The Good Shepherd

Special thanks to Laura Viau, Derrick Weston, and Candi Vernon for sermon ideas (21st Chapter of John, specifically). Additional insight courtesy of Kathryn Matthews Huey, the Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton, and Peter Bush.

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Acts 4:5-12

The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

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.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

Such a wonderful passage. The imagery is beautiful, isn’t it? “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.” Over the centuries, paintings and in stained-glass windows the world over have characterized this idea of Jesus; he carries a shepherd’s crook or cradles a lamb – in fact, the earliest known artistic representations of Jesus did not include a cross; rather, they depicted a young man, a shepherd, carrying a lamb across his shoulders.

Though it is, and it should be, a comforting thought, Jesus as the Good Shepherd, we far too often over-sentimentalize this image of Christ.

Being a shepherd in first-century Judea wasn’t about cuddling lambs. According to theologian and scholar Joachim Jeremias, describing a shepherd’s life, writes, “The dryness of the ground made it necessary for the flocks of sheep and cattle to move about during the rainless summer and to stay for months at a time in isolated areas, far from the owner's home. Hence, herding sheep was an independent and responsible job; indeed, in view of the threat of wild beasts and robbers, it could even be dangerous. Sometimes the owner himself or his sons did the job. But usually it was done by hired shepherds, who only too often did not justify the confidence reposed in them.”

Now, while some of Israel’s great heroes were shepherds – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David – and while the 23^rd Psalm compared God’s care to that of a Good Shepherd, shepherds – and specifically, hired-hand shepherds – had a bad reputation. Joachim Jeremias draws on Rabbinic sources to say that “most of the time they were dishonest and thieving; they led their herds onto other people's land and pilfered the produce of the land.” Moreover, because they were often months at a time without supervision, they were often accused of stealing some of the increase of the flock. So of course pious Jews were warned not to buy wool, milk, or kids from shepherds on the assumption that it was stolen property. Shepherds were not allowed to fulfill a judicial office or be admitted in court as witnesses. A Jewish commentary on the 23^rd Psalm reads, “There is no more disreputable occupation than that of a shepherd.” Philo, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, Egypt, who lived between 25 BC and 45 AD, said this about looking after sheep and goats: “Such pursuits are held mean and inglorious.”

In contrast to this general contempt for shepherds, Jesus consistently sees them in a postitive light. Not only does he identify himself, personally, as a shepherd, In Luke’s Gospel, the fifteenth chapter, he tells a parable of the shepherd leaving ninety-nine sheep in the fold while searching the hills to find the missing one.

And, of course, Jesus would have known shepherds personally, as people. He fellowshipped all the time with the outcasts of society, after all, the despised and the sinners, folks the Pharisees called “people of the dirt.”

He would have known that, in that day and age, these outcasts, these shepherds worked hard, living most of the year outside, away from towns and other people. Flocks were kept outside in this way from April to November, and, sometimes during the winter in suitable locations. Shepherds never, ever left their sheep, since the sheep were vulnerable to all kinds of trouble – wolves, robbers, or the danger of just wandering off somewhere. The concept of a shepherd risking – perhaps losing – his life to protect his sheep was not at all a foreign concept to Jesus’ first-century listeners.

I don’t have to spend any time at all explaining that, if Jesus is the Good Shepherd, then the sheep are, well, us. We who belong to Jesus, who know him and are known by him. It’s a unique kind of allegory, because the Good Shepherd is also the Lamb of God. He is a shepherd who knows exactly what it is like to be a lamb – just as, in Christ, God knows exactly what it is like to be us.

Now, admittedly, for those of us brought up on a steady diet of the virtues of individualism, it’s perhaps a little uncomfortable when we get to the theology of the “fold,” the inescapable context of community. George Jones may have sing, “Me and Jesus Got Our own Thing Going,” but Karl Barth, one of the authors of the Theological Declaration of Barmen, in our Book of Confessions, said that “there is no such thing as an individual Christian.”

