Sermon
4-22-18
Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our
lord and savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
To be honest, I don’t know anything about sheep. But I do
know a thing or two about cows. When I was a kid, I would love to help my dad
let the cows out of the barn so that that they could spent a little bit of time
each day outside. If sheep aren’t known for being too smart… Cows are most
definitely creatures of habit. They know when it’s time to go outside into the
cow yard, and they know when it’s time to come back inside to eat –and they
know when you are LATE: they are always waiting in a big crowd by the door to
be let in, especially on a cold or rainy day.
Believe it or not, cows also know where to go once inside
the barn. Every cow has its own spot and usually they go right to it, no
problem. Unless of course there is a new cow that doesn’t know where she’s
supposed to go. Sometimes the new cow will stand in a stantion that is already
taken, and the cow that belongs there will stand there confused. Hmm… I have
heard that at OTHER churches something similar happens when someone sits in
someone else’s favorite pew… but that NEVER happens HERE, right???
I think that sheep tend to act the same way as cows do. They
tend to follow whoever is in leading, putting a kind of blind trust whoever is
at the front. If that person is kind and cares for the flock, he or she will
lead the sheep to good pasture, clean water, and shelter. If that person
does not care about the sheep, then the herd is in a load of
trouble.
We are not unfamiliar with the second kind of shepherd - we hear about them all too often these
days. Just open any newspaper or online news blog any day of the week, and
you’ll see nothing but: CEOs embezzled from companies, or senators made secret
deals, or the chairs of foundations lying about illegal activity... And so on,
and so on.
We like to think
that our leaders know what they are doing and have our best interests in mind
when they make decisions that affect us. But perhaps this is our cow-nature
talking.
Everyone you know is going to let you down at some point.
Everyone you put your trust in is going to betray you. Maybe not today. And
maybe not even on purpose. But it will happen, sooner or later.
I hate to say it, but even I will let you down sometimes. Four years of seminary
doesn’t purge us of all our flaws. I didn’t get a “perfect pastor chip” at my ordination.
I am trying my best to love and serve this community as one of its shepherds,
but I’m not going to “get it right” every time. Church leaders can make
mistakes, just like everyone else. And often those times can feel even worse
than when other kinds of leaders let us down.
There is one shepherd who claims to never lead us astray.
He is the Good Shepherd; a shepherd so good that he would give everything, even
lay down his own life for those who belong to him. But Jesus talks a big
game… But how can we sort out reality from campaign promises? What about when
things go really wrong – how is God our Good Shepherd then?
Long ago, a writer of the psalms once wrote: “The Lord is
my shepherd; I shall not want.”
Most of the time, we hear the 23rd Psalm
read at funerals. It is a beautiful psalm, a favorite for good reason. But this
psalm is intended, not as a metaphor for death, but as a snapshot of life –
of what life is like under the care of our Good Shepherd. Yes, death is a valley
through which we all must pass. Before that, however, there are plenty of other valleys… there are plenty of
enemies to face during this lifetime.
What good is the Good Shepherd if being part of his flock
still means still experiencing things like … getting a cancer diagnosis? … filing
for divorce…. Infertility…. Losing your spouse…. being unable to find full time employment… struggling
with addiction….? What good is a Good Shepherd if some people recover and some
don’t? What good is a Good Shepherd if some people bounce back and others can’t
catch a break? What good is a Good Shepherd who still can’t prevent bad things
from happening?
This is exactly what Kate Bowler wrestles with in a book
she published recently that was featured on NPR. The book is called “EverythingHappens for a Reason and Other Lies I have Loved.” Here was a woman who seemed
to have everything: married in her twenties, a baby in her thirties, won a job
at her alma mater right out of graduate school – seriously, who does that?? … But
then in 2015, she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer that had metastasized
to her entire body. Her book is her journey to reconcile our convoluted ideas
about how we think God SHOULD act in our lives and how God actually does work,
as she comes to terms with what life looks like living with a terminal
diagnosis.
Kate talks about this in an interview with Terry Gross,
where she says “… I really had to rethink what trust and hope looks like if I'm
just living scan to scan….” She wonders, “what does it mean to experience …
proximity to God or a sense of faithfulness without actually thinking that my
life is supposed to be better because of it?”
“What, then, is the point of it all?” Is the big question
she is trying to answer.
Spoiler alert – sort of - The point is that at the end of
the book, she is not cured of her
cancer. But she is made whole, in a way. The point not to be good so that good things will happen to us… but to see the good
that is already there all around us. The point of it all is to love and be
loved... The point is that while she is here, she will raise a son who “will
know the pain of the world but all will be better for it.” Along this journey,
she learned, that trust looks a lot like love.
There will still be dark valleys in this life, and evil
will still be ever present and waiting in the shadows. Bad things will still
happen to us and to our loved ones. There are still terrible injustices going
on in the world right now. But we shall have no fear in the face of such evil. We
belong to the fold of the Good Shepherd. Our enemies will still be present,
sometimes surrounding us. But we will not be anxious about what will happen to
us, because the presence of our Good Shepherd will never leave us.
As the Psalmist says, our beloved
shepherd-turned-gracious-host prepares a celebration banquet in our honor, and
our cup of life is never to be found empty. Our Good Shepherd DID lay down his life for us, his sheep, on Good
Friday, and he picked his life right back up again on Easter Sunday. When
the wolves come – and they will – Jesus will be ready to do what it takes to
keep us with him, no matter what.
And when we follow such a shepherd, when we hear his
voice and obey it, we may find ourselves
laying down our lives for the sake of others.
Not necessarily physically dying, but instead dying to our egos and our desire
to follow trendier shepherds with more palatable promises. …Dying to the idea
that our lives are supposed to turn out a certain way if we do certain things
and follow certain rules… dying to our dedication in going along with the herd
mentality.
When we belong to the herd of the Lord, we do not have to
fear where the paths may take us for the sake of others. Since we belong to the
flock of God, we do not have to fear what happens to us DURING this life or
what comes AFTER it. Our lives – and our deaths – are in God’s hands. We are
loved. And we are not alone.
The road ahead of us may look kind of dim and hard to
navigate, and our map may seem outdated and of no use to us…. We may have
discovered that, as a church, our “spot” in people’s lives has been “taken” by
other thing… sports, the arts, work, family. Let’s not be that cow that waits
for something else to move and
change… if you’ll forgive the bad pun, but let’s be the herd that gets
“MOOving”… following the voice of our good shepherd to the abundant life that
God has in store for us. And THAT, I think we might find, will be UDDERLY
life-giving and full of love. Amen.
