For many of us, instead of opening our hearts to prayer, Sunday school, or for Jewish children, Hebrew school,l can have the effect of silencing our natural instinct to prayer. It’s like the story of a simple shepherd, who every day would offer his personal prayer to God: “God, I love you so much, that if you were here, I would give you half of my sheep. If it was raining and you were cold, I would share my blanket with you.”

One day a great rabbi was walking by the field, and he heard the shepherd praying. He ran up to him, and said “Do you call that praying? Are you kidding? What would God do with your sheep? Of what use would a blanket be to God? Here, let me show you to pray properly before you further dishonor God’s holy name!” The rabbi then gave a brilliant lecture on the structure and meaning of the various prayers, and explained what to say and how to say it to the poor shepherd.

As soon as the rabbi left, the shepherd sat there stunned. He didn’t understand a word of it. But he knew the great rabbi was quite upset that his prayers were not proper. So he stopped praying.

For too many of us, that’s where the story ends. Fortunately for the shepherd, there is more to his story

Up in Heaven, God noticed the silence, and said “what happened to the beautiful prayers of my humble shepherd?” He decided to send an angel down to go and find out what was wrong. The angel found the shepherd, and the shepherd told him the whole story of his meeting with the rabbi. The angel said, “what does that rabbi know? Would you like to see how we pray in Heaven?” The shepherd instantly agreed and the angel whisked him off to Heaven, where he saw a Heavenly Host standing and proclaiming: “God, I love you so much, that if you were here, I would give you half of my sheep. If it was raining and you were cold, I would share my blanket with you.” The shepherd happily went back to his prayers, and God happily listened.

Now I must make a confession to you: I am that rabbi.

Professionally educated with way too many degrees, I am more comfortable lecturing than listening. I can be more comfortable leading in front than praying a humble prayer in the back. I need to learn from that shepherd. I sometimes let competency and knowledge blind me from the prayers and holiness right in front of me. Sometimes what I see and hear in the world may not fit my preconceived ideas, so I reject the shepherd’s prayer because it is not like mine.

But there is much more to this than my confession. In many respects the Episcopal Church is that rabbi as well. The world out there is the shepherd saying his humble prayer. The good news is that God listens to the prayers from the Episcopal Church AND God listens to the prayers of the humble shepherd.

How often do we look down upon other worship expressions because they are unusual? How often do we encounter prayer and worship that we reject because it doesn’t fit our preconceived ideas?

I am not suggesting that we have to reshape our practices of prayer and worship along the lines of other churches. Could we learn from the shepherd? Could we appeal to more people with an additional, simpler service?

The world is full of people who say they are “spiritual but not religious.” They want to pray like the shepherd without an educated priest or rabbi telling them how to pray. They already know the simple truth of what we have missed: The Lord is the shepherd.

The world has changed profoundly in this generation. Like the rabbi, our beloved church has been stuck doing the same thing for too long while the world passed us by. Maybe it is time for us to listen to our youth and listen to the world out there so we can learn how to be a church in this generation.

Maybe if we sit down and really listen to what they are saying, we can learn something from our children. Maybe.