Scolding the Sheep

I wish I could say that it was the first time I've heard a homily like this, but it isn't. I've heard similar things before, and from the same preacher, who happens to be a retired high school teacher and an ordained deacon. While he was preaching, I was praying the psalms.
I started with Psalm 38 and got as far as Psalm 44. I didn't plug my good ear, because I was listening to him while I prayed. He has warned me that to pray or read my bible during sermon time is childish and disrespectful. On my side, I just want to make best use of my time. If a sermon or homily is useful, I listen. If it isn't, I pray. The following is in quotation marks for effect. They are not the deacon's exact words, but the general content of his homily, as I remember it.

"I fear for the future of the Church," he confesses, "because attendance at liturgy has gotten to be so poor. It's great that we have all kinds of projects and events that we work on, the Festival, AHEPA Crab Feeds, Greek Dancing, various glendis and what not.
But that's not what the Church is for. We should all be here whenever there's a service. The church is barely an eighth full when liturgy starts, and even by the time of the reading of the Gospel it's not even half full. People are piling in late and that's not right. If this were a really healthy parish, umm, I mean, cathedral, we would have eighteen bible studies instead of only two, and there would be at least three priests serving here, instead of one. Children don't do what we say, they watch us and do what we do. How can we expect our holy faith to be passed on to the next generation, if they see us acting in such a careless and irreverent manner? Where's our zeal?"

Yes, deacon, I too fear for the future of this church, but not for the future of The Church. By definition, the Church of Christ is the congregation of all faithful Christians, no matter where they be, who follow our Lord Jesus Christ and confess Him their Savior, and prove on the battlefield of their own bodies that they are willing to lay down their lives for Him, not only their two or three hours a week. I am simply appalled that the shepherds should scold the sheep for not being fruitful and multiplying.

"Go forth and make disciples of all nations," the deacon reiterated several times. "Why aren't we doing that?" he asks, using "we" instead of "you" because, I hope, he realises he is even more responsible than the sheep are for his lack of anything more than verbal zeal.

One of the first duties of the clergy is to actively seek out members of the congregation placed in their charge who have the kinds of spiritual gifts, talents, skills, dispositions, and desires that qualify them for active ministry in the church. Instead, what we have are clergy professionals who confess they are "afraid of the people," because they "cannot trust them," and who therefore hoard all authority and desire all control to be in their own hands. Then they wonder why attendance dwindles, why people don't come to them for confession, why (from their point of view) the parish has let them down.

Don't scold the sheep! Step up to the plate and be good pastors of the flock, and you will see results, if that's what you want. But as long as you want to play the numbers game, and do little else but picture perfect liturgies and ho-hum, kaffee-klatsch meetings, you're going to lose, even the numbers game, even what little you think you have. You cannot cheat God, nor is the flock deceived. We know when we have a shepherd who is doing what he sees the Good Shepherd doing, and when that happens, we come a-running.