Sermon

Of Sheep and Shepherd

by The Rev. Bryan England, Deacon

Eleven years ago, fourteen members of my extended family went to England for two weeks to discover our “roots.” To be perfectly honest, I think most of our roots are hidden in the Black Forest of Germany and the potato fields of Ireland, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s think my roots are in England.

One of the highlights of the trip was an excursion from London to Bath in a huge motor bus more often used for transporting fans to soccer games around Europe, but this time chartered for our little group.  Part of the trip was along roads that dated to the Roman occupation of Britain, which tend to run along the ridge lines, with picturesque dales dropping off on either side.  In one of those valleys, I spotted an idyllic manor house, sitting beside a stream, with pastures leading up the slope of the hill to our road, separated from the next pasture by a hedge-row leading down to the stream. 

I grabbed my trusty Canon, which was none of the three with us today, and prepared to take the perfect picture of rural England.  But just as I was about to snap the shutter, I noticed a man walking across the pasture into the foreground of the shot, a burly brute with a pot belly in a blue undershirt and blue jeans, completely spoiling the ambience of the setting. 

I muttered something under my breath about a “bozo,” and waited until the bus passed the hedgerow to the next pasture, and miraculously the shot was even better!  This time, the pasture contained a flock of sheep, being herded by a border collie, with the manor house and stream still in the background.  It proved to be one of my favorite photographs of our trip to England.

Just as I snapped the shutter, I realized who the “bozo” was who had spoiled my shot in the previous pasture.  He was the shepherd, of course!  I didn’t recognize him before, because I didn’t know what a shepherd looked like in England in the last days of the Twentieth Century.  But the sheep knew, and the dog knew, and he was driving the flock to the shepherd.

Early in my life I had a rector who every fourth Sunday of Easter would get up in the pulpit and begin his sermon with this introduction, “Baaa.” “Baaa.” That was his way of letting the congregation know that this Sunday is known as “Good Shepherd” Sunday.  The word “good” occurs in the Bible 657 times, and the word shepherd or shepherds occur 106 times.  But they only occur side by side, in the phrase “good shepherd” three times, and then only in the 10th chapter of John’s Gospel. Unfortunately, they don’t appear side by side in this year’s passage.

For the last several weeks, we have been reading about post-resurrection encounters with Jesus, but today we shift our attention to quite a while before the crucifixion. 

Today’s Gospel lesson is set in Jerusalem during the Feast of the Dedication.  This is the modern celebration of Hanukkah, which is held in December to celebrate the liberation of Jerusalem from the reign of the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes.  Antiochus had defiled the Jerusalem temple in 167 B.C. by building an altar to his own gods within the temple sanctuary.  Two years later Judas Maccabeus and his brothers threw the Syrians out, regained control of the temple, and rededicated it to the God of Judah.  There was only one jar of sacred oil found undefiled in the temple, enough to fuel the temple’s lamps for only one day; yet miraculously, the oil lasted for eight days, which is why Hanukkah is an eight-day festival.

As Jesus walked in the temple precincts, a group approached him and asked, “How long will you keep us in suspense?” Actually, a modern translation would be, “How long are you going to continue to annoy us?” “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly!”

I don’t think the request was really that unreasonable, but Jesus was rarely reasonable.  I have already told you, he said, but you still don’t believe.  “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me,” Jesus said.  Don’t ask me who I am, look at what I do and draw your own conclusion.  He answered John the Baptist’s question in the same way in Luke’s Gospel, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.”

I heard a story of an Amish man who was once asked by an enthusiastic young evangelist whether he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.  The gentleman replied, “Why do you ask me such a thing?  I could tell you anything.  Here are the names of my banker, my grocer, and my farm hands.  Ask them if I’ve been saved.”

How would we like to be judged by that same standard?  Not by our relationship with God, but how others perceive our relationship by watching our actions.  Are we identifiable Christians in our relationships with our coworkers, or those with whom we do business?  Do our families think we’re Christians in the way with deal with them?  What about our fellow parishioners?  It’s often said that the last thing converted to Christianity is our pocket books.  If our pledges to the Church were posted on the parish bulletin board, would everyone who saw it think we were Christians?  It’s that old axiom, if being a Christian were against the law; would there be enough evidence to convict us?

Jesus continued his answer by telling his critics that they did not believe in him because they did not belong to his sheep.  Those to whom Jesus was talking were not confused by his metaphor.  The image of Israel as a flock of sheep was an old one, and the image of the shepherd had been applied to both Moses and David.

But who were the sheep Jesus was talking about, if they are not those to whom he was talking, the elders of Israel?  Jesus said his sheep hear his voice.  He knows them, and they follow him.  Somewhere I picked up the image that middle eastern shepherds could graze their flocks together, because when it was time to return to the fold, all they would have to do is call out, and their sheep would recognize their voice and come running in answer.

Have you ever known someone who would call you on the phone and just begin speaking without identifying themselves?  Don’t you want to kill them?  And when you finally give up wracking your memory and ask who it is, they respond with “guess,” and you haven’t a clue, and probably couldn’t care less.  But when my wife, Linda, calls me at work, she doesn’t have to identify herself.  I know who she is at once from the sound of her voice, almost before she even begins to speak.  And I know if everything is all right, or if something is wrong long before she tells me about it.  Just from the way she talks and breathes.  That’s the kind of knowing Jesus is talking about, an instinctual knowing like it’s lodged in our chromosomes. 

These are Jesus’ sheep, the ones whom he says the Father has given to him and that nothing can snatch from his hands.  This is the great multitude that John depicts in our reading from Revelation, the multitude that comes from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.  This is the great multitude of which that old rector of mine wanted to be a part when he would get up every fourth Sunday of Easter and bleat like a sheep.  And now he is part of that multitude.

This is the flock of the Good Shepherd, and the good news is that we too are part of that flock.  We are among those whom the Father has given to Jesus, and one day we will join all those others who have gone before and stand before the throne of God.  We will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike us, or any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be our shepherd, and he will guide us to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. 

© Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral