One Flock

Scriptures:     Acts 3:1-10, 4:1-12                            Psalm 23

I John 3:16-24                                    John 10:11-18

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, when the readings focus on the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  One of our stained glass windows portrays Jesus as the Good Shepherd, carrying a lamb back into the fold.   This window is dedicated to the Rev. John Forster, who served from 1883 to 1917 and is one of Emanuel Church’s good shepherds.  Our longtime members can point to other of our pastors who were good shepherds to them…..I know that for our longest time members, the Rev Victor Steinberg, who served during World War II, was a beloved and venerated good shepherd.

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.  To be a shepherd was anything but a high-class occupation in Jesus’ day.  You would not want that word on your resume.  Because of their nomadic lifestyle, they were considered untrustworthy; in a court case, the testimony of a shepherd was considered inadmissible as evidence.  Also, because of their nomadic lifestyle, they couldn’t attend worship regularly or otherwise perform the sacrifices and rituals considered necessary to remain in God’s favor by the religious establishment of the time.  And yet, in protecting their flocks from thieves and even driving away wolves and other predators, they really acted as unsung heroes.  And in today’s reading from John’s Gospel, that’s the image Jesus gives to explain his ministry.

Of course, if Jesus is the good shepherd, that would mean that we are….sheep.  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.  Sometimes people who we consider easily duped and misled are referred to as “sheeple” – and it’s not a compliment.   

And yet, even more fundamental to us than American individualism is that we are human beings, and as human beings we, like sheep, 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.  Certainly Bridesburg is a very tight community; here in Bridesburg, everybody is aware of everyone else’s business, with all the blessings and all the annoyances that entails. 

And, as human beings, we respond to leaders.  Like sheep, we follow our shepherds.  In history class we learn about the famous or infamous men and women of history, those whose horrific or magnificent deeds live on, the Adolf Hitlers and the Martin Luther Kings, to name two leaders at opposite ends of the spectrum of humanity.  What we forget is that behind these famous leaders were a whole lot of followers. A shepherd without sheep is just a guy holding a curved stick.   Adolf Hitler would have been considered nothing more than a ranting whackadoodle, 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 in marching and picketing and protesting, often at great sacrifice.   And so, as much attention as we pay to the leaders, those who commit great evil and those who accomplish great good, these leaders would have been 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 of churches long and small devote a great deal of time and effort, blood sweat and tears, into building up their congregations and caring for their people.   Some pastors, who are interested primarily in a paycheck, 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 are driven around in limousines 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, found in all denominations, who have caused great harm to their church members, even to children. 

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 becoming inappropriately involved with congregants or dipping their sticky fingers into the offering plate or otherwise acting out.  Within the wider church UCC, I’m co-chair of the Philadelphia Association Committee on Ministry, and it’s my responsibility to read through all those background checks and reference letters and psychological reports and essays, read through stacks and more stacks of paperwork, as part of safeguarding the United Church of Christ congregations in Philadelphia and the near suburbs 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 serve God as 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 – and even more difficult to tell someone that, because of the red flags in their psychological report, we can’t allow them to be a pastor ever, 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 United Church of Christ congregations from boring sermons.  But they may protect you or your children from harm. 

Jesus spoke of having other sheep, who were not at that moment members of his flock, but who must be brought together with it.  Jesus ministered mostly to fellow Jews, and yet Gentiles responded to his message, often more so than his Jewish brothers and sisters – and so Gentiles were among those “other sheep” whom Jesus would add to his flock.  The history of the church is a story of wider and wider circles of humanity being added to the one flock, or to use a phrase from the prophet Hosea, a story of those once considered “not God’s people” being called “children of the living God” (Hosea 1:6-11)

We here at Emanuel Church are a small part of that great story of the church, a little flock that is part of the great flock of those called by Jesus.  For the members and friends of the congregation, Emanuel Church is extended family; for some, the only family they have.  We have longtime members for whom Emanuel Church is the only church they’ve ever known, along with many who have joined more recently, most from other traditions – Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Quaker, Baptist, Presbyterian.  Today, Adam and Jennifer, with their children, Julianna and Madison, join our flock. 

What do we have to offer?  What does this flock called Emanuel Church have to offer?  If you’re looking for a large, wealthy congregation, a church that can fund a staff of multiple pastors, a paid choir, a portfolio of community ministries; if you’re seeking a church of movers and shakers, a prestige church, look elsewhere.   We’re not that church.   Our numbers are modest and our resources are limited.

What does this flock called Emanuel Church have to offer?  In a word, love.  We can offer a sense of close-knit community often missing in larger churches.  If you’re away, you’ll be missed.  We can offer prayer.  We’re a small church that prays big, and here we’ve seen people on our prayer list recover from dire, grave, seemingly hopeless illness or come out on the other side of horrific circumstances in ways that could be called miraculous.   We can accompany people through difficult circumstances over long periods of time.  Up until a week or two ago we provided one family, who lived in an abandoned house with no running water, with filled jugs of water to take home, week after week, for most of a year, until just last week they found more secure housing in another part of the city.  For some time we’ve welcomed Bobby and Tim, who live outdoors, as they await housing.   We offer ways to minister to the needs of the Bridesburg and the needs of the world.  We’ve given backpacks filled to the brim with school supplies to children from this church and from the neighborhood year after year…for this school year, thanks to Penny’s organized efforts, each backpack had the full list of supplies requested by Bridesburg Elementary. We hosted the Santa breakfast.  We’ve responded with assistance to families left homeless by fires.   After last year’s hurricanes, thanks to Sean and Carol, we provided disaster relief kits for Church World Service, and hope to again this year.  We’re about to start a feeding ministry to the homeless.  We’re a permission-giving church – if you feel a call to start up a new community outreach, we’re here to support you. Beyond that, our members care for one another and offer support to one another – phone calls, text messages, Facebook posts - throughout the week in ways of which I’m not even aware.  Of course, we don’t do it perfectly, and we have our squabbles from time to time. From a worldly perspective, what we do here would not be considered great.  But we regularly do small things with great love.

In a later letter, the writer of John’s Gospel said that “We know love by this, that he” – that is, Christ – “laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”  And that’s really what life within the flock is like – to share our lives with one another, to be there for one another.  It’s not just the work of the pastor.  All of us here can be under-shepherds, walking with one another through good times and bad, all of us under the care of Jesus Christ, the good shepherd.

So – to Adam and Jennifer, Julianna and Madison – welcome to the flock!  Welcome to Emanuel Church.  We hope you’ll be blessed yourselves, and that you’ll have opportunities to bless others, as you join in the life of this congregation.  And we hope that together we can be a blessing to this neighborhood of Bridesburg in which God has planted us, and that through our wider connections we can bless people beyond Bridesburg throughout our city, state, nation and the world. Amen.