Life Together

Scriptures:     Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 23

I Peter 2:19-25,   John 10:1-16

In many churches, today is informally known as Good Shepherd Sunday, as the Scripture readings center on the theme of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, which is found in the 10^th chapter of John’s Gospel.   Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd; I lay my life down for the sheep.”  Actually, he also calls himself the gate keeper who lets the sheep in and out of the sheepfold, and even the gate itself!  John’s Gospel tells us that his disciples had a hard time getting their arms around what Jesus was saying, so he kept using different metaphors – “I’m the shepherd; no, I’m the gate keeper; no I’m the gate.”  Actually, Jesus is all of the above, so much so that it’s hard to find one image to capture all that Jesus does.

Sheep are relatively defenseless animals, domesticated to the point where the shepherd really has to provide for them and protect them.  Their main defensive instinct is, when they are threatened, to huddle together.  Sheep need three things – good pasture, preferably with interlopers like snakes and scorpion and larger predators removed, access to water, and safety.  It is the vocation of the shepherd to be sure the sheep get these three things.

Now, for us in the church, it’s possible that we may object to being compared to sheep – defenseless, kind of dumb, easily led and easily misled.  We’d rather think of ourselves as being brave as lions or wise as owls or quick as jackrabbits or, if we’re feeling a little grandiose, as inspiring as soaring eagles.   Or, if we feel threatened, we may think of ourselves as being, out of necessity, as stubborn as mules or as wily as foxes.  But sheep?  I don’t know of a lot of folks who take pride in looking on themselves as sheep.  Our American culture prizes individuality in a way that makes us unique from other countries; a favorite popular song from decades back ended with the chorus, “I did it my way.” Being part of a herd is the last thing we Americans want.  In fact, in today’s polarized politics, political operatives of one party routinely insult voters from the other party by referring to them as “sheeple”….people who can easily be herded like sheep, and led right off a cliff.  And who wants to own up to being a sheeple? 

And yet, even more fundamental to us than American individualism is that we are human beings, and as human beings we are social creatures.  Some people, once they leave their families of origin, spend their lives alone, but they’re the exception.  Most of us form families of one sort or another.  Our church, small as it is, could be considered a kind of extended family.  And beyond our families, most families live in some sort of community, though with the rise of suburbs and McMansions on large pieces of land, that sense of a larger community has broken down somewhat.  But, certainly Bridesburg is a very tight community; here in Bridesburg, everybody is aware of everyone else’s business. 

And as human beings, we respond to leaders.  In history class we learn about the great men and women of history, the Abraham Lincolns and the Adolf Hitlers, Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare of the 1950’s, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s.  What we forget is that behind these famous leaders were a whole lot of followers.  Adolf Hitler would have been considered nothing more than a ranting nutjob, the kind of loudmouth you can find in any bar or at many family picnics, if millions of Germans had not liked what he said and decided they wanted to hear more.  Martin Luther King would have accomplished nothing if thousands of followers, black and white, had not followed him, often at great sacrifice.   And so, as much attention as we pay to the leaders, those who do great evil and those who accomplish great good, they would be nothing without their followers.

Certainly, in the church, we know the truth of Jesus’ words about the various persons and creatures who may want to enter the sheepfold – the shepherd, who wants to care for them, the hired hand, who is just there for a paycheck, the thieves and robbers who want to steal, and the wolves, who want to destroy.   Some pastors devote a great deal of time and effort, blood sweat and tears, into building up their congregations and caring for their people.   Some pastors do the bare minimum of showing up to lead Sunday worship, and bail out at the first sign of trouble, or at the first opportunity to serve a larger congregation that can pay more.  And the newspapers and TV news programs tell us from time to time about those pastors and TV preachers who are there only to enrich themselves at the expense of the members of the church, who are there only to fleece their flocks – the pastors who live in gated communities and drive Cadillacs while their members live in public housing and take the bus, the televangelists who toss the heartfelt and heart-rending prayer requests from their viewers into the dumpster, but use the checks enclosed with those prayer requests, often sent at great sacrifice, to buy estates and fleets of cars and even jets for themselves.  And from the news we know of those pastors who have caused great harm to their church members, the pastors, not all Roman Catholic, who abuse children, the cult leaders who cut their followers off from their families and dominate their lives, to the point where those followers will even kill themselves if their leader tells them to. 

