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. Of course, because Easter was so late this
year, we’re celebrating Good Shepherd Sunday on Mother’s Day – and our mothers
are our first shepherds in life. As
infants and young children, if our families are at least somewhat functional,
we may get some sense of what unconditional love feels like, as our mothers and
fathers 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, many 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 jackasses in sheep’s clothing, or worse. While turkeys aren’t destructive, 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 the turkeys. Or perhaps I am called on to care for turkeys,
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.
And two thousand years later, we’re
still reading about Dorcas and the tunics and clothing she made. We never know which of our routine acts of
kindness we may be remembered for, which of our acts of kindness may live on in
peoples’ memories long after our time on this earth has passed – for example,
seventy years after his pastorate here ended, I still hear stories about the
many acts of kindness of the Rev. Victor Steinberg, who served this
congregation from 1937 to 1949, a true shepherd who was beloved by all who knew
him. And even if our acts of kindness
are forgotten by those around us, God sees all of them, and our acts of
kindness are never forgotten by God.
When I read of the story of Dorcas making her tunics and
other clothing, I’m reminded of my 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 in the sanctuary upstairs. 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.
Yesterday, I posted an article to our Facebook group written
by a Lutheran pastor. He was lifting up
the role of small churches such as our own in holding communities together, as
places where people from all points of the political and economic spectrum and
people from a wide range of life experience can sit side by side, worship
together, approach the communion table together, and look after one another
beyond the walls of the church. He saw
churches like our own as a bridge over our society’s many divisions, as a kind
of glue holding the fragile vessel of our society together. Or we might remember the net from last week’s
gospel reading, that held all those fish, 153 fish in all, and yet, we’re told,
the net was not torn. Similarly, small
churches like our own are resilient enough not to be torn apart by society’s
divisions – we’re flexible enough and yet resilient enough to live with
difference. Our resilience helps us to
be shepherds, not only of our own members, but of the wider community beyond
our walls.
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.
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