St, John Chrysostom Episcopal Church - Delafield, Wisconsin
Fourth Sunday of Easter – April 22, 2018
V. Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Acts 4:5-12/Psalm 23/1John 3:16-24 /John 10:11-18]
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." Those are touching and familiar words, but also rather unfamiliar in other ways. How many of you have had any direct interaction with sheep or shepherds lately? – I thought not. Because I know that I haven’t. It’s almost like something I read from a British clergy magazine, “Two sheep were standing in a field. ‘Baaa,’ said one. ‘Bother,’ said the other one. ‘I was going to say that!’” Two years ago Julie and I went to Ireland; there we saw flocks and flocks of sheep as we traveled around the wondrously green countryside. Little lambs gamboled about and one got the picture of a truly pastoral landscape. Oddly enough, on this "Good Shepherd Sunday,” I can’t think of a flock anywhere close.
Today we have to go to the zoo or way out into the countryside to see sheep, yet so much of the imagery we have for our faith is based on this pastoral, sheep and shepherd thing. I am the pastor – the shepherd (well, I’m more like the sheep dog) and you’re the flock, but we don’t know what that really means. Do we? Sheep, shepherds and suburbia simply don’t seem to mix.
It would have been different in the time of Jesus. Certainly both the Old and New Testaments draw on the imagery of sheep and of shepherds. So when David wrote the Psalm, when Jesus spoke his words, sheep were everywhere. While most often it was the king, like David, who would be seen as shepherd in the ancient near East, Israel developed a different motif. For Israel it is the living God who is the shepherd, as the familiar words of Psalm 23 remind us. It was out of that pastoral culture that Israel began to understand its relationship as a people to God.
A shepherd cared for the flock and held the lives of its members in his hands. Thus, the Psalmist isn't merely playing with a romantic notion. This Psalm unfolds against the threat of want, of "shadow of death," and of the presence of enemies. Yet, God's provident care and embracing love allow the flock to be gathered in safety and to live in peace. So the flock becomes an apt metaphor for the Church. We are a community gathered around the Good Shepherd. One of the titles for clergy is 'pastor,' but there is really only one Shepherd. I would suppose pastors are more like sheep dogs than shepherds; our task is to run around – sometimes barking a bit – trying to get the flock closer and closer to the Shepherd.
John's Gospel has the Good Shepherd giving us the description of how he relates to his sheep. He doesn’t approach them as a hired hand, as someone who only sees this as a job, but as one who profoundly loves and cares for the sheep. The shepherd, unlike the hired hand, sees his welfare intimately tied-up with that of the sheep. The sheep come to know the shepherd, trust him and follow him, because they have come to know his voice and his care. The relationship of the faith community – the church – to Jesus is like that of the sheep to the shepherd. Jesus says that the sheep hear and then follow. The community of the Good Shepherd, then, is a listening community. We seek to hear the Lord speaking to us with the ears of our hearts. His Word of life and love takes hold of us so that we then follow after him, become his disciples, trying to live out the word that we have heard.
All sorts of voices will compete with that of the Shepherd. These voices will seek to draw us away from the path of life and love to follow one of narrow self-interest and selfish behaviors. These voices will exhort us to distrust people who appear different from us and exclude those whose beliefs, or thoughts, or ways don't match ours. If we are to follow as we must, then we need to keep our ears attuned to the Shepherd's clear tones. We do that by offering worship, listening to and studying the Scriptures, meditating on them, and by prayer – in common and in private. Out of our hearing will come our following, because we will want to conform our lives to that of the Shepherd.
Thus the sheep hear and follow while the Shepherd knows and gives life. He knows us because he has become one of us and has shared our life. Even when we may turn away and seem changed from what we were, still he knows us and cares for us. That's why Peter in Matthew's Gospel would say, "Lord to whom shall we go? You have the Words of eternal life." The life giving Word Jesus speaks tells us of God's love for us, of our worth, and of our potential to be whole. He modeled that Word for us on the cross showing us the path of unselfishness. Each of us, then, is called to come to life, to renewal in the Risen Christ, the Good Shepherd. The life Jesus offers us is to be one with the Godhead. He prayed in John 17:22 "So that they may be one, as we are one." Now he speaks of “one flock, one shepherd.” The fullness of life for us is found in community with God and with one another. We are a flock gathered around the Shepherd, so we need one another.
Our community, the flock, is to be a place of unity, of peace, of all-embracing love, and life-giving acceptance. It's unfortunate that all too often churches don't look like churches because they've been deformed or injured by selfishness, agendas, or lack of true love. The buildings may be there, but the community isn't, it's just a group of individuals, not a flock. I think Gordon Lathrop offers an apt description of the flock in his book Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology:
The church is an assembly. The church is a gathering of people in a particular place who are, together, through concrete means, participating in the mystery of Christ and so are being formed into the holy assembly. The church is not a collection of consuming individuals, choosing religious goods according to their own self-perceived needs or desires. It is not a club supporting a particular ideology. It is not the audience for a speaker's eloquence, a choir's concert, or a priest's rituals. The local church-assembly is itself, as gathering, the primary symbol. By its participation, by its communal mode of song and prayer around Scripture reading, meal keeping, and bathing, it is being transformed into a primary witness to the identity of God and the identity of the world before God. [p.49]
If, as Lathrop says, we speak forth the very identity of God in the world, then we are to be a people of real love and real care.
How do we achieve this? I think the readings from the Acts and John’s first epistle give us glimpses. Peter and the apostles are hauled before the authorities because they’ve done a good deed in Jesus’ name – they healed a man. Now they testify to the healing power of Jesus’ love, even in the face of opposition and persecution. We’re to be like that, doing good, being instruments of God’s healing love, even when it’s not convenient. The essence of God's love for his world goes out through us, in the words we speak, in the things we do, even in the thoughts we think.
A shepherd – a good shepherd – was willing to risk everything for the sheep. That’s what John tells us Jesus did, and because he laid down his life for us, we’re to lay down our lives for each other. John’s epistle challenges us. John isn’t interested in what we say we believe. John isn’t interested in how we think on any level. John is interested in how we act. So, he says, “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…”
To be in the community of the Good Shepherd is to be placed irrevocably in God's hand. We are brought into this community through Christ's identification with us. How, though, can we know that? By listening for the Shepherds voice, hearing him call our names, knowing us, and our needs. Listen and you will hear that you are called to the table. Come, eat and drink. Through simple signs of bread broken and cup poured we will hear his voice. Here then is the table prepared and the overflowing cup. It happens here in a community gathered in worship, around Word and Sacrament. It continues and grows as we leave this place and live lives guided by the Good Shepherd showing our faith by the way we live in the here and now.
So, here we are sheep, with a Good Shepherd, in suburbia – who would have thought it possible. And dear ones, fellow sheep, healthy flocks grow. Flocks that are well-tended, loved and cared for, produce. It is that way with churches, as well. The difference is that the Shepherd is ALWAYS tending, it's the flock that neglects to receive the care. We can only grow and prosper as we place ourselves in the hands of the Good Shepherd.
I believe that this flock is ready to work to be healthy. All around me I see signs in the desire for spiritual growth and the offering of loving service. My job as your interim is to help you get there, and your vestry folk and I are going to work on this. Together let's continue to listen for the voice of the Shepherd as he speaks to our hearts and through each other. Together let's follow in loving service, giving of ourselves as the Shepherd did who says, "I lay down my life for the sheep." If we hear and follow, we will be known and given life, especially as we let our following bear fruit in loving and unselfish deeds in everyday life. The Lord IS our Shepherd and we are his flock, his community.