For The Sheep

Scriptures:  Acts 9:34-43, Psalm 23    Revelation 7:9-17,  John 10:11-30

A song on the radio by the duo Rock City, featuring vocals by Adam Levine, goes roughly as follows:

If I got locked away and we lost it all today

Tell me honestly would you still love me the same

If I showed you my flaws if I couldn’t be strong

Tell me honestly would you still love me the same

(Obviously, I have no plans on quitting my day job.)              

While I doubt the writers created the song with any particular spiritual commitments in mind, I think the lyrics point to something important:  I think we all want to be loved and cared for, not only when we’re strong but also when we’re weak, not only when we’re at our best but also when we’re at our absolute rock-bottom worst, not only when we can do for others or give to others, but when we’re weak and empty-handed and can’t even do for ourselves, when indeed all we have to offer is ourselves – and ourselves feel broken and next to worthless.  All of this can be summed up with two words:  unconditional love.  Unconditional love.  Love without conditions.

On this Good Shepherd Sunday, we remember Jesus who promised his followers this unconditional love.  “I am the Good Shepherd.  I lay my life down 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.”   Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus speaks of being the shepherd who will leave the ninety-nine sheep who are in safety, to go in search of the one sheep who had gotten separated from the flock, and to bring that one to safety before the wolf can get to it.

Unconditional love:  delightful to receive, very hard to give.  As infants and young children, if our families are at least somewhat functional, we may get some sense of what it feels like, as our parents will likely stand by us even if everybody else turns away.  And yet, at times addiction and other problems can break even the love between mother and child, if mother or father becomes too incapacitated to care for the child, or if the grown child becomes addicted and the mother and father have to cut off contact, for the safety and well-being of the rest of the family.  Certainly, as an adult, unconditional love is hard to come by.  Those who take the vows of marriage may promise to have and to hold from this day forward, for better and for worse, for richer,  for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish from this day forward, as long as both shall live. Yet not all marry, and of those who do, many find themselves in circumstances in which they find themselves unable to live out their vows.

Truly, only God can sustain unconditional love perfectly, over the course of our lives.  What love we offer is often conditional – I’ll love you so long as you act as I want you to, so long as you meet my conditions, or at the very least, I’ll love you so far as you don’t step over this line - and what unconditional love we can offer may be uneven and fitful at best.  But I believe Jesus was not only trying to get his followers to see him as the good shepherd, but to form a community in which the members of the community could be good shepherds to one another – a community that would care for its members, a community that would be there for its members, even when they fell down, even when they failed, as we all do at one time or another.

It’s a lot to live up to, and Jesus’ metaphor of sheep and wolves has its limits.  After all, in nature, sheep are sheep, and wolves are wolves.  In nature, we don’t see sheep turning into wolves, or wolves turning into sheep.  But in the community of faith, the member who we saw as a sheep may grow and mature into a shepherd, or degenerate into a wolf or some other kind of animal….in my life as a Christian over several decades in a variety of churches, while I’ve encountered very, very few people that I recognized as true wolves in sheep’s clothing – and most of those few have been TV evangelists, most of whom are incredibly predatory on their viewers - I have met a few here and there that I experienced as turkeys in sheep’s clothing, or dare I say, jackasses in sheep's clothing.  While turkeys are tasty and jackasses aren’t end end of the world, they don’t belong with the sheep.  Jesus described himself as a shepherd, not a zookeeper.  God created the turkeys; God loves the turkeys; but it may be that I am not the person God is calling to lead them.  Or I may be called on to care for them, but separately from the sheep.  What’s good for turkeys may be bad for sheep, and vice versa.  It’s just like that sometimes.

Jesus spoke of “other sheep, that do not belong to this fold.”  Jesus said, “I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.  So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”  In Jesus’ immediate context, this would have referred to the Gentiles who were not members of the Jewish community of faith in which Jesus began his ministry, and yet would hear the Good Shepherd’s voice and come to respond powerfully to Jesus’ message.  But down through the centuries, there are always those whom our society has labeled as “other” – people of color, immigrants, women, LGBT persons – and these are also among the other sheep who hear Jesus’ voice, and whom Jesus is gathering into his one flock, for whom Jesus seeks to be the one shepherd.  The church is at its best when it gathers into community those whom society has “othered”.   It may be hard for us to imagine, but the early church was radical in allowing Jews and Gentiles to share table fellowship, in allowing women to share with men in leadership – in our day it seems tame, but this was radical, edgy behavior in Jesus’ day.  And as Christians we are still called to push the boundaries that our society has set up to keep us divided.

We get a picture of what this community might have looked like in our reading from Acts.  We’re told about a disciple named Tabitha, whose Greek name was Dorcas – we’re told that both Tabitha and Dorcas mean gazelle, which gives us an image of a lovely animal leaping and bounding with energy.  We’re told she was devoted to good works and acts of charity – and that she had died.  In many communities of the day with its patriarchal attitudes, the death of a woman would have meant little beyond her family members, but this woman was greatly loved within her church community – so much so that the members would not accept her death.  They learned that Peter, the one whom Jesus had called “Rock”, was nearby, and so they sent to him.  Peter came, and we’re told that the other women were weeping and showing the articles of clothing the woman had made for them…..it’s really a moving image, seeing the impact this woman with her acts of charity had made.  Even though she had no official title, Dorcas was clearly a leader, an anchor within that community.  And then Peter knelt in prayer, and then said, “Tabitha, get up!” – and she opened her eyes and got up. 

When I read of the story of Dorcas making her tunics and other clothing, I’m reminded of my most recent trip to Cuba, in 2012, with a group from the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference visiting a group of progressive Baptist churches in Cuba.  One church we visited was First Baptist Church in Matanzas, Cuba.  Today it’s a thriving church, among the strongest in the city of Matanzas.  But in the early days after the Cuban revolution, when the Castro government was very suspicious of churches, most ministers fled the island.  They truly acted as the hirelings in Jesus’ parable, who cut and run at the first sign of trouble.  In those difficult years, it was a small group of women, fewer than a dozen, who kept First Baptist open.  Even though they had no pastor and no sermons to guide them, they met for worship week after week, month after month, for years on end, singing the hymns they remembered, and also sewing and knitting for the needs of the community.  It was from this church that I bought the cloth with the sheep hanging from the lectern.  These few faithful, persistent women were the Dorcases who kept the light of faith burning in hopes of better days, and their faithfulness was richly rewarded, even though some likely did not live to see their community’s resurgence.

Living in Christian community is really hard stuff.  Listening for the shepherd’s voice, welcoming sheep from outside the fold, fending off the wolves and driving away other animals that don’t belong with the sheep – none of this is easy.  This is hard stuff.  But we are better off for making the effort.  I believe part of the reason so many families are under stress and so many marriages go under is that they are living without the resources of community support, particularly the support of the community of faith.  They try to carry a burden that is too heavy for them, that they were never intended to carry alone, and needlessly so.  No one person can be everything to another person.  No one person can entirely meet another person’s needs.  Within the community of faith, we can bear one another’s burdens, support one another’s families, and that way share the burdens of life – and also the resources life offers us – so that everyone can be sustained.   True, no community is perfect, and every community has its share of Nosy Parkers, to use an old cliché.  Even so, it’s a much richer experience than trying to go it alone.  

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd.  I lay down my life for the sheep.  I know my own, and my own know me….My sheep hear my voice.  I know them, and they follow me.”  May we hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, and may those around us hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in our words of kindness and deeds of love.  Amen.