The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 20B
I did not grow up Episcopalian. I grew up in a different tradition, though my family was not particularly committed to it for a good part of my childhood. We started going to church as I got older, and I tried my best to connect to it, but I couldn’t. The way the Bible was interpreted, the way that the role of women was all about being a stay-at-home mom, as a teenager I distanced myself early.
At the same time, I was in honor society at my junior high. Part of being in honor society was doing so much volunteer work per semester. I wasn’t super-connected – I lived out in the country, and, to be honest, I didn’t know how to do volunteer work if it wasn’t associated with my particular church – who do you call? And remember, this was before the internet really made all that information available.
A friend of mine was going to do volunteer work at the soup kitchen, and he gave me the phone number of the Episcopal priest whose parish ran the kitchen. I was nervous and gave the priest a call.
So my first interaction with someone I knew was an Episcopalian, and a priest to boot, was about volunteering at the soup kitchen. The priest answered the phone, I introduced myself, and said I was interested in serving at the soup kitchen.
And his response? In a gruff, annoyed tone: “You better show up.”
My young heart panicked. I reassured him repeatedly that I would, I would absolutely be there. Thanked him and hung up. I did go, of course. I helped set the tables – I knew that I was not welcome to come into the kitchen at all. I worked quietly to set out placemats, set out silverware, take the pitchers of water out to the tables, and take the food out to the guests. After bussing the dishes, I picked up the landline phone and called my parents to pick me up since I was done. I got the signature on the volunteer slip and left.
Did I go back? No, of course I didn’t go back to volunteer there ever again. I found other avenues for volunteer work.
The message that the priest and other volunteers had communicated to young me was that I was not welcome – and the priest had communicated to me that he suspected I was an incompetent flake like other volunteers he’d dealt with. All of that stood out to me in just a few short words, a tone of voice, and the behavior of the kitchen volunteers.
Imagine if the opposite had happened – if the young student volunteering for the first time had been made to feel welcome, if I had felt part of the team, if the frustrations of the adults in the room hadn’t been projected upon me. Yes, I know it’s frustrating when volunteers don’t show. Or when volunteers have to be helped because they don’t know where things are. Or when volunteers don’t do it exactly how you’d want it to be done. Or when volunteers are doing it because they have volunteer hours they need to fulfill. But all the adults working in the soup kitchen only cared about getting the meal done. I was made to feel like a hindrance to their ministry.
So yes, that was my first exposure to the Episcopal Church: a kid in a room of adults who communicated that I did not belong in their ministry. I bet the folks at that parish would have described themselves as warm and welcoming, of course.
Years later, in college, I was coming back to Christ after wandering spiritually. I was finally accepting myself as a gay man, and finding a church that would accept me was important to me. I was home from college, and I needed to find a church for the summer. There was no United Church of Christ congregation in Idaho Falls, and I hadn’t had much luck with other churches. But St Luke’s Episcopal in Idaho Falls actually responded kindly to my email.
I worked up the courage. I was 18 going on 19, and I went to the 8 am Rite I service. Now, worship in the Episcopal Church is very, very different from the United Church of Christ. I looked at the outline of the service in a mild panic. I opened the prayer book. I popped open the hymnal. Why is there an S in front of this hymn number? I wanted to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. I turned to the older woman behind me and asked – “Where do I find this in the hymnal?”
And with a gruff, abrupt tone, I got my response: “We don’t use the hymnal at 8.”
So the young adult, clearly a newbie and an oddity at a Rite 1, 8 am Eucharist, turned around, faced forward, and prayed I could get through the service. No help to use the prayer book, no guidance on the standing and sitting and kneeling parts. She didn’t even have to do the awkward, “Are you new?” – I definitely was new. I had asked for help. And now I just felt like a fool.
I got through it, sat after the service, and the priest came up to me during the procession out. He shook my hand, introduced himself, and said that if I had questions about the Episcopal Church, he’d be glad to set up time to chat, and that it was also great to just come to worship and experience what it was like. The first person to make me feel welcome in the Episcopal Church was Fr. Bruce Henne, whom some of you may remember here at All Saints.
It didn’t take much to make me feel welcome. I wanted to be seen as a human being. It took just a little gentleness. A little recognition of my humanity.
A little gentleness was all that it took.
By all reckoning, I shouldn’t have become Episcopalian. The priest and soup kitchen volunteers had made me feel so small and unwelcome as a teenager. My first attendance at worship made me feel like a fool. It says so much about the gentleness of one person in that one moment after the power of our Eucharistic liturgy that I kept coming back. They may not have welcomed me – either as a young teenager or a young adult – but that little expression of gentleness gave me permission to stick around instead of running away. It was the closest thing I could get for a welcome, and it bore fruit.
Gentleness as the Epistle of James talks about today is such an unrecognized virtue. Gentleness is not weakness, though people make that mistake all the time. Gentleness is keeping the human being at the center – not the annoying kid who has no idea where the placemats and forks are kept, not the frustrating young adult asking a question about the hymnal at 8 am, heaven forbid. Gentleness keeps us in check – we have to check what our tone of voice, our facial expression, our behaviors are communicating. Gentleness makes room for mistakes and also for kindness.
In the harshness of the world around us, we need this virtue of gentleness. It is not weakness, it not passivity, it is not indulgence. It says, “I see this human being in front of me.”
Even if they had not welcomed me as a child, a young volunteer at the soup kitchen, a little gentleness might have opened the door to coming back. But six or so years later, one person showed me a little gentleness, a little kindness that at least said I was not unwelcome. And here I am, almost twenty years later, still Episcopalian, against all odds, in the face of such unwelcome. All thanks to just a tiny bit of kindness.
What might a little more gentleness do for us, and for the world?