Rev. Stina Pope,
May 2, 2004

You are not of my flock, Jesus says to the people pushing him for answers in the temple. Harsh
words. And in the Acts passage, Paul and his trusty side-kick go to the local synagogue in the
town they are visiting, as they always do, until they are kicked out, and the elders invite him
forward and ask for a word of exhortation.

Now a small aside, because I can’t resist it. My mother is a Methodist minister, but she went to the
Mennonite Brethren seminary in Fresno. When Sue and I went to Vermont to do our civil union,
she and her new Jewish husband came to be witnesses. On Sunday, Sue and I went to the
Episcopal church in town, and she decided to go visit the Mennonite congregation that was close
to where we were staying. Their pastor, a woman, was on vacation, so the elders asked if there was
anyone who wanted to give a word of exhortation. They actually use that kind of language. Well,
don’t offer my mother the chance to say something unless you mean it, so she stood up and talked
about how wonderfully inclusive the Gospel is and that she had come to understand that meant all
sorts and conditions, and included gay and lesbian people in her list. She was, of course, quite
aware that the Mennonites were not coming from the same place she was, in fact they were aghast
with what she said, however they were much too polite to say anything except thank you. One can
imagine the elders in the local synagogue feeling somewhat the same way. They invite these
visitors to speak, and speak they do. And what do they say? The people Jesus came to did not
receive him.

I didn’t really understand what this meant until I lived in the South. “Mrs. Jones is not receiving
today” means that Mrs. Jones is indeed home, she just doesn’t want to see anyone thank you, so go
away. She is not receiving. The good people in the temple that Jesus called upon did not receive
him. The good people in the Church of England that John Wesley preached to did not receive him,
so he went out and started preaching to the coal miners who were not welcome in good company.
If Jesus came and spoke to us today, would we receive him?

You are not of my flock, Jesus says. Harsh words. How do we understand this?
A post from Tom Ehrich helps me make sense of this Gospel. He speaks of what faith is, and how
we get there. He suggests that today is shaped by what happened, not by what remnants linger. I
spent a large amount of time this week cleaning my office space. There was a lot to throw away,
and we have only lived in this house for a year. I hold onto things, pulling them around me like a
security blanket, and not wanting to give them up. I want to think it’s a way of showing who I am.
The truth is that I won’t learn about myself by re-reading old documents, but by examining the
person the actual events helped me to become.

So I throw things away. Historians don’t like it when we throw things away. But we aren’t doing
history. We are walking forward, and that requires shedding load. Shedding load is both about
things and about the memories those things hold. Moving forward requires that the present be
vivid and that the past become less vivid. Moving forward requires that we let go of the things that
hold us fast. For those of us who moved too much growing up losing both things and a sense of
place, this is a difficult balancing act between grabbing onto old things for the sake of their
antiquity and letting go of everything that has meaning. When we trust that the person we are is
enough, the balancing act becomes easier.

Tom suggests that following the future is the heart of faith. Not remembering former days, not
getting mired in what Jesus did or didn’t say 2,000 years ago, but shedding load and going
forward. So Jesus spoke harshly to people in the Temple. He said they didn’t believe because they
didn’t “belong” to his flock. They didn’t belong, because they didn’t follow.

What does this mean? Belonging, having a certain identity, was linked with making certain faith
claims, so failure to accept or to demonstrate that identity proved faith was absent or invalid. We
see this today all the time. People think that “Christians” are anti-gay, therefore if you think people
who are gay and lesbian, trannie and metro for that matter, are worthy of love and respect, then
you can’t be Christian, right? Having a certain identity is linked with making certain faith claims.
In Georgia, after a suburban county declared itself to be anti-gay, the gay leaders decided to have a
“family picnic” in the town square of the county seat. As the chaplain to Integrity/Atlanta, I was
pleased that everyone wanted to go support the action, and suggested that we should go Episcopal-
style. So there we were with cross, torches, incense and boat, all vested and led by the verger. The
cops stopped us at the gate. We were obviously Christians, therefore we were not going to be let in
to cause trouble. When we declared that we were all gay and lesbian, the good constabulatory got
very confused, and decided we must be in some kind of interesting drag, and not Christian after
all. We were, after all, in Baptist country. They let us in, and the gay people inside had a moment’s
panic, after all, having a certain identity is linked with making certain faith claims, but then, once
they recognized a couple of us, they cheered.

But, Tom says, what Jesus said was “follow,” not “belong.” To follow Jesus, the people of
Jerusalem would have had to discard their past. The Jerusalem people were keepers of an ancient
flame, not pioneers following a new torch. They were unable to follow Jesus into a new place.
That new place felt wrong to them. The problem was that they interpreted belonging as staying, as
opposed to venturing.

Our Pascal Candle is a torch, providing light to a dark world, but only if we dare allow it to set us
on fire and then walk outside. What would happen if we valued a faith that knew key stories,
understood the future as God’s new creation, understood discipleship as being sent out, and
understood faith as plowing forward. You see, Christians have the same problem with following
that the Jerusalem people did. Most believers, of any ilk, want to stay, and they argue about whose
staying-place is most authoritative, whose backward glances are most ancient and most accurate,
whose rituals are most assiduously grounded in yesterday. Only a few want to move on, and they
have little credibility in a movement that values non-movement. Meanwhile, Jesus is moving on. At
least, that is what I believe. I find it highly unlikely that Jesus stopped in 30 AD. We say our Easter
acclamation Christ is risen. If he lives, then he lives. And life is on the road, not on the shelf. I
want to follow God into the future. How about you?

(Italics from Tom Ehric’s “On a Journey” last week of April, 2004)