Knowing our Shepherd 5-11-25
Knowing Our Shepherd
Ps 23; John 10:22-30
Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
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.”
Prayer - Gracious and loving God, you sent your Son, Jesus the Christ, to shepherd us, to give us a voice that touches us deeper than any other voice. Jesus walked the dusty roads of Palestine, talking and teaching, preaching love and grace and healing the broken simply by the sound of his voice. Remind us this day, in the midst of the countless voices that speak in our world, that your voice, the voice of love and grace and mercy and peace is the singular voice that helps us to know our shepherd’s voice – amen.
One day a man stopped in a convenience store to get a newspaper. He noticed that the owner of the store had tears in his eyes and kept looking out the window. The customer asked the store owner what was going on. The store owner said, “Do you see that bench over there? There’s a woman who comes there every day around this time. She sits there for about an hour, knitting and waiting. Buses come and go, but she never gets on one and no one ever gets off the bus for her to meet. The other day, I carried her a cup of coffee and sat with her for a while. “Her only son lives a long way away. She last saw him two years ago, when he boarded one of those buses right there. He is married now, and she has never met her daughter-in-law or seen their new child. She told me, “It helps to come here and wait. I pray for them as I knit things for my granddaughter, and I can imagine them in their tiny apartment, saving money to come home. I can’t wait to see them.” The reason the owner was looking out the window at that particular moment was that the three of them – the son, his wife, and their small daughter – were just getting off the bus. The look on the woman’s face when her family fell into her arms was one of pure joy. And this joy only increased when she looked into the face of her granddaughter for the first time. The store owner commented, “I’ll never forget that look as long as I live.”
The next day, the same man returned to the convenience store. The owner was again behind the counter. Before the store owner could say or do anything, the man asked, “You sent her the money for the bus tickets, didn’t you?” The store owner looked back with eyes full of love and a smile before replying, “Yes, I sent the money.” Then he repeated the same statement from the day before, “I’ll never forget that look as long as I live.” A shepherd’s voice rings in his heart.
As the early Christians tried to make sense of the ‘why’ of Jesus’ life, his caring attitude towards all people, his ability to identify the ‘least of these’ and raise them up, his reaching out and including the lowest of society in his inner circle, his willingness to heal even the non-Jew; even his terrible death and glorious resurrection, they used a variety of images to describe the love he held in his heart for every single person he encountered. Some of those images are familiar to us from some of the gospel writers – I am the bread of life; I am the vine; I am the way, the truth and the life; but the image of the Good Shepherd, a favorite of traditional Christianity, is perhaps one of our favorites. How many devotional paintings portray Jesus holding a sweet, little lamb, surrounded by peaceful sheep?
Many theologians and preachers in particular interpret this passage about shepherds as a reference to pastoring a church, who are often seen as shepherds of their flocks, and therefore, are in some way like Jesus, or hopefully, at least striving to be like Jesus. Fred Craddock says that John’s church, the Community of the Beloved Disciple, was comforted by this gentle, protective image of Jesus when they felt ostracized and persecuted, turned out and abandoned, by the very people who claimed to be God’s servants. In every age since these earliest days of the church, there have been ‘shepherds’ who have abandoned their flocks and failed to live up to the image of the good shepherd. And, there have been many pastors who have embodied the image of the good shepherd and that pastor has more than likely been beloved.
So I wonder as I consider this passage, can we tell a good shepherd by the voice that we see reflected in his or her actions. Perhaps when we focus on shepherds as pastors though, we miss thinking about ourselves, or about the Good Shepherd himself. We skip over reflecting deeply on the profound truth of this passage as it conveys the depth and breadth of the love found in Jesus’ heart – a love that was often seen in the self-giving love of the shepherd for his sheep, an image that is more intimate than sentimental. A good shepherd who will even leave the 99 to find the one who is lost.
Father Michael Marsh, a Catholic priest, shares a story about the self-giving love of a good shepherd he encountered in his parish. “She died about two weeks ago. She was young, only in her forties. Her mom, Lupe, is one of the housekeepers for the church and our school. I persuaded Lupe to take some time off and stay home. “Don’t worry about your job,” I said. “Everything will be okay.” A couple of days later I learned that one of our teachers was staying after school to sweep out the classrooms and clean the bathrooms. She didn’t want to be paid. This was for Lupe and her daughter. She was laying down her life that Lupe might have some time for tears, memories, rest, and prayers. It was a gift of love.” This teacher had a shepherd’s heart not just for the custodian of the school, but for Lupe, a fellow traveler on this journey called life and faith.