Within the context of Jesus’ symbolism, when he speaks of listening to his voice, it is an observable fact that sheep respond to the specific voice of the shepherd who cares for them: sheep respond individually to the one who cares for them individually. Yet a shepherd is not doing his job if he tends only one sheep. And, just like a sheep who wanders off will eventually get itself eaten, or fall off a cliff, we find guidance and growth and direction through the Holy Spirit most readily and reliably in the context of community. We are one.

But the “fold,” the circle of “us,” does not (of course) simply encircle Fairfield Highlands Presbyterian. Jesus says in our reading, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold…”

And we can easily see that the “fold” is larger than one church, one denomination, one theological nuance. After all, every church, ever denomination, every theological nuance within Christianity is influenced by every other church, denomination, and theological nuance within Christianity – either consciously or unconsciously. In the South, there are very few Christians, even mainline Christians, who don’t have some degree of imprint from the Evangelicals. Liturgical traditions, like our own, are a gift from Catholicism. Even wildly different styles of worship hold to common elements – music, sermon, offering, prayer, the reading of a text… though we may find the worship in a seeker-friendly church or a Church of Christ very different and perhaps uncomfortable, we’ll always pretty much be able to tell what’s going on.

John Calvin put it like this: “Now, although the flock seems to be divided into different folds, yet believers who are scattered throughout the world are encircled in common bonds, in that the same Word is preached to everyone and the same sacraments are used, and they have the same order of prayer and everything necessary for the profession of faith.”

In other words, these churches, denominations, and theological nuances within Christianity aren’t “different folds.” We are in unity, not because we believe all the same things, but because we are loved by God. We are one.

And if that is true, what does that mean? If we are one fold, what is Jesus saying when he says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice...?” Is this a statement of Universalism, where God will, in the end, “save” everyone whether they like it or not? Is it referring to locations – “folds” outside of Judea, to the boundaries of the known world? Could this be Biblical confirmation of life on other planets?

Well, I don’t think we all need to learn Klingon, but it is a fact that each generation interprets Scripture according to its own unique place in history. For those first-century Christians, knowing that they were the hands and feet of this Jesus who said, “I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice,” “other folds” certainly didn’t mean Universalism, it meant other locations. The same could be said at each point of history where new lands and new peoples were discovered. The Gospel was one of the chief imports to all new nations.

And that’s all well and good, but aside from the occasional rain forest tribe here and there, until new life forms are found in far-flung corners of the universe, by now we’ve kind of found all the lands and peoples we are going to find. So what’s all this “other folds” talk mean for us? You and I, in the communities and circles of influence we inhabit?

We live in a pluralistic society, meaning that many cultures, religions, races, and orientations coexist, sometimes uncomfortably. Additionally, we tend to think one’s belief system is arrived at in the same way someone discovers their favorite flavor of Pop-Tart.

And, let’s be honest, if reaching “sheep in other folds” involved talking, everyone on the planet would be a Christian. We have plenty of preachers in plenty of venues, on plenty of forms of mass media, writing plenty of books, preaching plenty of sermons, buying plenty of billboards, waving plenty of signs and shouting into plenty of megaphones. I said it last week: talk is cheap, and in our society, talk is as common as grains of sand on the beach. Everybody knows what we say.

The story is told of a man driving down a crowded freeway one day, tooling along at the speed limit, when another care pulled behind him, flashing his lights, blowing his horn, waving for him to get over. He couldn’t get over fast enough, and the other driver began making what can carefully be called “rude gestures,” and shouting obscenities so loudly that the man could actually hear them. Just as the man was afraid he was going to get run off the road, a sheriff’s deputy whipped in behind the tailgater, put on his lights, and pulled the angry driver over.

The deputy got out of the car, gun drawn, and ordered the driver out of his vehicle. He was searched, handcuffed, and taken to the county jail, fingerprinted and put in a cell. A couple of hours later, that same deputy came in, unlocked the cell, and began the process of releasing the prisoner. “I’m sorry for the mistake,” the deputy said, “but I pulled up behind your car while you were making all those gestures and screaming and cussing, and when I saw your “What Would Jesus Do” license plate holder, your “God Is My Co-Pilot” bumper sticker, the fish logo on your trunk lid, and your “Meet Me At Sunday School” window decal, I immediately assumed the car was stolen.”

