John 10:1-18
A Sermon by Phyllis Roe, Preached at First United Methodist Church
May 14, 2000
Every year on the fourth Sunday after Easter we hear the passages on Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Perhaps this is because after Easter the disciples were having to make new decisions about following Jesus. The events of Jesus' death and resurrection were so new, so difficult to understand, that they were having to reorient themselves in the midst of a confusing time.
Not unlike us. We too live in a confusing time. We awake every morning with expectations, responsibilities and rush through the day, dropping into bed at night, exhausted, wondering what we are doing, what gives direction to our lives. Demands for our time, energy, money are constant. Many crazy things ask for our allegiance. We have just finished General Conference and have seen how deeply divided our church is over basic issues of inclusion. If ever there was a time when we needed to be able to clearly hear the voice of the True Shepherd, it is now.
The image of the Good Shepherd is one of the oldest in the church. Usually it refers to the religious leaders--whether true or false shepherds. The Patriarchs were shepherds--Abraham, Moses, David. Israel was a rural, pastoral culture. In Ezekiel the prophet blasts the leaders of Israel by calling them false shepherds. "You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings, but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains with no one to search or seek for them." Many times in the New Testament Jesus speaks of the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep in intimate details: the parable of the lost sheep and in the last appearance to the disciples Jesus commands Peter: Peter, if you love me, feed my sheep. The Shepherd is pictured throughout the Bible as an image of tender, solicitous care, dedication, and a willingness to do whatever is necessary to care for the people, even to the point of laying down the Shepherd's life.
It is an image that meant something to Biblical people. It is an image which is more difficult for us. I don't know a whole lot about sheep, but to my knowledge, they usually graze in areas defined by fences so they can't stray. A friend who recently visited England where they still raise a lot of sheep, said the "shepherd" drove a Land Rover to go check on the sheep. Needless to say, something of the intimacy of the shepherd's relationship to the sheep has been lost.
The other problem with the image for us is that sheep are thought of as docile and not very intelligent. The shepherd has to be vigilant because sheep are not regarded as being smart enought to not get into harm on their own. If by sheep we are referring to the church, this is not my experience of most lay people. A minister friend of mine once commented that ministry is more like trying to herd cats, than sheep!
Whatever the truth is about the reputation of sheep, there is one interesting point about the relationship of sheep to shepherd which I find relevant. Israel was a community based culture. Often the sheep belonging to several families were kept in a common pen, not always in pens attached to individual owners' houses. Every morning the shepherds would come by the pen and call their sheep and go off for the day or week. You can imagine what confusion that could be--several shepherds trying to sort out which sheep they were responsible for. As I understand it, it happened rather easily because the sheep recognize their shepherd's voice and they would follow no one else. They knew with whom they belonged. "The gatekeeper opens the gate and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out...The sheep follow him because they know his voice." And then the connection is made with Jesus. I am the Good shepherd, I know my own and my own know me.
And so it is with us. From the earliest days of our lives we know who we are by knowing whose we are. Of all the voices a child hears, the child is soon able to sort them out and to recognize the voice of the one who cares for him/her, the familiar, soothing voice of the one who knows the child and tends to the child's needs. Just as children will hear their parent's voice clearly even in a noisy room and will turn toward that voice, so we also are turning like a gyroscope to find the voice to whom we belong. Amid our scattered, crazy lives we search for that true voice, that sense of belonging that isn't just a membership in something, but a coming home.
There are many voices in this world calling to us and many of these threaten to enslave us: the voice of materialism, of self-sufficiency, of workaholism, the voice which says those who are different are to be excluded, voices that promise much but end up exhausting rather than energizing us.
The True Shepherd's voice gives us life. It is the voice of One who knows us, understands us, and cares enough for us to give his life that we might live. How do we know that voice? Our scripture this morning tells fairly clearly. We know the voice because it is the voice of love and care. Psalm 23 speaks of the tenderness of this love--calming, restoring, filling our hearts with song. Our passage in John speaks of the tougher side of this love--it is a love fierce enough to protect us from the wolves, from the forces which would devour us, it is a voice courageous enough to call thieves and bandits--false leaders--by their right names, and to stand against all evil for the sake of those for whom the voice cares. And a voice passionate and joyful enough to want us to have, not just life, but life to the full. Any leader, any voice in the world which does not offer you that is not the voice of the True Shepherd. When we hear this voice we recognize it by a deep sense of belonging, we know it as our own heart's fulfillment, we know it as home.
C.S. Lewis said this about the Christian life: "the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day, all the expectations of others, all the responsibilities you have, rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply by shoving them all back, in listening to that other voice, the voice of the True Shepherd, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter ife come flowing in. And so on all day. Standing back from all our natural fussing and fretting, coming in out of the wind. From those moments the new life will be spreading through our system because now we are letting Christ work within us in the right place."
We daily hear whispers of this voice that tells us where we belong, to whom we belong. We hear it in the middle of the night in the dis-ease that tells us our lives are on the wrong path. We hear the call of the True Shepherd in the longings we feel--longings to be more connected, longings to slow down, longings for our lives to make a difference. We hear the voice of the True Shepherd in opportunities which come our way, in the voices of friends who call out the best in us and love us at our worst. We hear the voice calling when we witness injustice and oppression, hunger and need. When we hear that Voice let us run through the gate, along with all the others who recognize the voice of the True Shepherd and follow.
Of course that's not all of the story. This story is also about what happens when we meet up with the others who recognize the voice as the True Shepherd. "We know love as this," says I John, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. By this we will know that we are from the truth." We are both to follow the True Shepherd, the voice that tells us to whom we belong, and we are to shepherd each other. We are to live in such a way that others can recognize in us that voice of belonging.
Look around us. There are modern day shepherds all over the place, daily caring and tending the vulnerable of our society: preschool teachers, caregivers of the elderly and Alzheimer's patients and the mentally ill, mothers all over the world who daily lay down their lives for their children: in refugee camps, in domestic violence shelters, in homeless shelters, who mold their personal and professional lives for the needs of their families. There are those willing to rish their professional lives, even to the point of arrest, by witnessing at General Conference on behalf of those who are excluded from full participation in the church. When we see this we hear the voice of the True Shepherd, the One who will see the lost, bind up the injured, strengthen the weak, and feed them with justice.
At the time of the Columbine shooting, I was most moved by one story about a teacher. As I read it, the teacher had just left a classroom and was walking down the hall when he saw the shooters and realized what had happened. He could have ducked into another room and gotten away. But was so concerned about the students in the class he had just left that he turned around and ran back down the hall to warn them. He was shot as he ran. He made it to the classroom and told the students what was happening, to get down and stay quiet. As they lay there the students tried to bind up his gunshot would and stop the bleeding. He died with them caring for him, as he had given his life caring for them.
By this we shall know that the True Shepherd abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.