A Letter of Recommendation

It’s always a little disconcerting, I am sure, for a politician to have his or her opponent begin an argument by saying they agree with you. No doubt, doubt creeps in that maybe, if they agree with me, I might be wrong.

Clergy are humans and like all humans there is a strong desire in us to be liked. Perhaps this condition could be considered a flaw and if so, rectors of parishes are afflicted even more so.

We want people to like us but we want to do our job too. Perhaps sometimes we can’t have it both ways.

Jesus, after preaching in his hometown, upsets the people so much that they want to toss him off of a cliff. That kind of reaction is exactly the opposite of that ingrained need to be liked. Yet there is something powerful, something of the Holy Spirit that brings on that kind of reaction.

Simply provoking a negative response is not what I’m talking about. Getting people to dislike you is easy enough.

The matter at hand is much more important. It is about speaking the truth in such a way that it jars people into truly considering whether it applies to them. So, at the risk of a gathered posse let me pose just one question that might result in having me tossed off of a cliff.

Would the poor of Charlottetown write

us a letter of recommendation?

I’m not going to try and answer that question. I simply mean it to be a question to make us think. It is one thing to have the rich and powerful to think well of us. And I dare say, if such is the case, we have our reward. A reward worth having, an everlasting reward has nothing to do with what the rich and powerful think, and I rather think that a letter of recommendation from the poor will be a rather handy thing when it comes to enjoying that great and worthwhile reward.

Of course I continue to firmly believe that in such matter it is only by God’s grace that any of us have any hope. In the meantime, it might be nice to have the rich and powerful think, when they see us coming, “Oh, you're one of them, aren’t you? You’re a member of St. Paul’s Church?”

PS—How about the ill, imprisoned, refugee, homeless, deaf, blind, disabled, gender-nonconforming, LGBTQ2+, would they write us a letter of recommendation?