The Origins of the Church? Mothering, Befriending Love

6 Easter cycle b         May 13, 2012

Acts     Ps. 33:1-8,18-22

1 John 4:7-21      John 15:9-17      

Lectionary Link

  On Mother’s Day, it might be appropriate to speak about love and the Gospel lesson certainly also gives us the occasion to speak about love.

  If we are to believe the Gospel lesson, we might say that the Christian movement was founded upon love.  The followers of Jesus came into a friendship with Jesus.  They understood that Jesus call them his friends.  The very word in Greek for the word friend is another word for “love.”  Philos is the Greek word for friend and phileo is the verb form for “love.”  The Greek language has four words for love, agape, phileo, eros and storge.  In English we might specify the kinds of love that encompass these four notions of love; love as justice and respecting the dignity of all.  Love as friendship, fondness, favoring preference, affinity and affection.  Love as sensual attraction.  Love  as familial affection.  And what more can I say about love that Country Western Music has not already said?

  There are many quotable phrases about love in the Bible.  We are to love God with all our hearts and love our neighbors as we love our selves.  We cannot say that we love God who is not seen, if we do not love our brothers and sisters who are seen.  Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends. Love is greater than faith or hope. We are to love our enemies.  Love is also expressed in the negative: The love of money is said to be the root of all evil.  In the Gospel of John, we aren’t supposed to love the world or the things of the world.  And also some people love darkness better than light because their deeds are evil.

  Love is one of those oceanic words that we use all of the time and it has inspired lots of clichés because most people at some time in their lives relate to the cliché of love.  At some point in one’s life, the word love seems to be the right word at the right time that says what needs to be said.

  I think love is a word that in its most general sense designates the cosmic personal glue of the universe.  We cannot live in this world without acknowledging that we are with other people and with other things.  And love is one of those words that is used to specify the quality of our relationship with everything in life.  When we try to assess what we value in life we must deal with the word love.  Love expresses how we are attached to the people and things in our life.

  Why do we love someone?  Why do we love sports?  Why do we love baseball or football?  Why do we love the San Francisco Giants, the Forty-Niners, the Raiders, the  Cal Bears?  Why do we love pizza and not love broccoli? Why do some people like anchovies and others do not?   Why do we like certain fashions or clothes?  Why do we love the Episcopal Church?  Or our political ideas and affiliations?  Why do we like certain locations?  Why do we like Music?  Not just music but certain kinds of music?  And not just certain kinds of music but certain songs or tunes that are performed by certain artists?  How is it that people, things, events, activities, beliefs come to be our favorites and our preferences such that they become part of the repetitive patterns of our lives?  How do we become attracted to what and whom we like in life?  I am not sure that even as we acknowledge love as the glue of all life, that we ever understand how we come to love what we do love or how other people come to love us.  I think that we all must confess that we are partakers in love without fully understanding all of the motivations of love.

  For people who don’t think that they have religion or belief, I ask them to take an exercise in discovering the loves of their own life.  And if they can discover the loves of their own life they may discover their values, their gods and beliefs.  The way in which you and I can analyze the loves of our lives in honesty is to be honest about the objects of our desire?   To track your own relationship with love, sit down and write out an entire series of top ten lists.

  What were the top ten experiences of your life?  Who are the top ten most influential mentors in your life?  Who are the top ten friends or lovers in your life?  What are the 10 best things that you have done for other people?  Best books you’ve read?  10 most influential people in world history?  10 most wonderful places you have been?  10 happiest occasions of joy?  10 favorite meals?  10 favorite articles of clothing?  10 times you felt closest to God?  On and on make your top ten lists and when you’ve finished that make your “bottom”10  list.  List the 10 worst things in every category of your life.  If you can produce a whole series of lists you may be able to look at your relationship with what we call love or the glue that keeps us connected to what we are experiencing in life.

  And it will probably turn out that in many of your top ten lists, it will involve other people.  Such people will turn out to be those who we might call friends.  And if we understand the notion of friend, we can understand the founding the church.  The church began with the friendship that Jesus had with his disciples.  Friendship was a quality of life together which involved the early followers of Jesus using such expressions as love, joy and laying down of one’s life for the other.

