Psalm 23
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not
want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still
waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's
sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no
evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff-- they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.
1 John 3:16-24
We know love by this,
that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one
another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees
a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love,
not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure
our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than
our hearts, and he knows everything.
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before
God; and we receive from him whatever we
ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his
commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and
love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments
abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us,
by the Spirit that he has given us.
John 10:11-18
"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down
his life for the sheep. The hired hand,
who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and
leaves the sheep and runs away--and the wolf snatches them and scatters
them. The hired hand runs away because a
hired hand does not care for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the
Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this
fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will
be one flock, one shepherd. For this
reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up
again. No one takes it from me, but I
lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay
it down, and I have power to
take it up again. I have received this command from my Father."
The message
When we were growing up, my brother and I watched our dad
rebuild the house. The place was what
people called a handyman special. The property was cheaper than most of the
other houses in the area but the place was neglected for many years and needed
a lot of repair. We spent several years living with some parts of the house
always being a construction area and piles of tools and supplies all over. My dad, with some help from my uncle from
time to time, redid the floors, walls, ceilings, plumbing, electric, kitchen, windows,
and basement. If there was a particular
project he did not know how to do, he would simply read about it, try it out,
or ask someone for advice. In all senses
of the word, my dad was a do it yourselfer. There was never a reason to pay a
professional to do something you could figure out for yourself and there were very
few things you couldn’t figure out for yourself. My
mother, grandmother and most of the people who cared for me as I grew up, all
felt and lived by that same rule, if you could figure it out for yourself, you
should figure it out for yourself.
In many ways, I saw, learned and inherited this same sense
of self-sufficiency, of being responsible for taking care of whatever needed to
be done. Even today, I do not like to ask for help (even when I probably
should). Of course, I am not unique,
today there are a lot of people who celebrate figuring things out for
themselves. Many people I know turn to the internet to be their own doctors, to
diagnose their medical or health problems, entering their symptoms and finding
out they have anything from the common cold to a super rare illness or anything
in between. I know many students in all different schools and levels who refuse
to ask for help and struggle through a particular topic or project. I also know
people who have gathered together groups of friends to replace roofs and handle
other jobs much better left to skilled, insured and trained professionals.
There is a sense of pride in declaring “I figured it out” and I always hear
people I know boast that they managed to repair their own car, fix their own computer,
taught themselves a language or learned a new skill on their own. There is a feeling of being capable and a
deep sense of independence and accomplishment that comes from knowing “I did it
myself”.
That is why it can be so difficult to really hear and really
understand what our bible readings are about. Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, a day the
church sets aside to focus on the metaphor of Jesus as the good shepherd. Jesus original audience were farmers,
fishermen, shepherds, and people who lived closely connected with the land, water, animals and crops. They would have
instantly understood the meaning of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. That is not true for many of us. I grew up in Brooklyn and have spent my life
living in a large city. I have visited a
farm once or twice, never met an actual shepherd and my only encounters with
sheep have been the cute, wooly ones at the petting zoo and the collection of
plush ones Jen and I have accumulated over the years. This limited experience
with sheep is probably true for many of you here today as well. I mean, we
understand the main idea, shepherds watch over and protect sheep, Jesus watches
over and protects us, but this metaphor of the Good Shepherd is much deeper and
scarier than that. The sheep depend on
the shepherd to survive. Sheep are
definitely not do it yourself type animals who figure things out. They need help.
I learned this about sheep
from a professor at the seminary. She was the only one I have ever heard talk
about Jesus as the Good shepherd who actually knew anything about sheep. She
had served several rural congregations in Montana prior to graduate
school. There, her communities and
congregations had actual shepherds, people who earned their living by raising
and caring for sheep. She showed us all
a new depth to the story of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Sheep often get trapped in places that they
cannot get out of and have a very limited ability to avoid danger. Jesus role
as the good shepherd is more than just watching over and protecting us. Through
Jesus God does what we cannot figure out or do for ourselves.
In this case it is a matter of salvation. The story of God’s communication of love with
the world is one filled with God’s disappointment, divine anger, forgiving love
and human failure. Before Jesus, our
scriptures and history are filled with examples of God calling people back to
relationship with God and faith, God trying to pull people away from the
gravity of sin and power of death. People are punished severely for
disobedience, they are rewarded greatly for faithfulness, they are forgiven for
unthinkable acts of faithlessness, given kingdoms, beautiful cities and great
temples, have kingdoms taken away,
beautiful cities left in ruin and great temples destroyed, they are given
victory in wars they should never have won and 400 years of slavery. They are given prophets to perform signs of
God’s power and announce God’s message.
None of these attempts at getting people away from sin, death and all
the things that separate us from the life God wants for us, really worked, at
least not for any real about of time. Salvation,
freedom from sin and death is something we just cannot do for ourselves. That’s when we get to Jesus, the good
shepherd, the one who lays his life down for the sheep, who sets us free from
sin and death. This is God’s work, God’s grace.
That is the heart of
our faith. We are saved by grace, God does for us what we cannot do for
ourselves. This is the comfort that Martin Luther longed for and saw missing
from all the rituals and rules of his church.
Of course, we are human, we want to do it ourselves, we always fall back
into thinking surely we can save ourselves by obeying the law, by doing good
works, by making the decision for Jesus. We often think there needs to be some
do it yourself way of salvation, some path we can take and works we can perform
to save ourselves. With all of the
things we can do and all of the things we know about the world, there simply must
be some way for us to save ourselves. We
want to be the Good Shepherd, the one with the power and faith to make things
right. We start to see Jesus as a helper,
someone who enables and strengthens us to be do it ourselves, who provides the
guide, who gives us a little push and lets us walk back to God. That is not the
story, “you are not the Good Shepherd”, “I am not the Good Shepherd”, we are
the sheep, and our salvation is not something we can earn, figure out or create
for ourselves
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