Confirmation Class Character Sheet

Trying to do something new and interesting (hopefully) with the confirmation class.  We're going to talk about gifts of the spirit, and I used Comic Life to put together a little character sheet for the kids to fill out.  The idea is to spark a conversation about the spiritual gifts described in the three main NT lists as well as turn us to thinking about which gifts we have, which we want to develop, and which we just wonder about.

I tried to change all of the spiritual gifts listed into I-statements that the kids can either identify with or not.  I hope this goes well.  The idea is just to jump-start talk about spiritual gifts, and to connect the lists in the Bible with what we do, or don't do, every day.

Anybody reading this brave enough to post your scores in the comments thread?

This is really a rudimentary sheet - the software is more versatile than this, but I don't have all that long to learn  how to use it better.  I got the idea from Pete Figtree using Comic Life for his syllabus and making character sheets for all of his high school English students. What he came up with is more of an example of what you can do with the software, which is free for 30 days, and based on its potential, may end up being something I pay to register.

Reflection: We Can Haz Elderz?

Here are my notes from yesterday's sermon. Not counting what happens when talking in the moment, embellishing and examples and cutting things at the last minute and so on, this is pretty much what I said.

There is an italic part in the middle, added at the last minute based on a good conversation I had with a colleague Saturday night. I put it in italics so I could decide, in the moment, whether I would use it. I decided to use it - it introduced some ideas I wanted to introduce, and said something connected to what I was talking about (or so I thought). I try to mention something at least a half-dozen times in various venues before I expect anyone to address it with me.

Oh, and the title doesn't mean anything - it was just my working title. In the bulletin it just said REFLECTION.

ISAIAH 58:1-12

1   Shout out, do not hold back!

         Lift up your voice like a trumpet!

    Announce to my people their rebellion,

         to the house of Jacob their sins.

2   Yet day after day they seek me

         and delight to know my ways,

    as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness

         and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;

    they ask of me righteous judgments,

         they delight to draw near to God.

3   “Why do we fast, but you do not see?

         Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”

    Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,

         and oppress all your workers.

4   Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight

         and to strike with a wicked fist.

    Such fasting as you do today

         will not make your voice heard on high.

5   Is such the fast that I choose,

         a day to humble oneself?

    Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,

         and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?

    Will you call this a fast,

         a day acceptable to the LORD?

6   Is not this the fast that I choose:

         to loose the bonds of injustice,

         to undo the thongs of the yoke,

    to let the oppressed go free,

         and to break every yoke?

7   Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

         and bring the homeless poor into your house;

    when you see the naked, to cover them,

         and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

8   Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

         and your healing shall spring up quickly;

    your vindicator shall go before you,

         the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

9   Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;

         you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

    If you remove the yoke from among you,

         the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

10  if you offer your food to the hungry

         and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

    then your light shall rise in the darkness

         and your gloom be like the noonday.

11  The LORD will guide you continually,

         and satisfy your needs in parched places,

         and make your bones strong;

    and you shall be like a watered garden,

         like a spring of water,

         whose waters never fail.

12  Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

         you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

    you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

         the restorer of streets to live in.

Prayer

When I finally decided to go to seminary, the last straw was reading Isaiah 58.  It’s one of my favorite passages in the entire Bible.  It touched me because, at the time, I liked a lot about Christianity...except for the religion part.  If we could just do Christianity, but not have churches, I thought that would probably be the way to go.  I felt acutely how church got in the way of following Jesus, of being true disciples.

Isaiah 58 is all about the difference between religion on the one hand and following God on the other.  It’s easy to confuse the two, but they are not at all the same thing.  (To be clear about now, I think it is easier to follow Jesus in a church committed to that - but it is a lot harder in a church that is committed to...the church)

The first job of an Elder is to follow Jesus.  This comes before the best interests of the church, before finances, before meetings, before any of these things.  The first job of an Elder is following Jesus.

I had a chance to talk to Peter a little bit earlier this week.  We were going through the Book of Order, and what it has to say about the call of an Elder.  

