3 Lent 2013
Father Adam Trambley
March 3, 2013, St.
John’s Sharon
“I am the Good
Shepherd”
I am the Good Shepherd.
Continuing our Lenten theme of “Who is Jesus?” this week we
look at Jesus in his work of providing for our needs, healing us, caring for
us, and loving us enough to lay down his life for us. The past few weeks we have looked more
theologically at aspects of Jesus’ life and work, but this week will look at
more pastoral dimensions of his ministry.
When Jesus says that he is the Good Shepherd, he is calling
to mind numerous Old Testament images.
While many Biblical figures like Moses and Joseph tended flocks, the main
human shepherd was King David. We know
David was so busy tending his father’s flocks that he was originally absent
from the banquet where Samuel anointed him as the next king. David was much like the shepherd Jesus
describes in another parable who went out and found the one lost sheep. David was even willing to risk his life, like
a good shepherd, hunting down bears or lions that took his sheep. He was not the hired hand who ran away, but
he fought off any threats that arose to the sheep, just like he later fought
off Goliath as a threat to his people.
We can be confident that Jesus, the Son of David is at least the
shepherd that his ancestor was.
Of course, an even greater shepherd than David is the
Lord. The Isaiah reading today describes
God as feeding his flock and caring tenderly for the little lambs. Even more well-known, in Psalm twenty-three
David describes the shepherding role of God.
The Lord ensures we have what we need.
He gives us safe places to rest.
He ensures we walk in the right ways.
He protects us from all evil. He
gives to us in abundance that not even our enemies can prevent. He gives us a place to dwell with him
forever. Jesus claims the psalm’s
description for himself when he promises, “I am the Good Shepherd.”
Jesus adds three specific elements in his description of
himself as Good Shepherd. In some ways
they are implicit in earlier Biblical shepherding accounts, but Jesus draws
them out. First, Jesus emphasizes that
he knows his sheep and his sheep know him.
His sheep recognize his voice and follow after him. The clearest scriptural example is after the
resurrection when Mary Magdalene at the tomb mistakes him for the gardener until
he calls her by name and she recognizes him.
But the way the disciples leave their nets and follow him also shows how
Jesus’ voice is recognized by his own flock.
Second, Jesus says he has other sheep that do not belong to this
fold. He is not the shepherd of only
Israel, but of many peoples, and he is bringing us all together. Finally, and most importantly, the Good
Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
He doesn’t just risk his life like King David did, but he actually lays
it down. His love for his flock is so
great that he gives up his life.
Jesus’ willingness to lay down his life for us out of love
has profound implications for us. We
talked last week about the saving work Jesus does through his incarnation,
death and resurrection in the atonement.
That reconciliation of broken humanity back to God is Jesus’ primary
work, but I don’t want to repeat that discussion again today. (You can read it online at http://www.adamssermons.blogspot.com/2013/02/atonement-jesus-as-fully-human-and.html
if you are interested.) Instead, I just
want to remind us how great a love Jesus has for us. In the First Letter of John we heard today,
Jesus’ laying down his life is the very definition of love. The first consequence of this love is that we
should lay down our lives for one another, as well. A difficult task, but the fundamental task if
we are taking up our cross and following Jesus.
The second consequence, however, is where I want to focus today. If Jesus our Good Shepherd loves us to this
extent, then we can trust him to do for all us the work that scriptures
promises us our Good Shepherd will do.
One of our main problems in life is that we don’t actually
trust Jesus to be our Good Shepherd. We often
prefer to be our own shepherd. Or else we decide we don’t need a shepherd at
all -- that we are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves and wandering
about finding our own grass on mountains and difficult terrain if need be, and
do not need someone with a rod and staff showing us how to find green
pastures. Now the animal described by
such attitudes is a goat, and the Bible doesn’t have very good things to say
about the eternal fate of such creatures, or of the people that resemble
them. So if we trust Jesus to be our Good
Shepherd what does he do for us? Many
things, but we’ll talk about four in particular. He provides for us in abundance, he heals us,
he protects us as we do difficult things, and he allows us to dwell in his
house forever. He also leads us along right
paths, but we’ll talk about that in more detail next week. (That sentence is an
example of foreshadowing, a sign of quality preaching which gets you excited to
come back next Sunday.)
