Stay broad St. Paul’s, protect the both/and, keep rejecting the hard either/or choices, that masquerade as courage or righteousness, but in fact are nothing more than the first sign of a lack of faith. Be the church that says, “Whatever you are looking for in a church, you can find it here.” Is it sacred music? We have that. Is it robust children’s programs? We have those. Is it outreach to the world? We have that. Is it the Protestant call to hearing the Word that changes everything? We have that. Is it the Catholic sacramental presence so thick that you can taste it? We have that too. They all go together here and that is why there is room here for all of us both now and in the future.

Yesterday, leaders from all over our diocese gathered at Trinity Church in Boston to elect our next bishop. We all knew it was a momentous decision that would affect the lives of many people for years to come. The decision weighed heavily upon us. We had to choose between five candidates. When the results of the first vote came in, the results were evenly divided between the five candidates. Each one of them had support. After that vote, many of us cancelled any plans we had scheduled for later in the day because it became clear that we were going to be there a good while. We had this voting app on each of our phones and we spent our time looking at those impersonal, cold, metallic surfaces as much as at the human faces around us….

Most of our Scripture readings only come around every three years. There are other things in the Bible that never show up in our Sunday morning readings. And then there a few passages that come around every single year because our tradition has found that they contain something we benefit from by reminding ourselves of what they contain with greater frequency. Jesus the good shepherd is one of those things. We are told of this four weeks after Easter every year.
The language of shepherds is one of the ways the Bible talks about who our leaders are….

Very early this morning, with a hearty committed group of St. Paul’s parishioners and others who happened to join us, I greeted the sunrise with a hearty, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen!” The birds were singing all around. As the sun become brighter and brighter, I had to squint and then eventually turn away because the sun simply became too much for me, and I thought, “I’m not sure my heart is as open to the joy of it all as it should be.” My heart too has to squint because it has become accustomed to brooding about the world, its recent problems, and altogether too much death. In the words of the Gospel of Luke, I have become too accustomed to seeking the living among the dead. It does not take long at all for most of us to feel like we know how the world works. It turns out that it is fairly easy in life to think you know what it possible and what is impossible, what tends to happen and what can never happen. I have had five year olds say to my, “Oh, I know all about that.” Yet life is full of surprises because on the whole none of us are as good at predicting the future as we think we are….