Ask: what is it that a Christian does?  What is a Christian’s job?  [some answers: to share the good news of Jesus’ life, to live a Christ-like life, to open our hearts to God’s Spirit, to have a personal relationship with Jesus]

It is possible to sum it up pretty briefly: there are things which all Christians are called to do - for an Elder, those things are your job.  By accepting this call, by saying yes to it, you are saying that you will take as your special responsibility following Jesus, seeking to become more like him in every way.  You will do this first and most.  You will set an example for the congregation that you serve. (list answers they gave to the question)

In contrast to following Jesus, there is church; there is religion.  It is Jesus who calls people, and it can be church that drives them away.  You come to church, maybe excited about following Jesus, but suddenly you’re caught up in someone’s political agenda, or you’re embroiled in gossiping, or you spend all of your time worrying and working just to maintain what the church has done in the past.  You drift off, or storm out, or whatever, because whatever following Jesus is, this ain’t it.

Or maybe it isn’t so dramatic - it is Jesus who calls people, and it is church that somehow convinces them that their calling (of God the creator of the universe; the risen Christ, the HS in us like a fire) amounts to attending worship once a week and maybe volunteering now and then, or making a donation.  It’s underwhelming.  You read the prophets; you read what he says in the Gospels, about giving up your whole live in order to find it, about moving mountains, and it doesn’t compare with what you experience in the church building.

The good news is, though, that this is our church - your church.  We have a choice.  We all have the same job - following Jesus.  I have the absurd, luxurious privilege of being able to try to do that as a full-time job.  This means that I have the easiest job in this room - and I mean that.  My job is easy.  I share that job with the Elders, and we share that job with all of you, that job doing things like (list their examples again)

That isn’t to say that there aren’t challenges.  One of the challenges that come up among Elders is remaining together when we disagree - even when we disagree strongly.  Fair warning - I am not going to avoid talking about divisive issues.  Avoiding conflict is poison for a community, and I am not here to poison anyone, even though this will require periodically letting people feel uncomfortable; periodically being uncomfortable, even angry, myself.

A few days, a few dozen male pastors of some large Presbyterian churches wrote an open letter to the Presbyterian church as a whole.  In that letter they talked about one issue that has been divisive in the denomination for almost 40 years now - that of gay ordination, and the connected issue of gay marriage.  In this letter, they described our system as broken, our disagreements as entrenched, and as a solution, they laid out a plan to pull away from involvement in the denomination, and to form their own sub-groups, composed only of those people who agreed with them.

My thought was how frustrating and saddening this letter was. This is exactly what kills a community - breaking apart into tiny enclaves where we all are sure that no one will ever challenge us, or lead us to grow or change.  We become theologically fossilized, with rocks instead of bones, unable to move - sad, dead things.  What this letter, written by some stand-out names in the denomination, says is that they are no longer willing to work with anyone who disagrees with them.

They are no longer willing to be a community.

The test of love is always conflict.  If you say you love someone, but you’re not willing to disagree with them, and talk about your disagreement, and remain with them, then is that really love at all?  The test of community is the same.

***

This Thursday I was at a Presbytery training session, looking at factors that contribute to long-term church health.  I learned a lot that was helpful.  I got into a conversation with another pastor who is looking at retirement in the next few years.  He said to me something like “Why would anyone ever want to do this”, meaning pastoral ministry.  Honestly, this kind of question frustrates me.  As calmly as I could, I asked “Would you rather be a pastor, or a cashier at Wal-Mart?  Which is easier, being a pastor or a used car salesman?  We get to do meaningful things all the time.  But try to make being a cashier meaningful.  It’s possible, but it’s a lot harder.”  He had to admit - of the jobs I listed, he would still choose pastor.

Some pastors like to pretend that their job is really hard - I am not one of them.  I’ve had hard jobs.  Right now, I have the easiest job in this room.

In a similar way, the job of Elder can sound like a hard job.  You have to go to meetings, and learn to use Robert’s Rules of Order, and read the Book of Order and the Book of Confessions, and make hard decisions, and have long discussions and even arguments.

Or, it could be like this.  You get to help show us how to follow Jesus.  And when you do, when you take risks, when you stick your neck out, when you take a stand for what’s right, Isaiah 58 says that God is backing you up.  Listen again to what Isaiah says:

11  The LORD will guide you continually,

         and satisfy your needs in parched places,

         and make your bones strong;

    and you shall be like a watered garden,

         like a spring of water,

         whose waters never fail.

12  Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

         you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

    you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

         the restorer of streets to live in.