I think one of our biggest challenges is make room in our hearts for the voice of the shepherd. There are so many voices clamoring for our attention today, and it is sometimes difficult to discern the voice of the shepherd amid all of the others. We find it easy to rest and even natural to relax in the warmth of God’s love, but we all too often find it difficult to love with a shepherd’s heart others who may reside outside of our church, our community, our gender, our ethnicity, our spoken language, our faith tradition – pick the difference. We frequently spend too much time worrying about who’s in the flock and who isn’t, which may equate with who’s loved by God and who isn’t . . . or at least who isn’t loved by God quite as much, or in the same way, as we are. We might be very surprised who is included in God’s shepherding heart.
It is important for us to remember the words of John today where Jesus says that there are those outside of his flock who hear his voice. Jesus’ shepherding did not exclude people based on the standards of his day. Yet, it becomes tremendously challenging to us today to apply those words, those intimate shepherding actions of Jesus’ heart, when we encounter people today who are “other,” whether we are shaping public policy or simply making room for people not like us in our neighborhoods. I wonder if that is the self-giving kind of love that Jesus was speaking to in our passage this morning.
So often we think love, a shepherd’s heart, is about emotions, feelings, and sweet words. There’s nothing wrong with those things and they can be a legitimate part of love. We all want to be told we are loved, to feel like we belong, to hear the shepherd’s voice. We want to feel that warmth, security, and tenderness that comes with Jesus’ voice. At some point, however, love, if it is to be real, must become tangible, revealed not only by words and feelings but by actions. In this case, bus tickets, a broom, a bucket, and rubber gloves were the signs and means of a store owner’s, a teacher’s knowing the shepherd’s voice. “Little children,” John writes in his first letter, “let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action”.
So, what does this have to do with Easter season, resurrection, and the Good Shepherd? Everything. It has everything to do with Easter, resurrection, and the Good Shepherd. God’s love for humanity became tangible in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, the shepherd’s heart of our Lord Jesus Christ. God enacted love and Jesus embodied this idea of love throughout his life – and as followers of the Good Shepherd – I wonder if that is the way we are to know the shepherd’s voice?
“We know love by this,” John tells us, “that he laid down his life for us”. In laying down his life Jesus chooses us. He is not the victim of another’s power or agendas. If he is a victim at all, he is the victim of his own all-consuming divine love, his shepherd’s heart that continues to speak to us today. His life was not taken from him, it was given to us; a choice and gift he freely made. That is what makes Jesus the Good Shepherd.
This intimate love is at the heart of resurrection and the resurrected life. Four times in today’s gospel Jesus says that he lays down his life. Four times he says to us, “I love you.” Four times he describes the pattern for our lives. John’s letter is explicit about this pattern: “He laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for one another”. To live and love with the shepherd’s voice in our hearts is about giving of oneself even if it means we give up something as precious as life itself.
For Christ, love is lived; and how we live is always a choice. It is a choice driven by the Shepherd’s voice and our recognition of, compassion for, and willingness to do something about the life and needs of another, whether they are in our own families, this congregation, or on the other side of town. We cannot claim to believe in Jesus if we are unwilling to lay down our life for another, regardless of who he or she is. As we hear and know the voice of the shepherd, we will love with a shepherd’s heart.
I read somewhere not too long ago about a person who lived their life as a shepherd – always searching for the lost, the one who may be on the margin and not in the center of everything. But what stuck with me is that a good shepherd, the kind of shepherd that Jesus was for us, is a shepherd who will leave the 99 in search of the one – who ensures that not a single sheep is ever left behind or lost. That is the kind of shepherd that Jesus is, was and will always be.
We need only be present, open our eyes, listen, and pay attention to know how and where love asks us to be good shepherds. A shepherd’s heart means we will have to change our usual routines. The life and well-being of “the other” now sets our agenda, guides our decisions, and determines our actions. That sounds a lot like how the good shepherd lived and died.
Living life with a shepherd’s heart is not, however, the end of life. It wasn’t for was Jesus, nor will it be for us. It is, rather, the beginning of a new life, a more authentic life, a life that looks a lot like Jesus’ life. It is the life in and by which we hear the voice of the good shepherd call our name and we follow where he leads.
Our OT reading this morning is perhaps the most well-known and beloved passage in all of scripture. And when we read it, when we speak it, we are proclaiming that the Lord, God, Jesus, is MY shepherd. And like all good things – there is a blessing and a curse to that understanding. A blessing because we know in our hearts that God is a loving, inclusive, caring, merciful, gentle lover of us, no matter how far away we may wander or find ourselves lost. A curse, because as sheep following a shepherd, we are to embody a similar kind of knowing in our daily lives – loving and caring, kind and gentle, inclusive and welcoming, standing up for right and wrong, forgiving and never losing sight of the one who wanders off. That is what it means to know our shepherd – the question is whether we, you and I, know the voice of the Good Shepherd – may God give us the strength, the courage, the fortitude to do so – thanks be to God – amen.