John 10:11-18
Once a year in the season of Easter we get these Good Shepherd texts…and we say the 23rd Psalm.
- And every single year I struggle with saying something new and profound because I find these rural…pastoral…images in the Bible to be difficult.
- It would just be so much easier if Jesus’ illustrations were about the characters on social media.
- If Jesus were saying…I am the good friend or I am the good cross country walking guide or I am the good kayaking coach…I would have something to relate to.
- But no. We get…I am the Good Shepherd.
- The problem is that friends and guides and coaches are things I have experience with.
- But I have no experience with shepherds.
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
So…here it is…the truth about sheep:
- A sermon by someone who does not know anything about sheep.
- But knows a little about humans and only a tiny bit about God.
- But is going to take a shot at this anyhow.
The truth about sheep is that I do not want to be one.
- The sheep I have seen up close have been the sad and dirty ones on the byways and in the adjoining fields of Scottland and Israel and Ecuador.
- Given the choice I would be a wolf or maybe a shepherd…but never a sheep.
- Sheep are stupid and docile and easily manipulated.
- I want to make my own choices and go my own way.
- Even… (I need to be honest here) …if those choices and that way is killing me.
So…the truth about sheep is that sometimes we are rebellious.
- We are the sheep who adopt dark contrarian elements…black clothes…black hair…black eyeliner…black nails…dark hoodies.
- We are the ones who stay as far to the edge of the flock as possible so we can try and pretend we are free agents.
- We are anti-shepherdtarians.
- Our insistence that we are not like other sheep keeps us from the one thing we really want.
- Which is to belong and feel safe.
- And it is the complete lack of belonging and feeling safe that has made us turn instead to stand even closer to the margins of the heard.
But the truth about sheep is that we want nothing more than to belong.
- And yet never felt we have belonged.
- Some of us are needy sheep.
- We give pieces of our hearts to any shepherd shaped thing that comes our way.
We are also sometimes the big sheep…the bullies.
- We try to be sheep in wolves clothing.
- Contending with the shepherd.
- And yet us big sheep are really just scared and afraid.
- We are just pretending to be big bullies so no one will know the truth about us.
The truth about sheep is that we have terrible hearing.
- We are the sheep who cannot hear the shepherd because his voice is silenced by the clamor of our self-critique.
- I wish I were taller.
- I wish I were shorter.
- I wish my wool were as white as hers or as curly as his.
- We are the sheep who deplore our sheepness and so we search for our belonging in things that do not really matter.
We are the sheep who filter out all the good messages about ourselves and our place in the flock.
- And choose instead to only hear confirmation that other sheep get more attention.
- And that everyone else is having more fun and that we do not really belong after all.
But at times…we can shine as sheep… we can shine like the son.
- We are the sheep who do unbelievably tender and perfectly sheeply things for our fellow sheep-mates.
- We show them where the best grass is.
- We nudge them with our noses helping them stand back up when they fall.
- We know when to stop baaa-baaaing so that we can hear the shepherd call us.
- We are the sheep who love and listen to the Good Shepherd.
- And are so often our very best selves.
While I wish Jesus had said I am the Good Friend or the Good Guide or the Good coach.
- Because I would rather think of myself as a friend…guide or coach.
- There is nothing wrong with the fact that I am a sheep of God’s keeping.
- And you are sheep of God’s keeping.
- Because…the truth is that we are petty and deceitful and heroic and loving and filled with grace.
- There is nothing wrong with any of it.
- Because it is the truth about sheep.
- And we should not fear the truth because it is the thing that Jesus said would set us free.
So…see the truth of who we are.
- The truth of our jagged edges and our icky hearts and our fragile need to belong is nothing to be ashamed of.
- No amount of our rebellion and smallness and bigness and self-sorrow can ever change our belongingness to our shepherd.
- And none of the ways we seek belongingness to lesser shepherds and wolves can ever change our true belongingness to The Good Shepherd.
When we wander off and try and get our needs met through all the wrong ways…
- And allow others to be our shepherd.
- And when we let the wolves in.
- And when we do all the other things sheep just do.
- Well…it does not mean we are not worthy to have a Good Shepherd.
- It just makes it all that much better news that we have a good shepherd.
The needy…proud…distant…rebellious loving…vain…glorious…kind of sheep are the ones who belong to the Shepherd.
- And the Shepherd loves this mess of sheep.
- This means that the Shepherd’s care and unfolding love is not subject to the sheep being the right kind.
The Good Shepherd never holds auditions.
- The Shepherd never bases his protection and love and concern for the sheep on how the sheep look or feel or behave.
- Those are just things we created as a basis for belonging.
- Because grace is just too offensive.
- Grace is just too hard to take since we think that if it’s free it must be worthless.
- But the truth is…grace is priceless.
The truth is…the Good Shepherd calls us by name.
- We know the voice.
- It is always there…under the clamor of insecurity and the cry of wolves and the murmurs of our own feelings of unworthiness.
- The voice of the one who lays down his life for us is always right there saying:
- “You belong to me.”
- “You belong.”
- “you”.