Chad Herring

Sermon of the Week:
You Wanna Go Where Everybody Knows Your Name

An online sermon preached with The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on May 3, 2020.

Fourth Sunday of Easter #pcusa

Keywords: Aussies, The Good Shepherd, Cheers, Power of a Name, Gospel of John
#pcusa

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Acts 2:41-47
and John 10:1-18

Our family has been talking A LOT about shepherds this week,
but it wasn’t because of this passage from the Gospel According to John.

We’ve been considering adding another pup to our family mix
for a couple of months now
and, yesterday, we adopted a playful and goofy Australian Shepherd named Ryder.

Leading up to all this, I did a lot of research about Aussies, among other breeds.
Was a bit nervous, you know,
not just about Aussies, but about any new dog.
Would they get along with our other pup Annie?
Would they be good with our girls, our neighbors, our couches? All open questions still.

So we looked at all sorts of dogs,
mainly medium-small size pups,
dogs who could both go on a good long walk
and hang out while watching tv
and we fell hard for this Australian Shepherd Ryder.

Turns out they’re not from Australia at all.
Their roots go back to American Ranches in the 1800s,
possibly related to English shepherds and border collies.
The most likely story is that they were introduced
to help herd sheep that were being imported from Australia at the time,
and thus the name.

Like many shepherding breeds, they’re attentive and smart and active
and Aussies reportedly have a high drive to please,
so, needless to say, we’re excited,
even if we might look a bit tired this morning
with the introduction of a 9 month old puppy around here.

These are new surroundings.
We have to earn his trust, go easy with him,
show him we’re dependable and have his best interests at heart.

I have some training to do;
mainly I need to train myself, so I can help train him.

When you research the breed, you find some great youtube videos out there
of Aussies herding sheep.

When THAT’s their job, wow, watch out: they run fast and true,
and can keep hundreds of animals in the right place at the right time.

Some of those videos show the dogs guiding the sheep to stick together,
and somehow they get all those sheep to move as one gigantic horde
as the dogs guide them safely into their pen,
often through what seems to be an impossibly narrow gate,
at least when you’re talking about that many animals.

We don’t have sheep around here, at our house in suburban Kansas City,
so we’ll have to work up some other job for him to do.
Some of the literature suggests asking them
to pick up your dirty clothes off the floor and taking them to the hamper,
and I think we would LOVE some of that around here, if Ryder is up for it.

///
Truth be told, this is all another way to say
that I don’t know all that much about real shepherds,
the kind of work it takes to actually keep sheep and other livestock
on the straight and narrow.

I am, admittingly, a creature of the city and the suburb,
and even though I spent the first twelve years of my life
in some teeny-tiny towns in rural Iowa
and there are some cute pictures of me as a kid at county fairs
doing kiddy tractor pulls or enjoying Windsor chops on a stick,
we still lived in the town town, you know?
The farm life is largely foreign to me.

Some of you have more experience of the farm than I do.
But if you’re more like me,
then these passages about Jesus as a shepherd,
as the GOOD shepherd,
take a bit of translation to get your head around.

That’s ok. We all have our own histories and our own experiences,
and I value farmers and am so grateful for those who work the land, raise animals.
I just don’t have the innate connection
with these stories that they might have,
or, for that matter, that the gospel writer’s audience would have had.

The biblical world was a much more agrarian world.
Both sheep and the shepherding profession,
the people, not just the pups,
were common parts of everyday society back in Jesus’ day,
and more generally in the biblical period.

As a result, you see mentions of sheep all over the place in the Bible.
The people writing and listening to these stories would just get it, naturally.
Sometimes there are references to actual herds of livestock,
and other times, like today, this is offered more as a metaphor
about people and their leaders, or about who God is in relation to us.

The most famous of these passages is the 23^rd Psalm,
The Lord is my Shepherd,
I shall not want…
He maketh me lie down in green pastures
He leadeth me beside still waters
He restoreth my soul… [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week:
Passion and Compassion

An online sermon preached with The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on April 26, 2020.

Third Sunday of Easter #pcusa

Keywords: Zoom fatigue, Emmaus, Not Normal, Hospitality, Burning Hearts.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
and Luke 24:13-35

The BBC news published an article on Wednesday
with a title that seemed to call out to me
with the kind of deep understanding and keen insight
that makes me wonder if they’re reading my journal
or can hear the voices in my head.
The Reason Zoom Calls Drain Your Energy, the BBC title declared.

