Sermon: “The Good Shepherd”

17 May 2009

Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)

Sixth Sunday After Easter
May 17, 2009

“The Good Shepherd”

John 10:11-18

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our minds and hearts here together be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

This image of the Lord as “The Good Shepherd” is a familiar one, right? Did any of you grow up in a Sunday School with one of those great illustrations of Jesus the Good Shepherd on the wall?  Was he kind of “wearing” a baby lamb around his neck?  Either that, or he’d be carrying a lamb, leading the way, with the rest of the flock following after, meekly.  It was a pretty picture, sure, and we kids knew we were supposed to BE those meek little lambs – quiet, polite, doing what we were told.  It’s a beautiful image – Jesus, the Good Shepherd – but there’s one big problem with it: most of us Congregationalists, whether kids or adults, don’t really WANT to be sheep!

Maybe that’s not just our denomination of Christianity, though.  “Sheep” is not the image of success or maturity that most patriotic Americans aspire to, I’m thinking.  I mean, just look at our cars.  There is the Dodge RAM pickup – yes, technically it IS a sheep – but the ads make it look like it’s more for off-roading in the Wild West than for driving to church.  And there real wildlife too – the Impala, the Cougar, the Mustang, the Falcon and Thunderbird, even Taurus, the bull.  What do the names of our cars say about our spiritual lives?  Pity the lost soul that feels most at home in a Cobra, or Gremlin, right?  Anyway, when you look at any church parking lot, you can see the truth:  We’re a pretty diverse and unruly “herd,” we Americans. 

Out there in the world, we don’t behave much like a domesticated flock either.  We clearly prefer the fast lane to strolling meekly behind Jesus on foot.  We’re a bunch of wild animals – what are we at the high school? Bobcats?  So what do we do now with everyone’s favorite scripture, the 23rd Psalm?  It’s like the rest of the Bible, as I often describe it – often quoted, much admired, but rarely followed.  And the problem with proclaiming the Good News of Jesus, our “Good Shepherd,” is that most of us REFUSE to be sheep!  (Maybe Father Chip has the right idea, leading a motorcycle ride this afternoon – that’s a great way to get the flock to follow.)  In busy, mostly White Anglo-Saxon, Protestant churches like ours – run by a church council with committees, subcommittees, work crews, and task forces – we behave a lot more like WASPs, or maybe busy bees, than we do sheep.  To make us lie down in green pastures, you really would have to MAKE us lie down in green pastures.

And yet, the children would lead us, as Gospel promises, into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Kids do get it.  I told Brother Bob Lambert, our resident astronomer, that I used to make my camp kids in California lie down on their backs in the meadow and look at the stars.  They didn’t always want to do it, but they were always glad they did.  And like a lot of our kids here, when I was in the summer before 4th grade, I finally got to go off for a week at church camp.  For me in North Carolina, my closest camp was Moonelon, just outside the town of Elon College, a school our denomination had started.  Moonelon was a lot like our Silver Lake: it was mostly wooded, and life centered around a peaceful lake.  My favorite place was the outdoor chapel, where we went every evening for Vespers, but I’m guessing it wasn’t the favorite of our tired counselors – they had to herd all of us unruly monkeys to the other side of the lake at the end of a long camp day. 

The path crossed a wooden footbridge and a damp, buggy meadow to a chapel with logs for pews.  And of course the kids would want to leap off the path into the mud, or pick up sticks to start a sword-fight.  Or they’d want to stop to throw rocks off the bridge into the water, or themselves.  Well, I think it was my first time crossing that bridge over the tiny stream that fed the pond, I took one look at the lush green meadow on the other side and I ran ahead and actually threw myself down in the grass and started rolling around.  My counselor yanked me up by the arm and shouted “What are you doing?” and I said, “I was led beside the still waters, and the Lord made me lie down in green pastures.”  That was the day I learned the word “sacrilegious.”  I’m probably the only kid on the planet who NEVER misspelled it, because that night I had to write it 100 times: “I must never be sacrilegious… I must never be sacrilegious….”