Way more than I am comfortable admitting, I’m a whole lot like that tailgater. My words clash with my actions, my walk and my talk do not agree, and I am sorry to say that I’m not alone. Christians say they believe in love, but too often speak words of hate. Christians say God loves everyone, but too often work to exclude others. Christians say feeding the hungry is important, but too often walk past the hungry panhandler, worried that he’ll spend the eighty-seven cents in spare change they’d give him on booze.

We’ve spoken enough, and too frequently we’ve spoken poorly. The time for words has passed. It is Jesus’ voice which must be heard, because his sheep – even those in other folds, will listen to his voice – Scripture guarantees it!

In the twenty-first chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus and Peter were walking along the lakeshore. Jesus asked, “Simon, son of John, do you really love me more than these others do?”

“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

 A moment later, Jesus asked, “Simon, son of John, do you really love me?”

“Yes, Lord. You know that I love you!”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

 Jesus spoke to him a third time. He asked, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

Peter got upset because Jesus kept asking him that question. He answered “Lord, you know everything! You know that I love you!”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

Feed my sheep, Jesus said. All my sheep.

Care for my sheep, Jesus said. All my sheep.

We act. Jesus speaks. And his sheep hear his voice.

What Was a Pickup Truck Doing in the Bushes?

Get it? A ram was caught in the thicket. Yeah? No? Never mind.

This is a crowdsourced sermon, thanks to my friends on Twitter: Barbara Vaughan (who lent me her sermon on this subject), Candi Vernon, Kathryn Johnston, Ben Robbins, Kirk Jeffery (who also blessed me with sermon materials), and A Williams, among others. Also thanks to the writing of Mary J. Scifres of "Ministry Matters."

The good parts of what follows are thanks to them. Anything sub-par is the result of my own effort.

Romans 6:12-23
Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Matthew 10:40-42
“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

Genesis 22:1-14
After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

It wasn’t an unreasonable request, at least not for that day and age. Human sacrifices, and especially infant sacrifices, were common in the Philistine culture which surrounded Abraham. Human sacrifices evidenced a deep devotion to this or that god, or a deep desperation to appease whatever malevolent deity was causing this drought or that disease. When someone wanted to really prove their faith, they performed a human sacrifice.

But up until now, it had always been “those people” who sacrificed their children. “Those people” who spilled innocent blood to satisfy the thirst of their idols. Now, YHWH was calling upon Abraham to do the unthinkable, the unimaginable, something so out-of-character for YHWH that, had it happened today, we’d all be left wondering if God’s website had been hacked.

It’s too easy, I think, to read this text as if Abraham jumped out of bed, gathered his supplies, and toddled off into the distance whistling, as if this was just another day in the life of a sojourning follower of the Almighty. We know the outcome of this familiar story, and because of this we too easily skip over the difficult-to-comprehend bits, celebrate faithfulness, and pass the plate.

And I do not want to present myself as someone who knows exactly what’s going on with this story. By now, I hope you know me better than that. This is one of those passages that refuses to be easily explained. It’s like a bag of coathangers, all pointy corners and things that don’t fit together. God is not acting like God, Abraham isn’t acting like Abraham, at least not the Abraham who so boldly bargained with God for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And Isaac? He doesn’t act like any teenager I’ve ever met.

All I have is an idea.

Don’t forget that Abraham was far from perfect in his devotion to God. He had lied to the King of Gerar, Abimelek, passing Sarah off as his sister in hopes of saving his own hide. And rather than suffering for it, he profited! Later, he sent Hagar and Ishmael off into the desert, neither knowing nor particularly caring how they would survive. Perhaps in finally seeing the fulfillment of God’s promise in Isaac, knowing that his legacy is secure, Abraham grows too comfortable among the Philistines. Maybe, just maybe, Abraham has put his faith, his hope for the future, his trust for the future in Isaac rather than in God.

