4 Easter A
Transcribed from a
sermon given on
May 15, 2011
By Rev. Valerie Ann
Hart
At St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday.
Every year the fourth Sunday of Easter we talk about Jesus as the good
shepherd. The image of being a shepherd comes up often in scripture. We heard
it in the 23rd psalm. We heard in the Gospel of John with Jesus
talking about himself being the good shepherd.
It made sense to use that
imagery, this metaphor, in those times because everyone would have been
familiar with shepherds. The people of Israel were always a herding country. Abraham
was a herder who traveled from place to place with his herd of animals. He
became rich because of his large herds. Moses was a herder, and when he brought
the Israelites out of Egypt and they traveled around and wandered for 40 years,
they wandered with their herds. They had herds of sheep. They were living the
life of nomadic herders. And David, the great king David, was originally a
shepherd before he was called to be king. So the shepherd imagery was familiar
to everyone.
In the time of Jesus there were
lots of shepherds around. It was one of the main occupations of the area. On
every hill you could see sheep. And even today if you go to the middle east and
you stay long enough you probably at some point will see a tall man (he looks tall
next to his smaller animals) standing with a staff and a group of fuzzy off
white animals around him. Sheep are not white when they are out in the open.
The dirt makes them a dusty brown. The sheep are just kind of hanging around
him.
However, on the central coast you
are unlikely to see sheep. And very few of us have ever been shepherds. Some of
us here do know something about being a shepherd, but not very many of us. Some
of us have never even seen a sheep. Probably for most Christians the main thing
they know about sheep and shepherding is what you have heard in these sermons
every year about the Good Shepherd. It is not something that is existentially
real for us to talk about.
If you try to think about it in
our culture, what would be similar? It is not exactly the same, but probably
the closest we could come to our everyday life is our relationship with our
animals, with our dogs or our cats or our horses; the way in which we love them
and care for them and make sure they have everything they need. That is the
shepherd’s job. The shepherd’s life is focused around the flock, and making
sure that the flock stays healthy. He has to make sure they find good food, that
when one pasture wears out to go to another one. To make sure that there is water.
If a sheep gets sick the shepherd takes care of that sheep. When a new baby is
born and there is a little tiny lamb, if the flock has to move a long distance
the shepherd carries the baby that can’t keep up. There is total care for the
sheep.
Sheep really need that. Sheep
were domesticated pretty early in human history. Domesticated sheep would die
very quickly if there was not someone to take care of them. They have no
defense against predators, except for the fact that they are herd animals. When
the herd gathers together there is the hope that if a predator comes it will
only get a few of the animals around the outside and not get all of the sheep.
They can’t fight back. They have no horns to fight back. Also when they were
domesticated it turned out that they don’t see very well. Sheep are very near sighted so they only can kind
of see where they are. They can’t take a look around and see where the next
water hole is. They are one of the few animals that will eat where they are
until it is destroyed. Sheep eat grass right down to the nub. If you over graze
sheep in an area the grass won’t grow back. So if sheep are left to their own
devices, if it is green they’ll eat it and they’ll keep eating until it is all
gone. Then they will have no idea what to do unless they see something green,
then they will go over to wherever that is. They don’t survive very well on
their own.
They need a shepherd. They need a
shepherd that knows where the rich pasture is. Someone who know that at certain
times of the year the pasture would be good here and then will take them
somewhere else at another time of year. Sometimes that means taking them down
into a dry valley to take them up the other side to good pasture. The shepherd
does everything for the sheep, to care for them. It is a relationship of love
and affection and devotion and for the good shepherd even a willingness to risk
his or her life to protect the sheep from predators.
So when Jesus talks about being
the good shepherd there is that sense of love and protection, like we have with
our animals. If we have animals, we develop a relationship of carrying and
love. We make sure that they have enough food, and we make sure they have
enough water. And if it is a dog we make sure they get enough tummy rubs, maybe
brushing it and washing it occasionally. If it gets sick we take it to the vet.
If it is the middle of the night, we grumble but we go to the emergency vet. We
give them the medicine they need. We do whatever it is necessary to care for
the animals we have made a commitment to. It’s a relationship.