I hope that we find ways, through this church, to more closely follow Jesus.  I hope we find ways, through this church, to follow God, and to go out and to extinguish violence, and to raise up the lowly, and fight on the side of the oppressed, and to do justice, to show mercy - to do those things that God has always called people to do.

I hope we find ways to do this through the church - I bet you that we can, in fact, and that we will.  But the priority is to follow Jesus; the priority is to do those things that Isaiah is talking about.  That is my calling, that is your calling as Elders, that is the calling of every single person in this room, and every person who will ever come into this room, and every person who comes to know and trust the Lord.

We can look at this like it is the hardest job, or like it is the easiest and most wonderful job, like it is the only job worth doing.

[Praise hymn]

[Ordination/installation of Elders]

Sermon Notes: State of the Church Address

1 Corinthians 1:18-28

Dalton Presbyterian Church, 1/30/11

***

Show of hands: who has seen or heard Obama’s State of the Union address?

Yeah, this will be nowhere near that good.  Not even Joe Biden good.  But I felt like the timing was right to try something - Elder retreat, talking about the present and future of the church lately.

So because I am not a famous public speaker, I’ll need some prayers.

::pray::

State of the Church address
Thanks to leadership (stand, clap)

Remember the empty seats, and those who cannot be with us because of physical limitations or health (Dan Rudy, Susanna Amstutz, Jodi Smith)

Thankful for differences - we’re diverse (not ethnically - a shimmering rainbow of Caucasian!) in beliefs and politics.  Sometimes this comes out as fear to delve into divisive issues - but I see this as a strength, that we can come together even though we don’t agree on every line-item of a given creed.

Commonalities and continuity; this church, in one form or another, has been here a loooong time.  200 odd years.  From back when the flag didn’t nearly have so many stars.  In a couple years, we might want to think about doing something for our bicentennial.  That’s a long time.  Imagine all those saints who came before us - just in this little place in the world.

History - we’ve known times of flourishing, we’ve also known schism - the split 25 years ago that is still fresh for some of us - a split that is still felt now (I see it impact our live and ministry on an almost-weekly basis - it sneaks it’s way into other issues); and thru it all tremendous change.  We are inheritors, but the church now is almost nothing like it was 50 years ago; even less 100 years ago, or 150.  We’re not suddenly talking about change.  We’re simply continuing to change.

In recent memory, though, the world has moved.  The world always moves faster than the church - Facebook killing the church? - Evangelicalism and conservative politics - Christianity is a third-world movement, and will be for generations to come.  Even if we’ve tried to stand still, the ground has moved out from under us.

The state of the church is always this - the world has moved, and we must be part of it.  

The state of the church is always this - God has remained still, and we must move the world.

THis church doesn’t just have a past - we’ve also got a future.  We are not like any other church, and we are planted  here for a reason, no less now than our predecessors were 200 years ago.  We are called to flourish; we are called to live out our passion; we all have a mission.  Our calling hasn’t changed - it’s just that we have to figure out how to follow God out into the world.  The way we do church will not be the way we’ve done church before.  Until we are perfected, until Kingdom come, we are not finished.

We have this future, but I cannot hand it to you.  I cannot go get it and bring it back.  It isn’t going to land in our laps.  It is possible to run away from our calling.  God is alive and moving in our lives, alive and moving in the world outside these doors - but can ignore that if we want.

This future will not be made clear to us through wisdom - we read that in 1 Corinthians.  If we are looking for a wise, well-considered path, that won’t quite get us to God.  If we are careful and deliberate and discerning - that won’t quite cut it.  

We continue to read, in 1 Corinthians, that this future won’t even come by way of signs and miracles!  If we are waiting for a miracle, even if we experienced a miracle, a sign, here and now, that wouldn’t quite get us to God.  That’s a load off of my shoulders, because I’ve got no miracles.

What will move us into the future is...foolishness - the foolishness of trusting a God we cannot see, trusting a savior who died on a cross, trusting in our own efforts when we know how flawed we are, trusting in the Holy Spirit to strengthen us when we cannot do one more thing.  

Our hope is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is life to those who are alive with God. If we look ahead with the mindset that we are dying, God’s future for us will look like nonsense.

If, however, we are able to become fools, to cultivate our inner foolishness, then it’ll all make sense.  We’re called to be foolish, and seek God’s wisdom - we are called to be weak, and trust in God’s strength - we are called to be regular folks, and let God be the one who grants us our status.

