(I sometimes disagree with my theologically liberal Episcopal friend Harry Cook, but not this time. Rowland).

By Harry T. Cook

John 10: 1-10

About midway in the Good Shepherd passage cited above is the idea that the sheep will run from a stranger because they will not know his voice. They do not know the voice of strangers.

We have two cats at home, and they don’t seem to know the voices of strangers, either – mostly, I think, because they do not know those strange to them. To them, a stranger is one whom they have not encountered before. Yet, they who live in and – some would say run – our house are familiar enough with us that they will plop themselves down on our laps, try to cadge the food off our plates and take up most of the foot-room on our bed.

What makes a stranger strange? The word “strange” comes from a root that means “alien” or “outsider.” So it is said in the gospel passage that the sheep do not know the voice of the stranger. Is it the voice? Or the person speaking? Is he “strange” because of who he is or how he sounds or what he says or how he says it?

I was ordained to the priesthood 40 years ago this month when the church still used the traditional ordinal. The one about to be priested was asked by the bishop: Will you be ready . . . to banish and drive away from the church all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God’s Word?

My response had to be and was: I will, the Lord being my helper. After the rehearsal of the ordination liturgy, I asked one of my older mentors what he thought erroneous and strange doctrines might be, or what made any teaching erroneous or strange? He looked me over and said, “Buddy, YOU’RE erroneous and strange.” And we both had a good laugh. Little did he know, right?

In a sermon I presumed to give a week or so after my ordination, I tried – as the saying goes – to “unpack” that vow I had given in the presence of my bishop and several hundred people in the congregation. In the sermon I ventured that the phrase God’s Word could properly be construed as meaning what Jesus may have said, inasmuch as the church was bound by the teaching iterated in the Gospel of John and in the Nicene Creed that Jesus had been, and for all we knew still was, God in the flesh.

Therefore, those teachings (or doctrines) reasonably attributed to Jesus had to be God’s Word – as in the business about other cheeks, second miles, giving up coats and cloaks, loving neighbors, loving enemies and forgiving as often as required. If that was so, then I had just a week or so earlier taken on the solemn task of banishing and driving away from the church anything that was not in accord with those teachings.

There was at that time a huge controversy around the issue of open housing – that is, could people of color move into neighborhoods that had been all-white? I said that it seemed to me that the teachings of Jesus provided a resounding “YES” to that question. The United States was then in the middle of the Vietnam war. I asked how anybody thought we were doing on the loving-enemies part. The city of Detroit had just been torn asunder by the civil uprisings of 1967, and I asked how anybody thought we were doing in giving up some of our perks in favor of those who had none.

After one or two more sermons along that line, I found myself looking for a new job. Mine had become the voice of a stranger. I was no longer found fit to be one of the shepherds of that flock.

Strangeness, then, works both ways. What maybe makes a voice or a message “strange” is that it does not appeal to the listener’s ear. When my wife speaks sharply to one of our cats, who has jumped up on the kitchen counter, saying “GET DOWN!” the offending feline generally takes its own time in getting down, thereby signaling his or her displeasure with the sound of the voice and the unwelcome message it conveys.

Paraphrasing, as it turned out, Anthony Trollope, the rector of that church (my boss) some 40 years ago told me, “If you continue to preach that way, you will preach but seldom.” His senior warden continued in that vein: “If you continue to preach that way in the long term, you will preach but to empty pews.”

It was soon fixed that I would not continue to preach there, and I have found out since that speaking as I had spoken can result – and has, in fact, resulted – in empty or at least emptier pews.

It is, to say the least, an interesting experience to be seen as a stranger by one’s own flock, so to say, and to have its members recoil at the sound of one’s voice and its message. In trying to banish erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God’s Word, one can end up becoming a stranger himself.

Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.