Fourth Sunday in Easter
Acts 2:42-47 Psalm 23 1 Peter 2:19-25 John 10:1-10 Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed, Alleluia! Today, the fourth Sunday in Easter, has the unofficial title of Good Shepherd Sunday as there are sheep and shepherds all over our readings for today. God, Jesus, as the Good Shepherd is one of the most common images all throughout the scriptures and has caught the imagination of many particularly those who love Psalm 23. But what does it mean to call Jesus a good shepherd? Well, what does a shepherd do? They take care of the sheep. At text study this week (done over zoom of course) we were discussing sheep, and how well they aren’t very bright and if Jesus is the shepherd that means we are the sheep, one colleague suggested that people might be offended by being associated with such dim creatures, while another pointed out that when she looked at her life she identified with the sheep, always getting into scrapes and needing to be rescued by the shepherd, and her point is hard to deny, even at our smartest and best intentioned we humans have a way of getting into situations where we at least need a little help to get out of, even if we insist that we don’t at the beginning, by the end we realize that we have need of a shepherd. That same colleague mentioned the story of Shrek the Sheep as an example of this. It’s been a few years since Shrek was in the news but Shrek was a sheep in New Zealand who decided that he didn’t want to be sheared, and so he escaped, and hid from his shearers for six years, by hiding in caves, which I think is one of the funnier parts of the story. Now Shrek was a kind of sheep that was bred for the production of wool, without a shave his wool kept growing and growing, when they finally caught him he looked like a giant cotton ball with a nose and feet. I’ll post a picture and a link to his story along with the video of worship and when they sheared him, his fleece weighed 60 pounds and contained enough material to make suits for 20 large men. Now Shrek may have thought he was free and hiding would ensure that, but the longer he hid from the shepherds the more weight he had to carry around. Imagine the freedom he felt when he finally had a haircut after six years! We humans are often like Shrek the sheep, there are times when despite the good care our shepherd is taking of us that we feel like we could be freeer on our own, and off we go, we don’t need a shepherd we insist, hey look a nice comfy cave we can hide out in, and at first it may seem like fun and freedom, but as time goes on we find that there are things we can’t do for ourselves and these things begin to weigh us down gradually accumulating until we are hauling around a fleece of monumental proportions, our sins and worries, mistakes and vulnerabilities all tangled around us obstructing our movement and only the shepherd can set us free. And the whole time the good shepherd has been looking for us. God is not willing to remain at a distance from us and so is continually calling to us and searching us out. That’s what we see in our gospel for today, the story actually starts a chapter back, with Jesus healing the man born blind, we read that together about a month and a half ago, Jesus sees a man blind from birth, heals him, and when the man goes to the Pharisees they don’t believe his testimony about Jesus and kick him out of the temple, hearing this Jesus goes and finds the man, he seeks him out and what we have today is Jesus teaching the man born blind who he sought out and the pharisees that kicked him out. Be careful he tells the gathered crowd, it is perilous to follow the wrong shepherd, the implication being that the pharisees are the wrong shepherds. But they don’t get it. So Jesus tries another image saying “I am the gate for the sheep” the gate open in the evening allows the sheep into the sheepfold and closed keeps them safe from anyone not supposed to be there. Open in the morning it allows the sheep to access food and water. And Jesus must have received more blank stares from his audience because he summarizes it for them whether he’s the shepherd or the gate or any other number of images he says look “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” This is Jesus’ mission statement in the gospel of John. The Word present at creation in the beginning becomes flesh and lives among the people so that they may have abundant life. Jesus is the way to life because he himself is life. And as all of Jesus’ varied imagery shows us, what abundant life looks like depends on the time and place, at night abundant life for the sheep is being gathered together behind a closed gate that keeps out all the things that go bump in the night that like to eat sheep. During the day abundant life looks like the ability to roam, to find the tastiest bit of grass or most refreshing drink of water, but all the while the shepherd is there watching, calling to the sheep keeping them close so that the shepherd can point them to abundant life whatever that happens to look like in the moment, and if one sheep wanders off, the shepherd goes looking for it, brings it back to the fold and the care of the community. We are like sheep, to have full abundant life we need the care of our good shepherd, Jesus, who knows each of our names, who calls and gathers us and leads us to abundant life and yes, sometimes that may actually feel restrictive we long to leave the fold and so we make a bid for freedom, we strike out on our own and Jesus notices, calls out for us, goes out in search of us for as long as it takes and when he finds us, only he will be able to set us free from the heavy load we are carrying, the load that we created. If you are a sheep who has wandered far and long and now in this time of uncertainty would like to return to the fold but fear that the load you are carrying is too heavy too much for even the good Shepherd, know this, it is not, Jesus knows your name and is calling you back and there is no load so great that Jesus can not set you free. And if you are a sheep who has remained close to the shepherd but is starting to chaff at staying within the pen at night, remember the shepherd guides us to abundant life, even if it’s not quite like we imagine the good shepherd has our best interests at heart. Whatever kind of sheep we are Jesus knows us, and calls to us, guiding us along offering comfort and life abundant, he truly is the good shepherd. Amen
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AboutPastor Emily Johnson preaches weekly at Christ Lutheran. These are manuscripts of her sermons given at Christ Lutheran. Feel free to engage with them in the comments section of the blog. Archives
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