When I was very young I
loved Romper Room. I planted myself in front of the TV daily to watch Miss
Beverly and the lucky children who got to play with her in her TV classroom. Whatever
she said was gospel to me. I was a staunch proponent of the Do Bee concept,
ever wary of the Don’t Be. My grandmother loved to tease me and sing the Do Bee
song backwards, “I always do what’s wrong, I never do anything right,” just to
see me get apoplectic. I loved everything about Romper Room. But the moment
Miss Beverly picked up her magic mirror at the end of the show was unfailingly
a moment of despair for me.
She would begin to name all
the children watching at home whom she could see through her magic mirror:
Bobby and Cathy and Barbara and Jimmy, Lucy and Davy and Billy and Nancy, and
on and on. Every day I sat holding my breath waiting for her to see me, but she
never saw me. My mother told me once how hopeful I looked, listening and
waiting, and how disappointed I was every time.
It’s nice when they know
your name. If Miss Beverly had called my name just once, I would have pledged
myself to her for eternity. But, alas, she never knew me.
***
When I read in John’s
gospel that Mary recognized the risen Jesus when she heard him say her name, I
always think of this earlier story from John – the parable of the Good Shepherd,
who calls his sheep by name. They know his voice and they follow him. The sheep
can discern the voice of the shepherd from the voices of those who would do
them harm. They will run from a stranger,
Jesus says, because they do not know the stranger’s voice.
Yet, I am all too aware
that trust can be given to the wrong ones if they seem as though they know you.
Children will naturally trust someone who knows their name and says they are a
friend. Even adults will often misplace their trust. Our trust of certain
institutions, for example, has often been given unquestioningly.
So, as comforting as the
text sounds, our conversation at the roundtable this week soon turned to matters
of distrust, and not knowing, and concern about how we learn to recognize the
right voice – the voice of the Good Shepherd.
Often the advice given is
not helpful. How do you know a false prophet? If their prophecy turns out to be
false. Or, how do you know a false shepherd from a good shepherd? If they cause
harm to you. While I very much like the message of this parable – that the
sheep are safe in the enclosure of Jesus – I am not comfortable with the notion
that our safety is as simple as that. There are thieves and bandits in our midst
and people are less and less likely to give their trust to the church – with
very good reason.
Sexual harassment and abuse
has been in the news lately, again, and with it come the inevitable conversation
about institutions that seem to be especially prone to abuse. Katelyn Beaty, an editor for Christianity
Today, writes
in today’s New York Times that these institutions “are
usually insular organizations that resist external checks and revolve around
authoritative men.”
Beaty notes that too often
when abuse happens in the church, our first reaction is self-protection. People
close ranks around the institution out of loyalty, or a belief that it could
never happen here, or the fear that there could be a blemish on our reputation.
It should be obvious to us
that closing our eyes to thieving and banditry doesn’t make it gone. Ignoring untrustworthiness
doesn’t make us and our institutions trustworthy. But somehow it isn’t always
obvious, and I am concerned that we who profess to be the body of Christ, the
Good Shepherd, are not as careful as we should be about cultivating trust,
about earning trust. The question I need to ask is, how do we create trusting,
safe, and caring environments?
The greatest danger to the
church and those we minister to is to assume trustworthiness without the
benefit of any evidence. Saying, “Trust me,” is certainly not enough when there
are no actions to bolster the words. It is past time for us to put our focus on
demonstrating all the qualities that inspire trust – to be the voice of caring,
faithfulness, humility, truthfulness, and unconditional love.
That they might know the
Good Shepherd through us.
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