In recent decades, most mainstream religious denominations have put safeguards in place to weed out students going to seminary or otherwise preparing for ministry whose psychological problems would make them destructive to a congregation.  This is an advantage of being a member of a church that’s part of a denomination, as opposed to an independent church. In the United Church of Christ, we require background checks and letters of reference and psychological testing before people can become pastors, require them to write papers telling us about their faith journey and their sense of why they feel called to be a pastor. We require our pastors to take boundary training every three years to guard against pastors engaging in affairs with their congregants or otherwise behaving inappropriately.  Here in the Philly area, I’m co-chair of the Philadelphia Association Committee on Ministry – was just re-elected at the end of April for another two-year term - and it’s my job to read through all those background checks and reference letters and psychological reports and essays, read through stacks and stacks of paperwork, as part of safeguarding the churches in our area and making sure our churches have pastors who are spiritually and psychologically healthy.  And it’s a difficult conversation to tell someone who may have a sincere desire to be a pastor that they’re not ready, that before they can proceed further we want them to see a therapist, and that we want the therapist to send us progress reports – or to tell someone that, because of the red flags in the psychological report, we can’t allow them to be a pastor, that they’re just too emotionally damaged to be entrusted with the spiritual care of the lives of others. But I’ve been involved in even harder conversations after pastors have offended, many of them ordained back when those safeguards weren’t in place, and the congregation’s trust has been destroyed because the pastor was inappropriately involved with adult members or abused children, or stole from the church.  My efforts won’t protect you or the members of our other Philadelphia-area churches from boring sermons.  But they may protect you or your kids from abuse. 

But enough about pastors, good and bad.   I also want to talk about our reading from Acts, which talked about the life of the early church.  Remember what it said:  “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

We can compare this to modern-day churches and see some things that are similar, and some that are different.  Today we still have teaching and fellowship, still eat together and pray together, still spend time at church together.   We still have glad and generous hearts….well, most of the time, anyway.  While we encourage our members to give to the church – ideally, a tithe, 10% of income - we don’t sell all our possessions and pool the money for the church.  We don’t demand as much of our members as the early church did.   And a few other things we see, or maybe we don’t see, in our church:  a sense of awe or excitement at the signs and wonders God is doing, and the Lord adding to us day by day those who are being saved.  I am convinced that God is doing amazing things here at Emanuel – we’ve had prayers for healing answered, and a real sense of caring has developed among our active members.  A number of us here today have joined Emanuel Church in just the past few years; and for some, Emanuel is their first church experience.   So there’s some similarity to the book of Acts – just on a smaller scale, and sometimes very gradual.  But this reading from Acts reminds us that being part of the body of Christ is far more than just showing up on Sunday mornings once a week, or maybe once every few weeks or months.  It’s a daily thing, a way of life, a commitment not only to God but to God’s people as well.  And I’m convinced that the commitment the early church members showed toward one another is because of the commitment that Jesus modeled toward the first disciples.  Jesus shared his life with his followers, and ultimately laid down his life for them – and so those followers went on to share their lives with one another, and even to lay down their lives for one another and for Christ.

Jesus calls us into community.  Jesus didn’t speak of his followers as being isolated, but as being together. He didn’t lead his followers into individual telephone booths, but into a flock.  When Mary encountered the Risen Christ in the garden and wanted to hold onto him, Jesus told her not to hold onto him, but to go to the other disciples – in that moment, Mary wanted Jesus for herself, but Jesus sent her back to the fellowship of the other believers.  Like Mary, we may come to Jesus as individuals, but Jesus always leads us back into community.  And so as comfortable as we may want to be with an idea of a relationship that involves just “Jesus and me” – and some churches unfortunately encourage this idea – inevitably as our faith matures,  “I” and “me” becomes “us” and “we”.  It is true that we need Jesus – but Jesus also reminds us that we need one another, that we need to be in community. And Jesus spoke of having “other sheep” – in his context the Gentiles – that he wanted to add to the flock, so they would be one flock under one shepherd.  In the same way we are to welcome those who have sometimes been rejected by the church, but are sent here by the Risen Christ.

May we listen to the voice of our shepherd, and learn to sort out the voice of Jesus from the other voices clamoring for our attention.  And where Jesus leads, may we follow. Amen.