I realize the irony about bringing this up, since we’re all using Zoom to worship right now.
We like Zoom for worship, because it is generally easy to use,
because people who don’t use the internet very much can call into it,
because it connects, most of the time, to facebook,
and it allows us to bring worship to you,
while those of us leading worship
are in different locations.
It is a true marvel of modern technology.

We don’t think that Zoom drains our energies during THIS hour.
This is a bit different.
Worship via Zoom might be work, for us who lead it,
but for all of us, it is rejuvenating, joyous time together.

This isn’t the same as meeting using Zoom, where we have work work to do.

It is that sort of time,
the schedule the call
have an agenda to work through
get the whole team online and lets get the meeting done sort of gathering
that the BBC is seeking to explain in that article. And they have a point.

Some of you might be retired, or doing work that doesn’t require meetings
or maybe you’re out of work, and would be delighted to have a zoom meeting right about now
but for many others, including myself,
work in the age of coronavirus
means getting accustomed to teleconferencing software like zoom.
Millions of students and employees have, all of a sudden,
found themselves to be on these platforms all the time.

We use Zoom for a lot of our meetings and our bible studies,
which is fine.

But it also can feel like a lot.

One day last week I had 6 zoom meetings, lasting about 6 hours
and I’m not complaining,
I’m truly grateful for the technology that allows many of us to work from home
without it, this economic slump we’re in could be a lot worse,
though we know that it only helps those of us who work in careers where we meet a lot:
you can’t zoom that leaky faucet repair if you’re a plumber
or go-to-meeting the restocking of the grocery store shelves
or webex the intubation of your next patient.

So this is all relative, for sure,
but the BBC article did touch a nerve.

If you’re spending a lot more time on video teleconferencing, like me,
you might be wondering why you feel so exhausted at the end of the day.

Well, the BBC says, that’s because of all the extra work we have to do
in these sorts of meetings.

Our bodies and minds are not built
for processing our human-to-human interaction through a screen.
We are, as Aristotle once called us, social rational animals,
and being with other people is part of who we are, social animals.

So, we human beings are finely tuned in such a way
that we can read the so-called non-verbal communication of others,
the subtle raising of an eyebrow
when we hear something incredulous,
the barely perceptible wrinkle near the lips
when we think we’re onto something,
the slightly audible inhalation
when we’re shocked but we don’t want others to know it…
these things don’t translate very well unless we’re actually with other people.

Or so says the BBC.
But you learn much of this in an introduction to Psychology course in college, too.

This sort of communication happens naturally, often subconsciously, when we’re together

And therefore there’s something lost
with many other forms of communication:
the telephone: you can hear many important non-verbals,
but you might miss the furrowed brow or the silent laughter,
text or email: emojis can help, but they’re not always appropriate when you’re writing your boss
and how many times have we read something in an email or a text
that totally missed what the other person was saying?
snapchats and instas and facebook messages and, yes, teleconferencing software…
maybe more opportunity to get the broader picture, through video and pictures,
but, this is the point, your mind has to work harder at it.

The BBC says that we tend to ramp up our attention span
during these sorts of efforts at communication
looking for those non-verbal clues that would be naturally apparent if we were right there.

Then there are the moments of silence, normal in a face-to-face discussion
where someone might be reflecting on what we were just talking about,
but which seems unnatural over teleconference, and people leap to fill the void.

These are the things that can exhaust us.
To make it better, the article advises
space out your calls, take breaks, connect to real people,
all really sound ideas
that can often be in tension with the work we still have to get done
and this ever bizarre and stressful time we are in, where we’re all home alone, together.

///
During some of my zoom calls this week,
I’ve been talking with people about how we seem to be hitting a sort of rhythm
where, sure, we might be having trouble remembering what day of the week it is
because we’re all in our houses all the time,
but maybe we’ve got the basics figured out by now.
We have a plan for the essential things:
we know how to go to the grocery store:
my mask is in the car, along with my hand sanitizer,
I am sure to bring my list so I can be efficient and get out of there in minimal time.
Beyond the boredom and ennui and anxiety about our loved ones and our jobs
many of us are making it through the days ok,
sure, we’re eager to get back to the way things were,
we’re just not sure when that will be.

But it helps to remember that none of this is normal, you know.
Zoom calls might help some of us do our work, but they’re exhausting.
If you’re in a more manual labor type situation, or you work at a bank,
or you’re a chaplain or a nurse: there are so many new things we’re dealing with
that the stress can really build up, for all of us
(even if we’re not able to name its presence all the time). [Read more…]

Sermon: You Wanna Go Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Sermon: Passion and Compassion