Can we (future) clergy be both shepherds and sheep?

Sermon preached to my seminary colleagues at Morning Prayer, Chapel of the Apostles, Sewanee, Tenn. 2 Lent, Wednesday, Year One (Jeremiah 3:6-18, Romans 1:28-2:11)

Acknowledge your guilt, repent, and return to the Lord. Jeremiah and Paul are saying essentially the same thing in our readings this morning.
 
How will the ways we hear these passages be different when we’re the ones called upon to preach repentance to our people from the pulpit? As ordained leaders in the church, will we be as quick to repent as we will be to call others to repent?

I think this question is of utmost importance to our integrity and effectiveness as future clergy. There is a danger for those in positions of ordained leadership in the church to start identifying a little too closely with the voice of God and the voice of the prophets in the Scriptures and forget that we are also one of “the people” who are called to repentance.

“I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding,” God says, through the prophet Jeremiah.

Though the “shepherds” Jeremiah was referring to were probably kings of Israel, the shepherding metaphor has been passed down through the ages to church leadership – seen in the ubiquitous use of the term “pastoral” with regards to our ministry. Thinking of ourselves as “shepherds after God’s own heart,” who will “feed [the people] with knowledge and understanding” can set us up for a kind of blindness to our own need to be taught and fed – not only by God himself but by “the people” whom we think we are teaching and leading.

As clergy, will we be only prophets and shepherds, or can we remember how to be people and sheep as well? We hear a lot these days about “prophetic preaching,” about how to effectively call our congregations to live out the Gospel in their lives. But what about the value of responsive living? That is, patterning our own lives in response to the Gospel, to not only be the proclaimers but the receivers of the message that is ultimately not of us, but of God. As Paul says, we cannot pass judgment on others while doing the very same things we condemn. We cannot proclaim the message effectively if we do not live it out in our own lives.

Certainly, as priests, we will need to call our congregations to repentance – both in a routine, “it’s Lent so it’s time for repentance” kind of way and in a more specific, “there’s a particular issue in our community life for which we need to repent” kind of way. But how we do this is of utmost importance. We're fooling ourselves if we think our parishioners can't tell the difference between a call to repentance that comes out of self-righteousness and insecurity and a call to repentance that comes out of true humility and a deep familiarity with our own sinfulness.

This is why Mother Julia taught us in Pastoral Theology that a priest should not hear confessions regularly if he or she is not making his or her own confession regularly. We cannot effectively call others to repent if we are not also repentant ourselves – and I would add, not just inwardly, but outwardly – willing to publicly admit our wrongs and to “acknowledge our guilt” before the congregation -- being humble enough to apologize and acknowledge when we mess up, rather than trying to “save face” because we’re “the priest” and therefore somehow must be faultless in the eyes of our congregation.

As Paul reminds us this morning, “God shows no partiality” – not between Jews and Greeks, and not between clergy and laity. We may be called to preach the words of the prophet, but let us not forget to listen to them as well.