But these are all just words.

I thought about this passage, and about the Elder retreat we had yesterday.  We talked about a lot of things - including what we thought we as a church, and the Elders in particular, were good at.  What we care about most.  Where we should be headed.

And this is where a President would outline the government initiatives and programs that would bring us into the bright future.  I’m not a President, though.  Being a pastor is quite different from being President.  I can’t really make much happen on my own.  In light of that point of divergence...

I’ve been thinking about what I am called to do.  What it is that I am good at.  What I care about.  What am I supposed to do, in light of this reading, in light of our calling, in light of where we are, who we are.  Who I am.  I don’t want to speak for anyone else.

I will speak for myself.

I like the idea of being a Fool.  Some of the astute and observant among may have noticed - I am a fool.  I am a goofball.  My head is in the clouds.  I am a dreamer.  I log more time in my own imagination than I do in this “real world” everyone keeps telling me about.  Sometimes this is a strength, and sometimes it is a weakness.  Part of me is happy to read that we are called to foolishness.

I don’t have any miracles up my sleeves, and I am only occasionally wise - but a fool provokes.  I will therefore throw down a challenge.  I will call you out, here and now, you, and everyone who isn’t here this morning, and everyone we can convince to come through those doors.

My challenge isn’t to dare you to sit in the front few rows of the church - even though it is warmer up here, and a lot easier to hear.  I’m afraid what I have in mind is even worse. (and let me take a moment to honor the courage of the intrepid few who braved the front row this morning)

This morning, I’m going to use a dirty word in church.  I want you to say this dirty word with me.  Ready?  

“Evangelism”.  Say it with me: “Evangelism”.  

We had our Elder retreat, and do you know what the Elders chose as the highest priority for the church going forward?  Evangelism.  So I am doing something tremendously foolish.  I am calling upon an aging, shrinking Presbyterian congregation to join me in becoming evangelists.

Like fools, like Paul and the first apostles, we are called to proclaim Christ.  Whether we like it or not.  Whether it seems wise or not.  With or without miracles.  Whether we feel strong enough or not.

The state of the church is always this - we are chosen by God, we are called for ministry, and our future is present with us right now.  You remember what Jesus was saying in the hills of Galilee in our reading last week?  The Kingdom of God is at hand.

The state of the church is always this - we are the kingdom of God.  And we are called to carry this good news in our hearts, in our lives, and out into the world.

I’m not going to drop this evangelism thing.  If you ignore it, it won’t go away.

This morning, I dare you to believe it.

PresbyMEME: Why I Am Voting Yes on 10A

Name, City, State
Douglas Hagler, Dalton, OH

Twitter and Facebook profiles
Twitter: @robosnake
Facebook: Douglas Hagler, Two Friars and A Fool, Dalton Presbyterian Church, Robosnake Games, The Stand-Up Comedian Party

Presbytery and 10a voting date
Muskingum Valley Presbytery; March 12, 2011

Reason ONE that you are voting "yes" on 10a is...
Instead of merely ONE reason, I offer...over two dozen good reasons why everyone should vote "yes" on 10a.  After writing and expanding upon each of those, it's actually kind of hard to come up with more.  Let's see.

Reason TWO that you are voting "yes" on 10a is...
The arguments against 10a are founded in theology and modes of interpretation I reject, including but not limited to: complementarianism, literalism, fundamentalism, and what I want to call "hypocriticalism", or "the hypoCritical method", whereby some conservative Biblical interpreters pretend they are not preferencing some parts of scripture over others, but rather pretend there is a singular "Biblical position" that we need only align ourselves with.

Reason THREE that you are voting "yes" on 10a is...
My mom is queer, and an ordained PC(USA) pastor.  You talkin' about my momma?  I'm-a slap you. [1]

What are your greatest hopes for the 10a debate that will take place on the floor of your Presbytery?
I am a coward, so I simply hope that no one yells at me, or at each other for that matter.  I hope that the justice and equality viewpoint, which is a minority viewpoint in my presbytery, will not lead people who know nothing else about me to think ill of me, or glare at me, or that kind of thing.  Basically, pessimism, cowardice and selfishness guide my hopes, such as they are.  I would like to see some movement from 30% in favor of justice and equality to some higher proportion when the vote finally comes down.  I hope not to hear anyone compare LGBTQ persons to pedophiles, drug addicts, people who have sex with animals, or people who are incestuous.

