Fourth Sunday pf Easter John 10:11-18 May 3, 2009

        4Easter2009                         John 10:11-18  Good Shepherd Sunday                       May 3, 2009
Few metaphors or images get their own Sunday every year.  Whether it’s the Year of Matthew, Mark or Luke, the 4th Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday.  And, for good reason.
Shepherd imagery goes back to the Psalms where kings were called shepherds of their people. But not just kings. God is identified as the Shepherd of Israel.  It’s only when we get to the New Testament that the local down home shepherd is seen as lowly and a bit disregarded.  It’s not so in its original use where the shepherd was a royal image – highly esteemed and powerful.

God the Shepherd protected the Israelites in the wilderness and led them home.  With the Lord as Shepherd, there is no want.  Tables of plenty emerge in the presence of enemies.  To have a loyal shepherd would be a blessing – but when Almighty God is our Shepherd there is no compare – even when we don’t recognize it!  But oh the joy of growing to recognize it – which is what a spiritual journey is about – recognizing and responding to the goodness and grace that abounds.  

A story was told last week that a whole restaurant stopped eating and gasped when Magic Johnson appeared in the room. God our Shepherd, however, whose presence is far greater than Magic’s, often hardly gets noticed.  How often we go on eating and fretting as if we had no God at all when God is bright eyed in our midst, waiting to lead the day! 

In my own life anyway, it takes discipline to see God’s shepherding presence on a daily basis.  At home we try to give God the first word of the day.  We use our little dialogue: “Lord, open our lips.  And our mouths shall show forth your praise. O that today we would hear God’s voice. And harden not our hearts,” and so on.  We then listen to a scripture text and pray, and you’d think we had done the best one could to let our loving Shepherd lead the day.  But wouldn’t you know, minutes away from our litany and the humanness of life can seem to usher our Shepherd right out the door.  It could appear we’re on our own, but the good news is, we are not! 

The other day I read a story about a herd of sheep and their shepherd who were observed during a guided tour of the Holy Lands.  The guide had told the tourists to take note of the shepherds as the tour bus drove by a herd of sheep.  “Notice,” the guide said, “the shepherd never drives the sheep from behind like cattle.  The shepherd is always in front of them, leading them.” 

But as the bus came around a curve, they all saw out their windows that the herd of sheep was being driven by a man calling out to them from behind.  The tour guide was clearly flustered by this and stopped the bus. He went over and had an extended conversation with the man driving the sheep.  He returned to the bus with a triumphant smile on his face and announced to the tourists, “He’s not the shepherd.  He’s the butcher!” (Preaching: Word & Witness, May 3, 2009)

I was struck by the tour guide mistaking the butcher for the shepherd – and, by how relieved he was to learn the one driving the sheep from behind wasn’t the shepherd at all.  I wonder how often we mistake – I miss-take – what God is really up to in our lives – my life. 

God isn’t that voice nagging from behind, threatening us and demanding our lives.  God is instead the bright morning star, ahead of us, urging us forward towards abundant life, bidding us to take one life-giving step after another in trust that our Good Shepherd is just an ear shot ahead. 

A new small group is getting underway at Faith this week to begin a 40 day journey with 14th century Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich.  New people are welcome!  What I find fascinating about Julian is the widespread interest in her today.  Numbers of books have emerged in different formats and the Lutherans have now joined in with this 2008 publication by Augsburg. One book even asks, Why Julian Now?  It suggests that it may be because Julian wrote of God’s love during a difficult era – a time filled with questions and fears.   

She wrote things like “There is no created being who can know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly the Creator loves us.” Her sense is that what God wants most isn’t blind obedience or self-less sacrifice, but that God wishes most to be seen and sought, expected and trusted.

That’s how Jesus related to God, who he called Abba (like calling him Daddy).  There was an intimate seeing of God, seeking God out, expecting God to be there, and trusting God to be trustworthy.  John’s Gospel makes clear that even the call to give up his life wasn’t seen by Jesus as a call to diminishment.  In John it is a call that positions Jesus to take up his life even more gloriously. Jesus knew to give of self was to most fully live.

Today’s Good Shepherd Gospel gives us an empowering image.  Hear again just verses 17 and 18:  Jesus says, “…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.”  And today’s Epistle from 1st John follows on its heels with how we should then live.  1st John reads, “We know love by this, that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” 

In light of this radical call to lay down our lives, I find theologian Walter Brueggemann’s comment helpful.  He says: Christ empties himself, but it is not emptying simply to empty [in ways that don’t matter].  It is emptying for the sake of healing, caring, and bringing newness. Christ empties himself for the sake of the world.  (The Bible Makes Sense, 20)   

Good Shepherd Sunday calls us to this high understanding of Christian life – that to follow Christ is to willingly give of ourselves for the sake of the world.  “For life is sterile and powerless,” Brueggemann says, “when lived in isolation and aimlessness. Our life is not for self-indulgence, nor is it for desperate coping, or for frantic surviving.  It is life lived after the manner of God’s self-giving in Jesus.” 
What John’s Gospel tells us is that Jesus’ self-giving is not in response to pressure or shaming or panic. And neither should ours be.  It is emptying out of freedom, for the sake of the abundant life God has in mind.  As Jesus says, “I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own accord.”
Self-giving is a free response to the love of our Shepherd who restores our souls, not destroys them.  If self-giving is not freely chosen in response to our loving Shepherd, then it may well be closer to oppression, or co-dependency or hopelessness. Actions done because we fear there is no Good Shepherd – and no voice to listen to but our own – are hardly following the Shepherd.
There is a huge difference between spilt blood and given blood; between taken blood and freely offered blood.  One is a kind of violence.  The other is power.  There is nothing powerful about driven, frantic, coerced sacrifice.  But giving freely, guided by love, for the sake of reconciliation and hope is empowering, powerful and healing for both giver and receiver. 
And if we think decisions we have made so far in our lives have been motivated by fear or panic, goodness meets us there too.  In Holy Baptism, yesterday is covered with grace and today we are born anew to a living hope. God’s call to follow the Shepherd is before us afresh every day.
When Reg and I served a former congregation a family inherited a large sum of money. They decided to tithe it to the church. So we received $50.000 to do with as we chose – with one permission. We too could tithe our gift if we wanted.  No pressure; just permission. 
We decided to do that and out of the $5000 that meant we could playfully give away, the Council voted to give $3000 to the Synagogue that had been using our facility and had found a place of their own to rent.  There had been some contention between a few of our members and a few of theirs and this gift felt like a reconciling act.  What a joy it was for me to place that unsolicited check in the hands of the unsuspecting Rabbi – and to see the shock on his face.  I remember it to this day. They used the money to purchase the sign board in front of their building and it is still there speaking of the power of freely chosen self-giving love.
As we seek to follow our Good Shepherd, may we savor how attentively our Shepherd goes before us for our joy, and not our demise – even as we follow him in the way of the cross! When it is our loving Shepherd who bids us follow, we need not fear the cost, for though it may involve sacrifice, if it is God who calls us, we can be sure that resurrection will somehow, someday, have the final word!  That is why we call our Shepherd, Good – God’s goodness faileth never. 

Amen

   +Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson, to the glory of God
Faith Lutheran Church, Chico, CA