4 Easter A

We all need to listen and to follow.

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 23^rd 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.

4 Easter - Good Shepherd Sunday

Good Shepherd Sunday and Earth Day, how do they inform each other? What can we learn about our relationship to the environment by thinking about sheep?

4 Easter

Sermon Given on April 25, 2010

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas, Arroyo Grande, CA

Today is the fourth Sunday of Easter, and every year that is Good Shepherd Sunday, for we remember Christ as a shepherd.  It also turns out that this is the Sunday closest to Earth Day, and so it is Earth Sunday, a time to think about our environment, and I couldn't help but think that there had to be some kind of tie in between sheep and shepherds and Earth Day, that somehow that pastoral sense of caring for sheep and the pastoral sense of caring for the environment were somehow combined.  We'll see how that works out in the sermon.

How many of you have seen a live sheep? How many of you have seen a live sheep outside of a zoo or a petting zoo?  Seen a flock of sheep?  Hey, this group really knows animals.  Well, some of us grew up in the city and don't have that much familiarity with sheep.  Sheep are interesting animals.  They are the first animal that was domesticated for agricultural purposes.  They probably domesticated the dog first for hunting, but the domesticated sheep go back somewhere between seven and nine thousand years.  They've been around a long, long time.  And they think they probably were easily domesticated because of their tendency to follow whoever is moving, so it wasn't too hard for human beings to begin to herd them.  But it also means that sheep have been domesticated for so long that they can't survive in the wild.  If a sheep escapes from its fold, it will not be able to survive. 

Now, sheep have been given the rap of being really dumb.  I'm not sure they're quite as dumb as they're made out to be.  That might be how cowboys – you know, cattle herders, talk about sheep, but sheep are probably about as smart as a cow, which, of course, is not brilliant. Basically they have a one-pointed mind, and that is focusing on the ground and finding things to eat. And they are perfectly built for that. With their heads down they just kind of wander along and they look for anything that looks like it might taste good.  And also, the shape of their faces and their jaw is such that when they eat grass, they get it right down to the roots.  They get right down there because it's a thin face.  Cows and horses don't get as far down; they leave a little bit.  So if you have a flock of sheep that stay in the same pasture for a long time, they can rid it of all living things, and it's very hard for it to come back. So a good shepherd knows that you don't keep your sheep in one spot.  You move them from place to place.  They feed in one place and then you take them somewhere else. 

So, sheep are one-pointed, one-pointed consumers.  That's really all they're concerned about. They eat and when there's nothing to eat right in front of them, they look around, and the closest thing that looks good, they go over to it and they'll eat that, unless somebody in the flock starts to move. And if somebody in the flock starts to move, then they will just follow that.  There is some sense of hierarchy in a sheepfold, but it's not like in some animals.  Leadership sometimes is just whichever sheep moves first. That is the one that everybody else follows. 

So let's think about that.  Focused on consuming, looking just at what's close by for the next thing to consume until somebody gets up and starts to move.  Sound like anybody you know?  A little like modern Americans, isn't it?  Just focused on what the next thing is that we're going to consume, and if we're not careful, we can consume ourselves out of a pasture.

So sheep need a shepherd.  Sheep are in a pasture, and they don't think, "Well, gee, there's not as much to eat here now.  We need to start looking for somewhere else to go."  They don't think that far ahead, and they can't remember where the good pastures were, and they can't see high enough to look out and see where there might be some grass or some water.  They need a shepherd to lead them.

Most of the time, sheep move from one place to another with the time year, with the climate.  In Spain, at the time of Christopher Columbus, they had huge herds that would go from one end of Spain to the other during the course of a year.  That was how Isabella was able to finance Christopher Columbus, through these herds of sheep. 

If you live in Palestine, during the winter you keep the sheep in the lower levels because it gets a little chilly up in the mountains.  There's not much up there.  You keep them down low and then in the springtime, you take them back up into the mountain country where there's nice spring grass that hasn't been touched.  But how do you get from the low country to the high country? If you've ever gone into the mountains, you notice you don't just keep going straight up.  You go up a hill and then you go back down into a valley, and then you go up another higher hill, and then you go back down into a valley.  It's not a straight line.  There are these valleys you have to get through.