I hope I don't blow my lid, particularly in the event that people actually make those false and obnoxious comparisons, in public where I can hear them.

How would you respond to those that say that if we pass 10a individuals and congregations will leave the PC(USA)?
To put it bluntly - no one is forcing any congregation to stay.  If justice for LGBTQ persons is too much to stomach for some congregations, then so be it.  I'd rather they stayed and saw our LGBTQ sisters and brothers as human beings worthy of dignity and called by God to serve in ministry.  Failing that, if they simply must leave, then they'll leave.  I'm sure congregations left when we started ordaining women as well.  I'm sure congregations got angry when we stopped speaking out against interracial marriages.  Remember when some Presbyteries said it wasn't ok to own slaves?  A lot of congregations left over that too.  If this is the deal-breaker for some congregations, then that's what it is.  That has no bearing whatsoever on whether this is the right thing to do - and it is the right thing.  In 50 years when the culture has sea-changed on this issue, we'll be hearing about evangelical mega-churches with burgeoning pro-LGBTQ outreach programs, just like we're suddenly hearing more about environmentalism and social justice from them now.

What should the Presbyterian Church focus on after Amendment 10a passes?
Becoming a committed peace church and regularly engaging in active, participatory nonviolent direct action.  While Jesus is silent on homosexuality, he is very clear that his disciples must never, under any circumstances, use violence.  Before it was co-opted by Empire, the Church was a peace Church.  We will always be the slaves of Empire until we return to Jesus' original way of (among other things) radical nonviolence.

How does your understanding of Scripture frame your position on 10a?
Scripture is an ancient collection of human documents, written by people who were inspired by their faith and experiences to write a wide variety of things.  It didn't descend on a cloud in King James English; it wasn't beamed into the writers' brains; God wasn't working them like puppets.  Human beings wrote it, and whatever anyone says, human beings are left to interpret it.  We pray and hope for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our own interpretation and thinking.

It is a messy process, and it leads to a situation where the Church has been on the wrong side almost as much as on the right side, and the church has often had to be corrected by the culture rather than successfully correcting the culture.  This is to be expected when human beings are interpreting human writings which touch upon the deepest topics of human life and experience of the divine.

Scripture is also just one of many things which we rightly take into account when discussing theology and church life, including philosophy and reason, science, history, our own personal and collective experiences, God's ongoing inspiration, what the various Christian traditions have to say on the matter, and so on.  This is right and good and necessary, and I believe, precisely what God intends for us to do.  To use our whole minds, our whole bodies, and our whole collective wisdom, to bring all of that to bear, to the best of our abilities.

Bible-thumpers need not apply. [2]

***

1. No, I won't literally slap you.  I'll just want to.  Nonviolence is for the violent, after all.


2. If you want to read it and talk about it, I'm with you.  If you want to thump it or use it as a weapon, see above.

In For A Sheep, In For A Herd

These are my sermon notes, what I write out and then use to create bullet-points to preach from. I get the overall movement down, the ideas, a few of the pithy phrases, and then I discard it and go from notes. These notes are more complete than usual, and I think the illustration is kind of cool, so here you go. This is what I'll be preaching in 30 minutes:

Luke 2:8-20
Luke 15:1-7

I want to give some illustration around the idea of shepherds - I recently read an article that changed my image, my viewpoint, and let me to understand something more deeply than I did before.  If you want me to point you in the direction of the article, I can after the service, but it was written by Professor Richard Beck on his blog Experimental Theology.

Go back to the text and our imagery - what is a shepherd like?  Relatively poor, might be watching someone else’s flock, considered scruffy and somewhat dangerous.  

What is a farmer like?

Herdsmen tend to be more violent than farmers.  You can see this in Westerns - cowboys are rowdy and carry six-guns.  Farmers primarily provide daughters for cowboys to marry.  They do so, settle down, and do what?  Go into farming.

The reason is simple - it’s really hard to steal a farm, or to steal food from a farm.  There’s too much of it.  It isn’t very mobile.  And for most of the year, a lot of it isn’t in edible form.  The farmer might have neighbors who will stick up for him, and so on.

