John 10: 11-18
Easter 4
Almost every year when the fourth Sunday of Easter rolls around and we read the 23rd Psalm, God is my Shepherd I shall not want. And the Gospel is John 10, I think how difficult it is for us urbanites to imagine Jesus' saying "I am the good shepherd."
Yet, this year is different, this year, because many of us will remember a movie about two young men in 1963 shepherding in the Wyoming mountains. Of course the primary theme of the movie wasn’t how to tend sheep, it was about the power and endurance of love. Nevertheless, “Brokeback Mountain” evoked for 21st-century urban and suburban folk an idealized, bucolic scene of rolling green mountains and lush meadows, over which the fluffy and remarkably clean sheep roam with their serene if slightly bored shepherds.
In other words, those who wrote the movie had to add a lot of other things to the movie to spice it up. When I asked my mother how she like the movie, she said she thought it was slow and boring. I said Mom, what did you think about some of the more controversial scenes, she said, I don’t see what was so controversial. It was long and boring.
In the first-century Mediterranean world in which Jesus lived a reference to shepherding would be less about serenity and boredom than about survival. Shepherds had a hard life. To make sure that their sheep had enough food and water, they had to roam far from home, and they paid a heavy price for it. They were exposed to the elements, and suffered from heat during the day and cold during long, sleepless nights guarding the flock from human and animal predators. Their families became more vulnerable to predators, and that's a major reason why shepherds were generally thought of as dishonorable characters, leaving their families so poor, and alone, -exposed. If after all the work, a shepherd lost too many sheep to illness, injury, starvation, or dehydration, the whole family would perish -- the flock's welfare really was the shepherd's own.
In Acts 4 our first lesson: The passage says, "With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all, FOR there was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold." The New Revised Standard Version, like most English translations, leaves out that "for," obscuring a point the author makes repeatedly: that there is a direct connection between making sure that no one is needy and the other characteristics of Christ-centered community.
In other words, we experience the presence and the power of God's Spirit most fully and we testify to Jesus' resurrection most powerfully when we are caring for the poor in a way that no one is left in need. That connection isn't intuitive for many of us, especially in the individualistic and introspective West, where we're inclined to see "spiritual" as a word describing an interior and emotional experience rather than as a way of being in the world. But that connection is absolutely core to Jesus' message and God's mission.
Ezekiel 34 is a scathing indictment of the extent to which we who claim to follow "the good shepherd" have been doing the opposite of what a good shepherd does:
Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals.
We live in a world that discourages real contact between the rich by which I mean people like me – did you know that if you are single and make a pre-tax income $28,200 dollars it makes you among the top 10% of wage earners worldwide, according to the Global Rich List). Yesterday, some of us from St. Matthew’s went to South Central Los Angeles, and saw what it means to come to this country and to work hard to be among the rich. In a terrible neighborhood, on the inside of what looked like a dilapidated house; Habitat for Humanity workers, Americorp volunteers, employees of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, and St. Matthew’s members, did a third week of work to make this house liveable. Members of the family who will live there also worked with us. We painted inside, demolished a fence outside, and hung doors.
Spending any time in downtown Los Angeles teaches you what it means to come to this country, and to work hard to be among the rich. Before I spent much time downtown, I completely took for granted my home with solid walls and roof, running water, and electricity – before that, I thought that being rich was having a home in Brentwood, Santa Barbara, or Malibu. The cities we live and work in divide rich from poor by neighborhood and school so much so that the vast majority of people you speak to on any given day have similar levels of education as you do and are from a similar social class. And for the most part, the churches I have served are far less diverse economically, socially, and racially than the zip codes in which they get mail.
Jesus, the good shepherd, calls us out of that comfortable place where we sit, because we have been given to so freely by the Shepherd who cares for us. This is the call to follow Christ, it is a call to remember that all people deserve to eat good food, drink clean water, and enjoy the privileges we have that give us access to markets, and schools, and the power that comes with them. This will not be easy, and we will never live the Christian life perfectly, but Christ promises that the journey is the way to abundant life. I feel certain that we will hear the Good shepherd's voice most clearly when we are living in a world in which all of God's children can sing with the psalmist: God is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.
During the Great Depression, a government agency had the task of traveling through backward mountain areas, in search of poor farmers to whom they gave some grant money for the purchase of seed, or repairing their homes.
One agent came upon an old woman living in a shack. It had no floor. Several windows were broken and covered over with tar paper. The old woman had but the basic essentials, and was just barely scratching out a living on a miserable plot of land. The agent said to her, “If the government gave you $200.00 dollars, what would you do with it? Her answer was instant: “I’d give it to the poor.”
Such a different attitude than the one I had as a young person in confirmation at the church where I grew up, one evening, I raised my hand and said, Pastor, do we always have to keep on giving, giving, giving…without letting up? When is it that we’ve ever done enough for others. I’ll never forget the answer, very clearly he said: When God stops giving to you, then you won’t need to continue to give to others. Amen.