But here’s the thing:  my first punishment, the one she meted out right there on the spot, was to send me off alone to the far back pew (log) of the chapel to pray.  She sent me off to a lonely place to pray – the place where Jesus goes when he most needs to be with God and have his soul restored.  I loved it.  That’s when I got completely hooked on prayer.  You see, I had listened in church school.  I had learned to sing “Jesus Loves Me” and I believed it.  So I complained to Jesus about my stinking counselor; I thanked him for the birds and the bugs, the frogs and the grass, the gentle breeze on my face and the light streaming down through the tall trees.  I loved everything about that chapel, and I went back often, because I always knew the presence of God there.  It was where I could be reminded that Jesus loved me, that Jesus loves all the children of the world. 

What’s wrong with us that we punish kids by sending them off to be alone and quiet, on time out?  It’s no wonder that we in the church have such a hard-sell when we try to proclaim the Good News of the peace of Christ!  In a world filled with all kinds of stimulating activities, adventures, and temptations, few people I know long to pass slowly beside still waters or to lie down in green pastures.  And yet, I believe our world needs the serenity and grace that the church can offer now more than ever.  One challenge of my call as your pastor, as chief deputy shepherd to the Good Shepherd, is to lead, or goad, us onto the path Jesus would have us walk, and help us to know the peace of Christ even BEFORE we take a turn down into the valley of the shadow of death – a turn that, by the way, must come for all human beings.  We don’t have to wait until we die to live in the presence of God, surrounded by divine love.  Jesus taught was that the Kingdom of Heaven can be found not only in the life after this one, but right here on earth. 

So what might it mean for us to consider accepting our Good Shepherd’s call, to be the sheep of his pasture, to really accept new life in Christ, the invitation of the Resurrection?  “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!” We are called to do this every Easter as we read these familiar words from Psalm 118:24.  Could we really find joy in placing our full trust in God’s love and wisdom, and to allow the Lord to lead us in all we do?  To me, that is what the “PRAY” component of our vision statement is all about – “Make Jesus Your Mentor – Pray Share Welcome.”  All of our ministries here are important, but sometimes they can pull us in multiple directions at once.  Working together, and not at cross-purposes, can be a challenge – which is at the heart of the new by-law revisions our church council is proposing to the congregation for a vote today at 11:30.  For a busy church like ours, it is especially important for us to move together, following Jesus as his supportive and unified flock. 

Even in the early church there were many challenges too.  In our Bible study this spring, one of the first things we noticed about the Gospel According to Mark was that in it Jesus has a kind of “rock star” popularity that attracts crowds large enough to actually frighten the disciples.  One person wants to get well, another wants a demon cast out, and still another is demanding to be fed.  The parents crowd Jesus with all those raggedy children they want blessed.  It’s a problem.  Remember the story of the group who actually tear the roof off the house where Jesus is staying, so their disabled friend can be healed?  It had to have been terrifying.  And what does Jesus do when the crying needs of the world start to drown out the still speaking voice of God?  He heads out to pasture.  Over and over, he goes off into the wilderness, off to “a lonely place to pray.”

We shouldn’t dread prayer or view it only as an obligation.  I’m so grateful for wonderful teachers who showed me how just getting up in the morning is an invitation to prayer.  Our Pilgrim ancestors get up each day with much work to do – but they would first thank God for making it through another night alive, my grandmother’s favorite morning prayer!  Or do as one pastor told me, he says a prayer of thanks when he brushes his teeth in the morning – feeling blessed to have healthy teeth and good dental care.  And music, for me, has always been a prayer – whether it was unwinding after a busy day at school by playing the piano or singing hymns in church – which is why I gave us a prayer hymn to sing today.  We get to sit and enjoy it as a time of quiet rest.  One of my seminary professors was fond of saying that you don’t have to get up at 4 am to kneel on the cold stone-hard floor in order to pray.  “We are the luckiest people in the world,” she liked to say.  “We Christians, we GET to pray.  Any time we want, we get to talk to Jesus!” 

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.


John 10:11-18

11“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The 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. 13The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I 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. 17For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18No 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 page was last updated on 02/08/2014 09:04 AM.
Please send any feedback, updates, corrections, or new content to .