Sermon for 4th Easter Sunday
Not Safety - Abundant Life
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
In the church insider community, this Sunday is called “Good Shepherd Sunday.” Every year, around this same Sunday, the Gospel text is one of several which speak of Jesus as the “Good Shepherd.” Today’s text is certainly one of the best examples, “I am the good shepherd,” says Jesus in today’s lesson from St. John’s gospel.In the church insider community, this Sunday is called “Good Shepherd Sunday.” Every year, around this same Sunday, the Gospel text is one of several which speak of Jesus as the “Good Shepherd.” Today’s text is certainly one of the best examples, “I am the good shepherd,” says Jesus in today’s lesson from St. John’s gospel.
I have used stuffed lambs and real lambs as preaching aids in the past on this Sunday. Learned the hard way to put diapers on real lambs who visit us in church.
And, if you are like me and grew up in the church, Jesus as the “good shepherd” is a very powerful and positive image. How well I remember the portrait of Jesus in the nursery at Atonement Lutheran Church in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania where I grew up – you may remember a similar image – Jesus is holding a lamb and is surrounded by small children. Or, Jesus has a lamb draped over his neck. I bet that, years ago when there was a formal nursery here at Mt. Olive, one or both of these pictures were in that nursery. You can find it in churches of all denominations, in the city and countryside, in rich and poor congregations, even for sale on the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem! The image of Jesus with sheep, a lamb or lambs, and children is everywhere.
And it is a very positive image – Jesus loves us all, just like he would love a helpless little lamb, just like he would love small children.
That’s one reason Psalm 23 is so popular. I cannot remember a funeral or memorial service at which is was not read or sung or printed. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” You can all say it with me by heart. Even when I visit an elderly person with memory loss, if I start saying, “The Lord is my shepherd,” they will say or mouth it along with me, almost every time.
Of course, as wonderful as this image is for Jesus, and for us, it misses a lot about Jesus and sheep and shepherds.
Shepherds sleep and work outside and they do pretty dirty work. They smell like sheep, dung and body odor. They travel often, on foot, in search of new grass and all this with sheep who are pretty stubborn at times, well pretty stubborn most of the time.
That’s a very different image from frolicking lambs and clean children gazing lovingly on Jesus with a white Jesus looking like he just stepped out of a tunic store. That Jesus might not make a very good shepherd, at least he would quickly be a lot dirtier and smellier than that nursery image from my childhood. And, of course, the real Jesus would be brown, not white.
I like, we like, the more traditional image of Jesus – gentle power, someone who seems to be in control of our uncontrollable world. We want a Jesus who tames this often wild and unruly world, who with his shepherd’s staff can solve the unsolvable and answer the unanswerable in this life, who can protect and defend us against the thieves and bandits of this world, those who would come to steal, kill and destroy. Think of Psalm 23 again, “even though I walk in that darkest valley, I fear no evil” because “you are with me,” protecting, guiding and comforting me.
This is the Jesus I want. And, I suspect, the one you want also. Keep me safe, Jesus, protect, guide and comfort me.
However, regardless of what you and I want, we know that life for real shepherds and sheep, as I have already noted, and life for us, too, is very different from that image. It is much dirtier. The world is still wild and unruly. There are still questions without answers in this life. There are still thieves and bandits in this world bent on destruction.
We do not need further proof of that reality. It is all around us. School shootings. Chemical weapons and new bombing in Syria. Government chaos and gridlock. Unarmed African American young men shot by police. Police shot while they are just trying to do their job. And, on this Earth Day, I haven’t even mentioned the many assaults on our environment that only grow each day. And you could all add your examples.
Where is the Good Shepherd in the midst of this? Where is the Good Shepherd in the midst of shootings and war and the growing coarseness of our society?
Where is that shepherd who will sanitize this world, will clean up the environment and what is messy and misplaced in our own lives?
As I thought about this this week, I realized that, perhaps, my Good Shepherd image is a mis-reading of this text.
In Biblical times, and still today in the Palestinian hills, there were and are sheepfolds, sheep pens, dotting the hillsides, rock enclosures with just one opening measuring perhaps four of five feet. These were and still are the places into which shepherds drive their sheep at night so that the shepherds can then sleep across the opening and protect their sheep from wolves and other predators during the night.
As I reflected on this, I realized that, perhaps, I was putting Jesus into such a sheepfold, Jesus and me, safe and secure. An image of Jesus always leading me to safety and always keeping me safe.
However, that is not reality for a shepherd and sheep today as it was not in Jesus’ time. And it is not reality for our lives as Christians. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, does not keep us penned up for safety, but, instead, leads us out into the wilderness of life.
The shepherd is not in the sheepfold. The shepherd leads us beyond boundaries, beyond walls, out of a place of safety and comfort.
And, as we are driven, like sheep, away from safety, we can find abundant life.
You see, abundant life is not necessarily safe life. Out beyond the sheepfold, the sheep pen, there is green pasture and still waters, but there are also predators, wolves and bandits. There is a valley that is shadowed by death.
In the original Greek text of today’s text, there is a strong sense that the sheep are “outcasts.” The shepherd casts out his sheep, the sheep are literally driven out by the shepherd.
Think of the context of John’s gospel. Written around 80 AD, after the temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed, as the Christian branch of Judaism is moving away from Judaism, as Christians are being expelled from Judaism. Like the sheep in our gospel lesson, the Christians are now cast out, driven out. They are now outcasts in and from Jewish society. They can no longer stay in the sheepfold of the temple, of Judaism, but must now go out on their own.
Thus, the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd but outside of the sheepfold would have been a very powerful image for these early Christians. The assurance that this Jesus will continue to lead them, protect them and even restore their souls.
This was the image for the early Christians, a Jesus who cares about these outcasts from society, even as they are driven out, thrown out into the unknown.
And, I believe, this is still or can be a powerful image for us. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, continues to care of us as Jesus cares for the outcasts of society, and as Jesus calls on us to care for these others also.
Jesus is calling us out of our own sheepfolds, our own comfort zones, to care for others, especially for those are the margins of society.
Jesus is calling us to be like a shepherd, to move out of the safety of the sheepfold, the sheep pen, into the world. Our salvation, our liberation if you will, is tied to the salvation and liberation of others.
Because we have a God who, as Psalm 23 tells us, protects us through dark valleys, brings us out of fear, comforts us and is even with us in the presence of our enemies, because we do still have a Good Shepherd in Jesus’ love for us, we can go out, reach out. We can share God’s goodness and mercy for us with others.
That is how we follow Jesus, the Good Shepherd, today. That is how and where are find abundant life – not within our own sheepfolds, but out in the world where we are called to share God’s love with others.
God is with us, always, everywhere, protecting us, loving us and still challenging us to share God’s love with others. That is how we find abundant love in Christ today.
Amen.
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sunday, April 22, 2018