Perhaps, to Abraham, Isaac has become an idol. And we know how God feels about idols. They must be pulled down, destroyed, utterly wiped away. Abraham knows this, too. And perhaps, when God spoke to Abraham, deep down Abraham knew that this disaster, this horror, was his fault.

So when Abraham gathers his supplies, loads the donkey, and wakes up Isaac and the servants for this road trip, he does it with a heavy ball of dread sitting in his gut, doggedly going through the emotions in the same way someone would if they’re going to the doctors office to hear a bad test result, or to the funeral home to make arrangements.

They walked for three days. I wonder if, as they made camp every night, Abraham was hoping that God would come to him in the night, giving him an opportunity to bargain, to renew the covenant, to seek forgiveness, anything.

But the only time he hears a peep out of God is on that third day, when he looks up and sees the mountain, and knows that this is where his child will die.

But all the time, over all the miles, the nagging certainty had to be there. YHWH had made a covenant with Abraham! A solemn vow, in blood! His descendants would suffer four hundred years of slavery, but come out from bondage to become a great nation. The idea that God would break a promise was preposterous!

But there is the mountain.

And Isaac, how on earth could he have been silent for so long about this whole thing? Here he was lugging a huge load of wood, with his dad carrying a torch and a knife… maybe in the rush the old man had forgotten the “animal” part of the animal sacrifice?

Maybe he was so quiet for so long because he was trying to figure out a way to gently broach the subject without making his dad angry. But finally…

“Um, Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“Um, like, for this sacrifice thingie? We got, like, wood, we got, like, fire, we got, like, that totally awesome knife… but, like, um, there’s… there’s no lamb. I mean, it’s totally cool if you like forgot it, OK? I mean I just was only asking.”

Perhaps Abraham just says this to have a response, or maybe he’s just realizing it himself: “God himself will provide…”

Then the wood is stacked, Isaac is bound and laid across the altar (without, apparently, any argument or struggle!), and Abraham raises the knife. The altar that Abraham had built up in Isaac had fallen, and it, along with Abraham’s hope for the future, and God’s promise of countless generations, was about to be destroyed…

In many ways, Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac foreshadows God’s later sacrifice in Christ, and Christ’s willingness, like Isaac, to undergo that sacrifice. In fact, the writer of Hebrews contends that Abraham fully expected to kill Isaac, and quite confidently expected God to raise Isaac from the dead, because if God was to keep covenant, something drastic would have to happen.

And, of course, God provided. Not just a voice from heaven and a ram as a sacrifice in place of Isaac, not just proof that Abraham was, indeed, committed to YHWH, but a lesson in just what God wanted from Abraham and, by extension, all of us.

What did God want from Abraham? Abraham discovered that his faith in God required more than emotional agreement, more than mental assent, it required active involvement. God wanted Abraham. God wanted every bit of Abraham. Abraham passed God’s test because he demonstrated that he could do the hard thing, even when it made no sense. Even when it meant giving up everything. Somehow, when there was no hope left, no turning back, Abraham believed, and it was that belief which made him right before God.

In the book of James, the second chapter, we read that Abraham’s “faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,’ and he was called God’s friend.” From this, James concludes “You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.”

I think one lesson for us today is that it’s OK to not know the answers. Keep asking. It’s OK to not even be sure where we’re going. Just go.

After all, God’s plan is not destruction. . . God’s plan is resurrection. Isaac was snatched from the jaws of death, and Abraham was snatched from the depths of despair. It is easy to assume that God demands destruction when our backs are against a wall, and there are no options left. It is easy to assume that God is testing our faith when our lives are in shreds. But in Abraham’s story, and in our own, God’s loving promise – not our assumptions – is the common link, the steadfast thread that we can grasp when all else fails or the path seems hazy. Holding on to that promise of love and life is always our calling!

And for that we say, thanks be to God.