Sermon for April, 18 2010

Secondly there is another dimension to what I have just been saying and this time it is not about giving but it is about receiving. Before my online class really got started in terms of the reading, we were asked to write a couple paragraphs about who were are and then we were asked to write about our recollection of the first time that we were on the receiving end of pastoral care…not the giving end but rather the receiving. It is interesting you know…it took me much longer to answer that question about receiving pastoral care than it did about giving pastoral care. And so let us bring that question out of the classroom and into our own church life. When have you been on the receiving end here, in this church life of someone else doing their best to put into practice what Jesus told Peter, feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep? If you are like me, it feels easier to give instead of receiving; it feels more comfortable to give rather than to receive. I wonder how many times it has happened that folks have tried out a new church or have returned to church after a time of being away and after a few Sundays or a couple of Sundays they have decided that such and such a church is not for them. The reason that it is not for them is because the people don’t seem to care and they don’t seem to reach out and they seem distant. But if the truth were known the care and the reaching out and the heart is there, it is just not being received. Sometimes when we see the lambs being fed and the sheep being tended, it feels better to want to be the ones who are giving, than the ones receiving.

Now a word needs to be said about life. You will recall that on Easter Sunday I spoke about life and I asked you about some of the possible places where you might be finding life, and here at St. Paul’s. I suggested that if you are finding life in those places, then you are finding the risen Christ and the very presence of God. When the disciples had finished eating breakfast with Jesus, he then called Simon Peter aside and he asked him if he loved him and he said yes and then Jesus said feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep. And they knew in all that was happening…the casting their nets again, and the sharing of a breakfast meal and in Simon Peter being told to take care of and look after those who were to follow...they knew that Jesus was very much alive and that there was life. When we do the same here, be assured and doubt not that there is present life and where there is life, there is the risen Christ.

Rev. Glenn H. Stone