Easter 4 - Good Shepherds

So, we’ve just been through an election.  You may have noticed.  You may also have noticed that, to paraphrase U.S novelist Mark Twain, that reports of the death of the PC party were greatly exaggerated.

Really, if my own prognostications about the direction St. Matt’s was headed in were as accurate as the pollsters who covered our election, you would rightly boot my big bald head right out of this pulpit and make sure I was settled into a profession where I couldn’t do any damage – like, say, provincial politics.

And, having gone through our own democratic process, I can help but turn my attention a little bit to our neighbours to the south, where the Republican nomination process continues with slightly less fanfare.

By ‘slightly less’, I mean that some of the media hype has been toned down a bit.  For a little while, the rhetoric was so exaggerated that I began to think that the second coming of our Lord would get less press than Newt’s campaign.

But I don’t think that the language used was unintentional.  All the campaigners used the language of ‘strong biblical values’ to garner votes.  All of them – some more than others, granted – sought endorsement from prominent church figures in the United States.  And what amazes me (what absolutely confounds me) is that if the delegates could get an endorsement, it came with the assumption that the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of votes from the followers of those people would be theirs.

Because those church leaders would literally – and did – tell their congregations that certain delegates were ‘anointed,’ ‘ordained’, or ‘chosen’ by God, and thus worthy of their support.  And there was no middle ground, either – there was only going to be one flock, and either you were in, or out.

Does that make them shepherds?  Is that what shepherds do – tell the flock where to go, and what to do?

Does that make them ‘good’ shepherds?  Somehow, from a means of describing the Saviour, it has become a competition: the best shepherds have the largest flocks, where the sheep go to be seen.

It’s something to think about.  Because it doesn’t seem to be how scripture describes them.  The image of the shepherd is one of the most powerful metaphors that scripture uses to describe God.  It mixes descriptions of leadership, servanthood, responsibility, and love at the same time – and then holds that up what the world expects, or wants.

Turns out the world falls short.

What the world wants most in a leader is someone who will give them what they want: lower taxes, better wages, free healthcare, free money, free cable TV….the list is endless.

What the shepherd shows us is different: because David can say “the Lord is my shepherd,” he can also say “I shall not be in want.”  Shepherds don’t give the sheep what they want.  In reality, I haven’t the foggiest idea what sheep actually want out of life.  But a shepherd gives the sheep what they need.

On the fourth Sunday of the Easter season, the focus of the readings shifts from accounts of the Saviour’s resurrection and turns more toward focussing on the question of who is Jesus – not a simple question to answer, so our understanding becomes rooted in faith, not a descriptive or biographical tradition.

And that faith starts with the image of the shepherd, but a very unique one: the gospel of John points out that the good shepherd is willing to lay down his life for the sheep.  And there’s something else: when Jesus says to his people “I am the good shepherd,” their first thoughts would have gone to the Psalm, but also the prophet Ezekiel, where God the Father speaks and says “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.”

Small wonder, that a few verses later in John’s gospel, the crowd takes up stones and accuses Jesus of blasphemy.

The prophet Ezekiel - long before Jesus walked on the shores of the sea of Galilee - talked about a shepherd, too:

I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice. They shall know that I, the LORD their God, am with them, and that they..are my people, says the Lord GOD. You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture and I am your God, says the Lord GOD.

The crowds wanted to stone Jesus.  What kind of flock are we to be?

We are meant to be a flock that follows, understands, and tries to be like our shepherd.  There’s one thing that separates us from sheep – we have the capacity to love each other, and to serve each other.  It’s in this very human dynamic that a two-centuries-old metaphor begins to fall apart.  There are many people who claim to be followers of Jesus – even better followers than others – but who also say that they don’t ‘do’ organized religion.

To them, I say: come to St. Matt’s.  We don’t do ‘organized’ religion, either.  But at some point, to profess faith in Christ is to realize that you are in need of a shepherd; and a shepherd is going to bring you to a flock.  That flock won’t be what you want; it may be, though, just what you need.  There will be black sheep, white sheep, brown sheep, fluffy sheep, shorn sheep; sheep that are wounded and broken; sheep that are weak, and sheep that are strong.

But they are all members of one flock: they all have one shepherd.

You are that flock; you serve the shepherd and there is salvation in no one else.  Abide with Christ: serve each other.  Love each other, and God will abide in you.

Let the people of God say ‘amen.’