Stealing a herd is really easy.  Cattle-rustlers, right?  From the same westerns.

Imagine life for these shepherds: the sheep are everything they have.  All of their wealth; their investment portfolio; their medicare and medicaid when they get old; their 401k retirement plan; their day to day paycheck - all of that.

To illustrate this, I did something I probably shouldn’t have.  I went to the bank a few days ago, and I withdrew all of the money we had there in cash.  Mostly small bills, actually, just to illustrate.  There’s what’s in our checking account, as well as all we’ve saved in order to pay taxes this year - my taxes don’t come out of my paycheck, for the most part, as a pastor, so at tax-time we’ll be paying a huge bill all at once for the whole year.

Anyway, in this box is everything we have.

And this is what it’s like to be a shepherd.  (Dump it out)

There it is, all we have, lying out there where anyone can take it, any time.  Imagine this being your life - all you have in the world wandering around, bleating.  You bet your behind you’d be watching your flocks by night.  And by day.  Would you dare sleep?  Say a stranger comes near your flock - would you be welcoming?  Hell no.  You’d be locked and loaded.

That’s what it’s like to be a shepherd - constant anxiety that in a moment of neglect, you can lose everything.  The difference between prosperous herdsman and starving beggar is one bad night.

And now we return to our cute pastoral story about the angels coming to sing carols with the shepherds.  Only it doesn’t look much like that anymore.  We already talked about how terrifying angels are - shepherds are little better.  Come up to a shepherd in the dark and startle him and see if you live to see the dawn.  Not likely.

And yet these shepherds, when they hear the news about the birth of the Messiah, leave their flocks and go into town looking, door to door one imagines, seeking Jesus.

We don’t know if their flocks are there when the shepherds return.  All it would take is one cynical shepherd to see everyone else was leaving their flocks, and he could take off with everyone else’s investment portfolio.  In a heartbeat.  Not to mention wolves, or other predators.  Or the fact that sheep are stupid, and they just wander off sometimes.

This is not just “Hey, let’s go see a cute baby guys”.  This is a group of tough, sleepless, violent men dropping everything, risking losing everything they own, to go see Jesus.

Then - the shepherds could have returned to find their flocks gone.  The question is - given that, did they make a mistake?  Should they have stayed in the field, guarded their income, and ignored the baby Jesus?

Should we do that?  Is it the prudent thing, the wise thing, the right thing?  To remain ever concerned about our income, our retirement, and to neglect the times when Christ calls us into the world to do something?  To live out our calling?

Would we be the shepherds who stayed behind?  Because when we hesitate to risk, that’s who we are.  We don’t make it into the story.  We miss Jesus entirely.

***

Let’s continue on the shepherd theme.  Not only is Jesus birth attended by shepherds, but Jesus is later, as an adult, referred to as the Good Shepherd.

Now, this is not because Jesus acts like a skillful shepherd.  If Jesus was caring for actual sheep, he would be broke in a heartbeat.

Jesus tells a parable about a good shepherd - but no one who heard this story would have agreed with him at first.  It is more like a parable of an idiot shepherd who is destined for poverty.

(Illustrate with fake money again - get a pile and walk and drop a bill somewhere)

This is Jesus’ so-called good shepherd.  He’s going along with his herd, a hundred sheep, or, let’s say, ten thousand dollars.  He drops a hundred dollar bill, and later realizes it.  (Throw money up in the air)  He goes off looking for this lost one hundred dollar bill, leaving nine thousand, nine hundred dollars lying out on the ground for anyone to take.  He risks 99 for the sake of 1 lost sheep.

This shepherd is a moron.  In economic terms, this shepherd is a failure.

This shepherd is Jesus.

The incarnation, the Christmas story, is among other things, the Good Shepherd loving us so much, valuing us so greatly, that he comes to find us where we are, seeks us out, and risks everything in the process.

So we do not go seeking a God who is indifferent, or who is removed from us, waiting for our approach.  We go seeking a God who has already sought us, so passionately and relentlessly, that he takes on flesh, and every weakness, and absolute vulnerability, in order to find us when we are lost.

That is a God like no other.

And so here we are, watching our flocks by night - guarding our interests even when we are at rest, ready to go to war, to fight, to defend what is ours.

And our calling is to set it all down and to go seeking Jesus while he can be found.