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At this celebration of Harvest Thanksgiving each of us will have a very personal list of things we are thankful for, and we should include all these things in today’s eucharistic celebration, for "eucharist," you will remember, means "thanksgiving." In this homily I would like to focus on something for which, I assume, we are all thankful, namely, this church, the Church of the Good Shepherd.

Last week I received a mailing which proclaimed this Saturday, October 26th, as a "National Day of Prayer and Fasting" "for a church in crisis." This time the "crisis" is the decision by the Bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster to authorize a church blessing for same-sex unions. Fifteen years ago the crisis was over the heavy-handed way in which the Book of Alternative Services was being introduced. In the Church of England there was a crisis over the ordination of women, which nearly split the church, and today women in England are still ineligible to become bishops.

I do not intend to trivilialize any of these issues. But I am grateful that here at the Good Shepherd none of them has provoked a cisis. Sexual orientation is not a contentious issue here, as far as I know, although people may differ over the wisdom of Bishop Ingham’s action. As far as women in ministry is concerned, I am grateful to the women who have taken services here in my absence, and I am happy to serve under Kate Merriman as Regional Dean. The BAS did not provoke a crisis here because, although it is regularly used in our Sunday worship, it did not supplant the official service book of the church, the Book of Common Prayer.

Here at the Good Shepherd the most lively topics of debate have concerned such matters as whether or not we could afford a public address system and whether Harvest Thanksgiving should be observed on the Sunday after or the Sunday before the civic holiday.

An outsider might say that we enjoy such tranquility here only because we are not "on the cutting edge" and are not "pushing the envelope." To that I would reply, Thank God! "My house shall be called a house of prayer" (Isaiah 56:7), saith the Lord. We do not come together here to solve the problems of society or of the church, although we are not unmindful of these problems. We come together to worship God, and whatever differences we may have on the issues of the day, we do not allow them to intrude upon our worship.

The difference, I think, between an issue and a crisis is this: a crisis can get under your skin and unleash anger and resentment which may sometimes eclipse the issue which provided the catalyst. I know this from my own experience, because one of the issues I have mentioned, the status of the Book of Common Prayer, is something about which I have strong and passionate convictions. Before coming to the Good Shepherd, I have had to remind myself, in the words of James, that "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God" (1:20), and I am grateful that here the issue is just an issue and not a crisis.

Last week preached on the insidious attraction of negativity. I have found little negativity here at the Good Shepherd. Most people seem to want to "accentuate the positive," and that has made my five years as your Priest in Charge a most happy experience. For that I thank you.

October 20, 2002

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