  Friendship love is a mystery.  How does it happen?  It does involve what we call a projection of our selves.  Why do we love others?  Because in some way we find our own personal fulfillment connected with the people whom draw our desire.  We find personal enjoyment or fun or opportunity for the release of our mentoring gifts with the people who draw from us our creativity.  But in friendship love we find our limitation since our profound desire expects much more of the people, events and things of our life.  Even while people, events, places and things can provide great enjoyment, we still have a gnawing desire for more.  And that should tell us something about love and our capacity to love.  St. Augustine in his confession said that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.  Eventually we find that our hearts are made for more than our environment can contain in terms of people, events, or things onto which our desire can be drawn.  Our hearts ultimately desire God who has no environment, because God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being.  And in accepting our love for God, we can learn to understand love as a way to regulate the enjoyment in life for people, events and things so that we can learn the balance of justice.  Justice is the eternal quest to give everything and everyone proper dignity in life.  As such justice is never finished because love is never finished.  Love is always a commandment for the next occasion of doing justice to the people, events and things in our lives.

  We are most fortunate in life if we had a mother who befriended us with her love.  We are fortunate that Jesus came and befriended his disciples and followers in such a special way that this Christian tradition of befriending has continued for all of these years.  Befriending involves being drawn into relationship where we find it appropriate to lay down our lives.  The Greek word for life here is psuche, our psychological life or soul life.  Befriending is a love that makes us check our egos at the door so that community and communion can occur.  Certainly, mothers lay down their lives for their children.  They check their egos and give psychical space to let the identities of their children come forth.  This is what Jesus did for his friends and the result was the communion of the church coming into being.

  It is to this communion of befriending that you and I have been called.  And it is a type of befriending that we dare to call Christian love.  Amen. 

A Parable

  A parable: There was a coastal city that had marvelous sandy beaches and each year they had sand sculpture contest in the summer.  And each year they chose a theme for the sand sculpture contest.  One year they chose the theme of “lakes” and so each sand sculpture had to incorporate water in their created sand cities or villas.  So this meant running to the ocean and fetching buckets of ocean water to fill their miniature lakes.  At the end of the day the entire beach was filled with marvelous sand structures of every sort, all incorporating miniature bodies of water.  And so it was time for the judging to begin.  There were judges from every age group and one judge happened to be a six year old girl.  And the judges were reminded that they were to judge based upon the best incorporation of a body of water into their sand creation.  When it came time for the young girl judge to render her decision, they ask her to go and point to her winner.  And they were startled to see that she ran past all of the sand creations toward the ocean and she pointed at the ocean and said, “This is the winner!”

  Sometimes we spend our time in religion filling our little human made lakes from the abundance of the ocean and we take those little lakes so seriously that we forget the plenitude from which they came.  We do the same in our religious metaphors about God; sometimes we let the metaphors serve as a replacement for the plenitude of God, who is grander than even the ocean.

Riddle: The water of the beach lakes is and is not the ocean.

Christ as the Vine; a Baptismal Sermon for Children

5 Easter  B         May 6, 2012

Acts 8:26-40 Psalm 22:24-30
1 John 4:7-21  John 15:1-8

 Lectionary Link

  Today is a special day of Holy Baptism for Bailey.  And we are going to look at Bailey's life as a branch growing out of the Vine of Christ.  In the Gospel lesson, we read that Jesus said I am the Vine, you are the branches.

  What happens if a branch is cut off a vine?  Can it continue to grow or live?  No, why?  Because the branch gets its food from the sap that flow in the branch.

  This parable was used as a teaching riddle by Jesus and the early teachers about Jesus.

  If a grapevine is going to produce good grapes what is needed?  You have to have a good grape plant.  You have to have good soil and the right amount of water.  And you need a good gardener to make sure the grape vine is taken care of.  The branches have to be protected from birds and insects and deer and any plant diseases so that good grapes can grow on the vine.  And the branch has to be supported and not get cut off from the vine or the branch will die.

  So what do Bailey and you and I need to be good Christians?  We need to have a good source of life.  Bailey has a good source of life; her mom and dad.  And even though David and Taryn are almost perfect, all of us need a more perfect source for our Christian life.

  And that source of life is Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ is the vine and we are his branches.  And we can know that we are connected to Christ as our vine since way down inside of each of us we are connected to the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ.  And this is like a sap or an energy or a power for our lives.  And it is always there, but sometimes we need to remember to go there for this energy or power of life.

  And so we are going to baptize Bailey today and we are going to promise to remind her and ourselves about Jesus Christ as a source of energy and power for our lives.

  Just as a grapevine has to be taken care of so that the branches do not get damaged or broken off from the vine; so we need to take care of Bailey and each other so that we do not get cut off from Jesus Christ as the Vine and the source of our lives of love and faith and joy and hope.