The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. Green pastures, still waters, a table laden
with food. Doesn’t get much better than that.
I had a friend who used to respond to the question, “How are you doing?”
by saying, “I’m drinking from my saucer because my cup is overflowing.” We can all claim what David says in Psalm 23
as true for us. But we don’t always
believe it. In some cases, although they
are fairly rare in this area, those Biblical words seem untrue because the
basic necessities of life have become scarce.
Almost always however, that scarcity could be alleviated if people with
more than enough were generous. Other
examples of scarcity result from destructive or self-destructive choices. In either case, God has provided enough, we
have simply misused it. Usually,
however, we decide that we do not have enough when we really do. Whether because our appetites have gotten out
of control (who really needs meat and dessert at every meal?), or because we
have believed the advertisers who say we need their product to be successful or
to be safe or to have sex with beautiful people, or because we have convinced
ourselves that the blessings we have today will disappear tomorrow, we decide
that there is just not enough for us.
When we decide to live like we are amid scarcity, we get anxious and
afraid and make decisions that are harmful to ourselves and others. Instead, we can trust Jesus our Good Shepherd
to provide what we really need. He told
us not to be anxious about what we are to eat or what we are to wear. If we go where he leads us we will have the
green grass and still waters we need. We
can focus on the grass the looks greener to us in the next field and get
ourselves into trouble pining for something else, but we should remember Erma
Bomback’s note that the grass is always greener over the septic tank. Or we can be satisfied and happy in the
pastures where our Jesus puts us, trusting that if there were somewhere better
for us, our Good Shepherd would take us there.
Our Good Shepherd is also our healer. “He restores my soul.” When something is
amiss in us, we are brought back to wholeness in body, mind and spirit by the
same one who made us. Too often, we look
for pills, vitamins, doctors, or diets to straighten us out, forgetting that
all of those things are merely instruments of God’s care for us. Remember that God created Sabbath for us, and
Jesus spent a whole lot of time going around healing people from all sorts of
physical and mental illnesses. When
medical remedies are successful, the glory still goes to God. And when nothings seems to help, the prayers
of ourselves and others are often a necessarily compliment to pills, effecting
a healing on some level even if a cure doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.
Our Good Shepherd protects us as we undertake difficult
tasks by going with us even in the valley of the shadow of death with his rod
and his staff. Christianity is not
really a safe religion. We are called to love like Jesus did, and that love can
take us into some tight spaces and bring opposition from scary people. We might just be bringing God’s love to
prostitutes or drug addicts most of whom are in regular contact with
sociopathic pimps or violent dealers. We
might share Christ’s love with the mentally ill, many of whom have unstable
family situations. We might care for the
sick who have diseases we really don’t want to catch. We might try to bring Bibles into countries
that have outlawed Christian evangelism.
We might just be telling our friends that it isn’t OK to do something
that is wrong. And we might be afraid
of the evil inherent into those situations and draw back. Except that we know that the Good Shepherd
protects us so that we don’t need to fear any evil. Nothing can separate us from the love of God
in our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, and all the powers of the enemy fear his
rod of righteousness and his saving staff.
Our Good Shepherd also makes a place for us to dwell now and
always. We will dwell in the house of
the Lord. Jesus loves us so much that he
laid down his life for us. By laying down
his life, he is now on both sides of our death.
He is not only our Good Shepherd in this life, but remains our Good
Shepherd after we die. Just as we are
promised a beautiful grazing area now, we can trust the promise of receiving an
even better situation in the hereafter. As
surely as his goodness and mercy follow us today, so much more will we receive
in that room prepared for us in the Lord’s eternal home.
We can trust Jesus, the one who laid down his life for us,
to be our Good Shepherd. He leads us to
green pastures that provide for us in abundance. He restores us to health and wholeness. He is with us in the darkest valley to
protect us while we are there. And he
gives us a good place to dwell now and forever.
He is our shepherd, and we are his sheep who know his voice.
Jesus says: I am the Good Shepherd.
*Note: with permission
of bishop we are using alternative readings this Lent to focus on “Who is
Jesus?”
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