So there is the relationship
between the shepherd and the sheep. The shepherd’s part of the relationship is
to love and care for the sheep. What’s the sheep’s part of the relationship?
What’s the sheep’s responsibility? The sheep’s responsibility is to listen for
the shepherd’s voice and then follow where the shepherd leads. That’s it. To
listen and to follow.
It is sort of like with our dogs.
We hope we can train them to come when we call, not always successfully with my
dog. We want our animals, especially our dogs, to respond to our voices because
if they are running toward the street we want them to stop and come back for
their own safety. That’s what the dog’s responsibility is, to love me and
hopefully respond when I tell it to do something. That’s our responsibility as
sheep. To listen to the shepherd’s voice and to follow.
But one of the things about
listening for the shepherd’s voice is that you need to learn to discriminate
between the good shepherd and all the other voices out there. Jesus in this
passage talks about the different shepherds. The sheep recognize their
shepherd’s voice, and follow their shepherd because there is a relationship.
The sheep learn over time who to trust, who feeds them, and cares for them, and
carries them. Over time they learn to distinguish that voice from all the other
voices.
Sometimes it is hard to
distinguish the voice of Christ. There is so many voices out there. You turn on
the radio and there are voices that want us to buy things or agree with a
particular political points of view. And then there are the voices of our friends
or our associates who are telling us things. And then there is the voice of our
mother and our father who sits on our shoulders and talks to use and tells us
what we are supposed to do. And then there are the voices of our own guilt. And
then there are the voices of that come from all different kinds of places. How
in the cacophony of noise in our minds are we to discriminate the voice of the
Good Shepherd?
It takes time and practice and relationship.
We listen to the voice of God in scripture. We come together as a community, as
a flock, and we listen together. In any flock of sheep if the shepherd calls
out and one of those sheep hears and starts to follow all the other sheep will
follow. But of course if one of the sheep listens to the wrong person and goes
the wrong direction the sheep tend to follow that too. One of the things we
discriminate as we get to know a community is who are the ones who hear God’s
voice that we can rely on and we can trust. And who do we go, “Eh, they are
going off on their own again. Maybe I’m not going to follow.” It’s about discrimination
and discernment. We come to know God’s voice as we come together to worship
every week. We listen, we hear and we sense God’s presence. We begin to know
what it feels like when we are in relationship with Christ and what it feels
like when we are not. That takes time and practice but as you hear it better
and better you learn follow and trust that where it is going to lead is to
life, to abundant life.
Last night I was on the phone
with a friend and she asked me what I was going to preach on, so I gave her a
synopsis of what I just said to you. She said, “Listening to the shepherd and
then following, that sounds really boring.” I acknowledged that can sound
really boring, to be a sheep that just listens to the shepherd and follows
along. There are a lot more exciting voices out there. There are wonderfully
exciting voices. Come and do this and have fun and party; we are going to have
a great time. Or the first time you have a drink its fun and the second time
you have a drink its fun, and the fortieth party you go to its starting to get
a little boring and then suddenly you discover that you are in an AA meeting
and you are lost in the valley of the shadow of death.
There are lots of more exciting
things then following the shepherd, although once you really start following
the shepherd it can get pretty interesting. But those other voices, those more
exciting voices, sometimes lead us to the valley of the shadow of death.
Sometimes they lead us into places where there is no water, there is no
nurturing, there is dryness and emptiness. When we find ourselves in those
kinds of situations. We discover we are one of those little sheep that have
walked off in the wrong direction, because that is what sheep do, and that is
what we all do sometimes. But the good news is that when we find ourselves in that
valley of the shadow of death the shepherd is still with us, and the moment,
the moment we turn and say “Help” he is right there to lead us home. He is
there to care for us and protect us and heal us and nurture us and forgive us.
It is a relationship. It is about listening; it is about responding when we
hear his voice.
Each one of us must find our own
way in discerning the voice of the Good Shepherd. Some people have sense inside
when they hear it inwardly, others find the voice in scripture, others find the
voice in worship, but with time we learn to discriminate that voice. And when
we follow, when we listen and follow, what you are offered is life, abundant
life.
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