So the shepherd has had the sheep in the winter down in low areas. Spring is coming, the pasture is getting kind of worn out, and the shepherd knows there's good grass up in the hills.  The sheep have no idea.  Now, you could, as a shepherd, sit down with the sheep and go, "Okay – okay, sheep, I want to explain to you what we're going to do.  We're going to be going through some tough territory, but I want you to trust me that there is a good pasture up on top of this mountain.  It'll be worth it."  You could do that with sheep and they'd sit there and they'd go "baa" – and they'd have no idea what you were talking about.  Maybe a few might, but most of them would have no idea.  And so, what the shepherd has to do is just start going, and if the sheep trust the shepherd, they'll follow – well, unless there's a really good-looking thing to eat over here, and then one of the sheep might go over and have to nibble, and then – then you've got to go back and get a sheepdog to kind of get that sheep back in line.

But generally, they will follow the shepherd.  Imagine, when the shepherd comes to a deep valley, and it's steep and it's dark and the sun doesn't get in there, and the sheep don't know what's going on.  They're going through this really difficult time, and they're tired, and it feels like the valley of the shadow of death.  But they keep following the shepherd because they trust the shepherd, and eventually they come out of the valley, and here is the beautiful green upland pasture, untouched by other sheep yet that year – lots of wonderful grass to eat. 

That's the image of the Good Shepherd that we hear in Scripture.  The image of the one who takes care of the flock, who knows a little more than they do and makes sure they have everything they need.  The people of Jesus's time would have certainly understood this.  After all, in the Old Testament, Abraham became wealthy because of his flocks of sheep, and Jacob became wealthy because he was good at breeding sheep, and King David had been a shepherd before he became the king.  So it's part of the whole story.

So we, like sheep, are sometimes not real bright.  For example, right now, we tend to consume and consume and consume and not really worry about whether there's gonna be enough there later.  So that's part of the Earth Day thing. Are we going to be narrow-minded sheep, just worrying about feeding ourselves or are we going to realize that we have to pay attention to what we're doing? 

And in our own personal lives, we all know, we've all gone through valleys of the shadow of death.  Every one of us here is old enough to have in one way or another experienced that shadow time, experienced that valley time, that time when we may have lost a job and not found another one yet.  We don't know what's on the other side but have come out the other side to discover a whole change in direction.  Or we've gone through grief and loss and found that Christ walked with us and that we were able to come out the other end.

About six or seven years ago, I was misdiagnosed.  I had a disorder, and they misdiagnosed it, and they gave me medicine for it.  And the medicine made it worse.  So they gave me more of that.  And that made it even worse and also made me really confused.  And then, since that didn't work, they decided to give me another medicine on top of that until I was in the hospital and the problem had become so intense that they thought they might have to do surgery.  Finally, I got to a doctor who correctly diagnosed it, treated it, and I've had no problems since.  But during that period of time when I was misdiagnosed and on all these horrendous medications, I couldn't read, I couldn't think, and every time someone would come to visit, I would say, "Get out the 23rd Psalm.  Read it to me."  Because I wanted to be reminded that while I was going through this valley, that on the other side of it, when I got to the other end of this, there was going to be something good and that Christ was with me as I walked through it.

That's the power of the 23rd Psalm.  That's the power of the Good Shepherd.  To know, no matter what, we're not alone.  And, no matter what, there's something good on the other side.  And in this season of Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection of Christ, it says even if that shadow of death leads to the death of our bodies, that's not the end.  That even on the other end of that valley is a pasture, is a celebration, is peace and joy and the presence of God. 

Sometimes life leads us through very difficult things, and sometimes all we have to hold onto is keeping our eye on that Shepherd, knowing that the Shepherd is walking with us, and knowing that eventually, if we just keep putting one foot in front of the other, if we just keep our eyes on the Shepherd, it will be okay.  In fact, it will be more than okay and that our cup will runneth over.

And for us, on this Earth Day weekend, when we look around us and see what's happening to our environment, and as we, as human beings, have been asked to shepherd the world, we may feel that it's a dark time.  And we may be asked to go through a time when we stop just consuming and we have to give up some stuff in order to get to a place that's healthier for everybody.  And it might not be real clear, and we might need to use our own minds and our own thoughts and our scientists because you know what - the Shepherd also gave us minds.  We're not as dumb as sheep.  In spite of the fact that we act like that sometimes.  We are not as dumb.  Unlike sheep, we are capable of seeing that we're overeating the pasture.  The question is:  Are we ready to set out and go someplace new, whether it be as a culture or as an individual? 

I  love the 23rd Psalm, and many of us have great fondness for the King James version of it.  So sit back, relax, and let me read it to you.

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. 

He leadeth me beside the still waters.  

He restoreth my soul. 

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.  

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,

for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.  

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;

thou anointest my head with oil;

my cup runneth over.  

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."  Amen.