Requiem
BISHOP ROGERS SANDERS HARRIS
“I am the good shepherd,” Jesus says. Deep within us we all want to know someone is looking out for us, that someone knows our name and cares about us. Here, Jesus describes himself as one who cares enough for his followers to lay his life down for them. He does also tell us of others, whose interest in the sheep is mercenary at best. The hired hand says, “Pay me and I’ll watch the sheep, but don’t expect me to stick around if trouble arrives.” —However, the good shepherd stays. The good shepherd watches and protects, regardless of danger or trouble. Rogers Harris lived his life with this kind of watchful and steadfast concern for others. I’m not sure that people always perceived how deeply Rogers cared for them, though. His no-nonsense, down-to-business approach to problems and situations, perhaps formed in part during his time as a marine serving in the Korean War, made it occasionally appear to some people that he seemed detached. But others knew the deeply attuned side of him. As a priest of this Diocese, he served at Grace Church, Ridge Spring, St. Paul’s Batesburg, Good Shepherd, Greer, and St. Christopher’s, Spartanburg. At Good Shepherd, a young girl in the congregation prepared for a father-daughter dance at her school. When her alcoholic father didn’t show up, Rogers appeared within twenty minutes and took her, along with his own daughter, to the dance. A former South Carolina parishioner of his who is now a member of the Alabama parish my younger brother serves heard that Rogers was in intensive care here in Columbia. He called Rogers only a day or two before his death to tell him what his ministry had meant to him. “You saved my life,” he said, having reached and maintained sobriety now for about 25 years. Rogers also had a deft evangelism approach. He befriended a Baptist who owned the local liquor store, and began ordering the parish’s communion wine from him. The store owner was so taken by Rogers that he became an Episcopalian! Memories abound of Rogers’ rootedness in scripture and in his relationship with Jesus Christ. Whatever flaws Rogers may have shared with the rest of us, his eyes, his heart and his actions were all ultimately turned toward the rock upon which his faith was grounded and the call that God had made to him as servant and shepherd. That faith and that call indeed come to all of us in one form or another. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians reminds us in chapter 13 that now we see dimly, but then we will see face to face; now we know in part; then we will know fully, even as we are fully known. The turmoil and polarization and alienation that swirls around us these days is stark evidence of just how dimly we see—so stark that too many of us have lost even the desire to try to love those with whom we disagree. But when I reflect on Rogers’ life and ministry, I am reminded of that point at which we can see clearly—that God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that all who believe should not perish but have eternal life. Paul assures us that this is the love from which we can never be separated. Even if everything else seems muddy, chaotic and fearful, God’s love is the prize. God’s love is the goal. Love—even for one another—is what we will finally see and experience face to face, in the radiant presence of God. Yes, Rogers was a Bishop in the Church of God. He was bishop suffragan in Upper South Carolina and bishop diocesan in Southwest Florida. But above and beyond all else, Rogers was a child of God and servant of the Lord Jesus. Shortly before he died, his daughter played the hymn “For all the Saints” for him on her smartphone. At the alleluias, Rogers mouthed the word with the music. When she next played Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, his breathing began to slow. And with Amazing Grace, he entered into the eternal love and grace of his Father in heaven. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Well lived, my brother. Excerpt of a sermon by the Rt. Rev. Andrew Waldo, Bishop, Upper South Carolina 3