sermon-april-25-2010-  (Click here for an audio version of the sermon.)

 

 

Today is often called “Good Shepherd” Sunday.  Since our congregation is named “Good Shepherd” and not named after some historical saint, it’s as close to a patronal feast day as we get. This passage from John’s gospel about the Shepherd and his sheep, and our psalm for today – Psalm 23 – are probably two of the most popular passages in the Bible. They’re popular because they give us an image of our relationship with God and with Jesus, and they point to what most of us value about belonging to a church community. In the gospel, Jesus says, “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.” This passage speaks of a close personal relationship between Jesus, the Shepherd, and us, his flock.  It’s the same kind of relationship that the psalmist is talking about when he says, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

 

Isn’t this one main reason that many of us are here? Because of our relationships with people here we can glimpse something of what the gospel and the psalm are talking about. Because of our relationships here we sense what it means to be known…to be loved…to be cared for – just at the Shepherd knows and cares for the sheep.

 

But let’s pause for a moment. Although many of us have experienced the joy of being known and cared for by other people….experienced, through our relationships here something like the relationship of the Shepherd to the sheep…we know that there are many people who have not experienced this. For many people, Psalm 23 or this gospel passage provide comforting images of God and of Jesus, but they don’t speak to us with any real power….they don’t really touch us where it matters most – in the heart. Why else do we see the slow decline in attendance at many churches like ours? If people’s hearts were really touched by the love of the Shepherd… if they knew with some depth the power of God’s love and forgiveness, wouldn’t they naturally want to be part of a Christian community where the voice of the Shepherd could be heard on a regular basis?

 

So what are some of the obstacles that people face in continuing to experience the presence of the risen Jesus in communities like Good Shepherd?

 

As people who have grown up on a sheep farm know, sheep are not like cattle. Cows are herded from the rear by hooting cowboys with cracking whips.  But this doesn’t work with sheep. Sheep need to be lead from the front. They won’t go anywhere that someone else doesn’t go first – namely their shepherd – who goes ahead of them to show them that everything is all right.  Sheep tend to grow fond of their shepherds.  A shepherd could walk right through the middle of a sleeping flock without causing a stir, whereas, if a stranger did this, it would cause pandemonium.

 

Sheep tend to consider their shepherds part of the family and the relationship that grows up between the two is very intimate and exclusive. The shepherd and the sheep even develop a language that outsiders aren’t privy to.  A good shepherd learns to distinguish a bleat of pain from one of pleasure. And the sheep learn that a cluck of the tongue means food or a two note song means that it’s time to home. Even when different flocks of sheep are all mixed up in a pasture, all the shepherd has to do is make a special call and the sheep withdraw from the crowd and follow the shepherd home. The sheep know who they belong to.

 

I know a lot of us resent being compared to sheep, but there’s something we can learn from this picture.  Many of us would be the first to admit that, in our relationship with Jesus, we feel that we are know, loved and forgiven by the one who gave his life for us. But how many of us would honestly admit that we know the voice of Jesus in the way that sheep recognize the call of their shepherd?

 

It’s interesting that, in English translations, the word “voice” appears 325 times in the NRSV Bible. To hear someone’s voice is to encounter what may be most distinctive about that person, to be in relationship with that person.  But how much time do we spend intentionally listening to the voice of God or the voice of the risen Jesus. Do we listen to the voice of the shepherd in our personal or family reading of scripture or in personal or family prayer? Do we intentionally cultivate an intimate relationship with the shepherd ….a relationship that is ours and no one else’s….what we would call an “owned” faith?

 

To use the language of John’s gospel, what keeps us from being part of Jesus’ sheepfold? Most of us would probably agree that it’s not about belief. We believe. The questions is, “are we connected to God in the midst of our harried, hurried lifestyles? Do any of us make the time, carve out the time to give priority to hearing the shepherd’s voice?

 

Another way that we exile ourselves from the community where the risen Jesus lives is through our expectations about what it means to be a member of the flock. I think that one of the reasons why the words of the 23^rd psalm are so comforting to people in the face of anxiety or worry is that they don’t focus on what we need to do to be in relationship with the shepherd. Instead, they describe what God had done for us: “He revives my soul; he guides me along right pathways; he comforts me; he welcomes me to a banquet; he anoints my head with oil.”

 

One of the obstacles that we face is that, so often, we put way too much emphasis on what we have to think, do or believe rather than on what God in Christ does. Psalm 23 clearly says that the sheep are in relationship with the shepherd because of what the shepherd does, rather than on what the sheep do.  

 

My former assistant in San Antonio once gave me a drawing that illustrates what we often expect we need to do in contrast to what the shepherd does for us. The drawing consisted of three related images. In the first image a pair of hands encircles the top of an elegantly shaped ceramic pot. The hands look as though they are just touching the vessel lovingly after the work of shaping and firing the clay – just enjoying the perfection of the completed vessel. Beneath this first image are the words, “Expect a miracle.”

 

The second image shows the pot again, this time without the hands. Two jagged cracks have broken open the mid-section of the vessel. Shards of pottery have fallen to its base. The interior of the pot is dark. But in the center of the vessel is not visible a bright, round light, and an equal brightness flows from the light, and spills out the front of the pot, beyond the broken shards.  “Expect a miracle.” The miracle we’d like to see is the one in which the vessel stays perfect and whole, not matter what happens to it….safe in its creator’s hands. We would like a life like that, and some people spend considerable time and energy in pretending that it is like that. Failing that kind of perfection, we might wish that, at the first sign of cracking, and after an appropriate prayer from us, Jesus would whisk right in and restore the pot to wholeness.  A miracle, yes, but then, we were expecting miracles, weren’t we? After all, isn’t the Jesus to whom we pray, God’s Messiah?

 

This is what is going on in our gospel for today. Jesus says to the people walking in the Temple, “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me, but you do not believe.”  What are the works that Jesus did? Were Jesus’ works more like the first image or the second? In the second image, the hands that were on the outside have become the light on the inside, a light that shines in the darkness at the center of the pot…a light illumines the broken shards and even the space beyond the shards.

 

What were the people expecting? What are we expecting? That we have to be perfect, like the pot in the first image, in order to be part of the shepherd’s sheepfold? Or do we see the miracle…the real miracle….in the light that shines in and through the broken places of our lives….in the hospital room of a dying friend…..in the painfulness of a divorce or separation…in the anger that comes from hurt feelings and dashed hopes?

 

Isn’t the miracle we should expect that the love of Christ for this broken world will heal despair; that Christ’s love overcome brokenness? And that this love…the love of the shepherd….will lead us forward through the brokenness towards God’s bright and constant presence within us…..and that this love will spill over from out lives into the lives of others?

 

What keeps you from hearing the shepherd’s voice? Your busy, hectic life? What keeps you from belonging to Jesus’ flock?  Your expectations about who you need to be rather than what the Good Shepherd has done for you? Whatever the obstacles are, remember that the risen Jesus is here among us. The question is do we want to live without him being at the center of our lives? Amen.