(Editor's Note: The following is the printed text of Mary Frances Schjonberg's last sermon at St. Paul's on Mother's Day, May 14, 2000, just prior to her graduation from CDSP and her departure to Montana for ordination.)

It being Mother's Day, the temptation -- perhaps even the expectation -- is to talk about shepherds and mothers -- of lambs and kids.

But I want to talk about wolves and laboratories.

When you come from western Montana the way I do, you know from wolves. Wolves have always been hated. The ranchers and the government killed them off because they killed the sheep and cows. No wolf howls had been heard in western Montana for decades.

Then a few years ago, the wolf began showing up again in our mountain valleys. These animals who know nothing about international borders wandered down from Alberta and British Columbia. They traveled far -- as much as 500 miles to appear one year in a rancher's meadow in the Nine Mile Valley west of Missoula. The rancher and his brother caught the Nine Mile pack on video. You can see them benignly passing among the rancher's cows. There's video of wolf pups frolicking in the meadow's spring grass.

These Nine Mile wolves became the poster children for what is known as wolf reintroduction. If wolves were wandering into Montana on their own, didn't that mean that they were supposed to be there? That it was wrong to eliminate them in the first place? As the Canadian immigrants started hanging out in the Nine Mile Valley, there were reports of wolf voices being heard in Yellowstone National Park.

So the suggestion was made that maybe we ought to help this process by catching wolves up in Canada where they abound and transplanting them into Montana where they are scarce. The fight that ensued pitted biologists, Indians, and so-called tree-huggers against ranchers and people who just plain didn't want the government telling them what to do -- not to mention messing with nature.

The ranchers know that the wolf is evil personified. The wolf snatches their sheep and scatters them. It is not a pretty sight to see a wolf-killed lamb under any circumstances. Knowing how much you invested in the lamb's mother and father just makes you all the more angry and sad.

The anti-government activists knew that the government is evil personified. No one asked them, they said, about the wolves. Yes, there were public hearings and such, but everyone knows the government was just going to do what it wanted to do -- regardless.

The Indians knew that the wolf was sacred. She roams through their creation stories. She is full of mystery and power.

The biologists and the tree-huggers knew in their souls that wolves belonged here and that it was a shame, if not a sin, to have killed them off. The park rangers in Yellowstone knew that their problem with elk overpopulation stemmed in part from a lack of wolves to thin the herds.

So the mountain valleys of western Montana became a laboratory for a major biological and environmental engineering experiment called "could people, livestock, and wolves lie down together?"

Wolves were caught in Canada and flown to western Montana. Indian chiefs and spiritual leaders welcomed them in a hanger at the Missoula airport Some environmentalists agreed to pay ranchers for wolf-damaged livestock and to let problem wolves be killed. Some opponents took to the woods with guns and knives. Determined to thwart the experiment and to vent their anger, they killed and skinned wolves.

And the wolf flourished, surviving centuries of hate and even surviving the hazards of modern western life like speeding four-by-fours. It wasn't until the alpha male of the Nine Mile pack was killed on the Interstate that the teenage wolves started killing cattle and to be killed themselves.

Five years into this experiment people still argue about whether the wolves should be there. I was inclined to think that the ranchers were just mean old yahoos who weren't capable of being as liberal -- or as poetic -- as I was. But, we've all learned that the story of wolves in western Montana is not a clear-cut morality play. The ranchers aren't all wrong. The biologists aren't all wrong. All the opponents aren't all wrong. And five years into this experiment, many people know now to be shepherds of sheep and cows and wolves and ranchers.

Now there's another laboratory I want to tell you about. You actually know this one very well. It's not in a mountain valley filled with ranchers and biologists and wolves and courtrooms. No, it's made up of

people who care about social justice. . .
people who argue about liturgy and homeless people. . .
people who have deep faith and who long to see God more clearly. . .

All these people come together in a parish hall with pretty grungy carpet, and in a sanctuary crowned by a rose window won from a gambler.

When I first came here two years ago, Fr. Bruce told me to think of this as my laboratory -- a place where I could try on ministry and see how it fit. I also took his invitation to mean: come join us in this experiment called church. It took me a while to realize that you saw me differently than I saw myself. Back over in Berkeley I was a seminary student who didn't know much. Somewhere between there and here -- I think probably halfway across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge -- I became a budding priest whom you expected could lead you in praying and learning about this God we believe in. You had more faith in me than I sometimes could summon up in myself. It was those times when I remembered that you have done this before: taken in a sheep from seminary and shepherded her into her pastoral identity.

In the nearly two years that I've been here, I've been part of many experiments. I've joined your conversations about homosexuality, children's roles in worship and ministry, changes in worship, inclusive language, new versions of the Lord's Prayer, the death penalty, theological reflection.

We haven't always agreed on what were the right choices -- or sometimes even whether we should be talking about this stuff in the first place. Sometimes I've wished I could take all the passion of the disagreements and push it all in the same direction. What power you would have then!

But, that desire of mine ignores another reality - there is power in our disagreements. The question is how we use that power. Are we like wolves who would snatch and scatter those who disagree with us? Sometimes the power of our disagreements hurts and scares some people. It makes them leave. None of us mean that to happen, but it does and so we have to pay attention to that use of this power.

Fortunately, there is another power alive in our disagreements if we can stand firm long enough to find it. It is the power of creation - the power of the Spirit. If all we're after is to get people to listen to OUR voices, we will never hear anyone else's voice. We will sit deadly secure in our certainties and revel in the assurance they give us. We will never hear a powerful new idea lurking in the arguments of the people we deem our opponents. We will never learn how to shepherd new creation into being. We might just run like the hired hand if the only stake we have is in preserving our position. Wouldn't it be better to stay with the sheep and find a way to lie down with the wolves that roam through the valley of our disagreements? Must we always see our antagonists as wolves instead of fellow confused sheep?

When I first joined the Episcopal Church, my rector allowed as how Episcopalians argue -- a lot sometimes. I learned through that the freedom to disagree meant I didn't have to check my brain at the door of the church. I felt the saving grace of being able to disagree with people and still be able to walk up to the table with them to praise and thank God for the power of the Spirit in our lives.

So many experiments go on in this place and they're all part of the biggest experiment of all -- "How do we live out the Gospel? How do we remember the promises made over us when we were baptized? To seek and serve Christ in all persons -- to strive for justice and peace and to respect the dignity of every human being. If we knew the answers to those questions, all this would be so much easier. But, we don't so we have to keep experimenting - probably disagreeing about how to conduct the experiments and probably questioning what the outcomes mean.

As I leave (to return to Montana), you are deep into conversations about just what your vision is for this place called St. Paul's. I hope you will remember what I have learned here: that church is an experiment but it's not rocket science. Everything in rocket science is ultimately about provable right and wrong answers. Church is about feeling and nuance and mystery and power. It's about leading and being led. It's about seeing the beauty in the wolf AND the danger in never leaving the flock to seek that greener pasture. We can do both: look the wolf in the eye and not be afraid and wander far from the sheepfold to see new ways of living.

We can do this if we've pledged to protect each other the way the Good Shepherd and Easter teaches us. Through those examples we know that faith rolls away huge boulders --

tombs empty out
fear becomes courage
wolves lie down with lambs
and compassion abounds.

This is what you've all taught me here. I pray that I remember it - - always.