  So we are here today to remember that we can find a wonderful connection with Christ.  And when we baptize Bailey, we are celebrating the fact that her life is connected with Christ too.  And we are going to remind her every Sunday and every day of her life that her life is connected to Christ.  Can you make that promise to her today?  Can we make that promise to each other?  To remember that our lives are connected to Jesus Christ because God’s Spirit is within us as a place where we are connected to Christ.

  Jesus said that he was like a Vine and we are like his branches.  He said this to remind us how closely connected we are to him.  And today we are here to celebrate that Bailey too is a branch of the Vine of Christ.  Amen.

What Did You Hear from the Grapevine?

5 Easter  Cycle B        May 6, 2012

Acts 8:26-40 Psalm 22:24-30

1 John 4:7-21  John 15:1-8

 Lectionary Link

  A parable: There was a coastal city that had marvelous sandy beaches and each year they had a sand sculpture contest in the summer.  And each year they chose a theme for the sand sculpture contest.  One year they chose the theme of “lakes” and so each sand sculpture had to incorporate water in their created sand cities, castles or villas.  So this meant running to the ocean and fetching buckets of ocean water to fill their miniature lakes.  At the end of the day the entire beach was filled with marvelous sand structures of every sort, all incorporating miniature bodies of water.  And so it was time for the judging to begin.  There were judges from every age group and one judge happened to be a six year old girl.  And the judges were reminded that they were to judge based upon the best incorporation of a body of water into their sand creation.  When it came time for the young girl judge to render her decision, they ask her to go and point to her winner.  And they were startled to see that she ran past all of the sand creations toward the ocean and she pointed at the ocean and said, “This is the winner!”

  Sometimes we spend our time in religion filling our little human made lakes from the abundance of the ocean and we take those little lakes so seriously that we forget the plenitude from which they came.  We do the same in our religious metaphors about God; sometimes we let the metaphors serve as a replacement for the plenitude of God, who is grander than even the ocean.  Riddle: The water of the little beach lakes is and is not the ocean.
  Every metaphor in our lives is and is not God.  Each metaphor is divine in its derivation from plenitude, but it is not in its limited contextual use.

  And with that as a prelude, we might infer a question from the Gospel metaphor that we’ve read today:  What have you heard from the Grapevine?  In legal terms, hearing something from the grapevine is not admissible in the court;  it is called hearsay.  The famous Motown song, “I Heard it through the Grapevine” popularized this expression.

  The Gospel of John is a type of grapevine message; it is the hearsay that was passed within the early Christian communities.  And though hearsay may not be admissible in court, the Gospel is addressing our hearts and minds to see if a grapevine message about Christ as the Vine and us as the branches is a metaphor that can yield for us some insights about our lives of faith.

  This metaphor of the grapevine and branches is right down our alley here in California where we presume to have developed viticulture and enology to levels surpassing the French or so we like to think.

  The ocean of plenitude known as God is too big to understand and the interrelationships of an infinite number of particulars is too complex to understand; we but can reduce the complexity to metaphors of insights to help us live in our day to day lives.

  The vine and branch metaphor addresses the age old question of which is more telling, nature or nurture?  And it is a “what comes first the chicken or the egg”  type of question.  What makes for good grapes, the hybrid of the plant stock or the environment and vine dresser’s skill?   What makes for fruitful lives of faith, our interior heritage or the environment wherein we live our lives that includes our mentors and care givers?

  In the nature and nurture question there is no easy answer or either/or answer.  Sometimes we just choose an answer that is convenient for the moment.  And so when our children were misbehaving, my dear wife referred to them as “my children” as though the Cooke side of the family was responsible for the “misbehaving.”  Or I would retort, “Can’t you control “your” children?

  What is it that the writer of John is trying to teach us regarding our lives of faith?  In the midst of human nature we can find another more profound Nature with which we can learn to abide and gain strength.  By the presence of God’s Spirit we can access within us the Christ Nature; this nature  is a profound source of inspiration and a continuing vision of what we can yet become in our lives.  The Vine or the Christ Nature is a source of freedom and why do we need to access such a source of freedom?

  We need a seeming transcendent source of freedom as an empowerment for our lives.  And why do we need such empowerment?  In our lives we can experience the downside of our human nature.  We can come to think that our own resources are very limited in empowering us beyond such challenges of despair, despondency, disillusionment and a sense of being over-whelmed by some tasks of our lives that seem to require success.  We can experience our human nature as leading into addictions.  We often find ourselves in need of a seeming transcendent source of empowerment? 

  What makes for good grapes?  Good care and good climate and propitious weather conditions.  These conditions affect the quality of the grape no matter what kind of hybrid the plant stock is.  In our lives we can find ourselves in very imperfect conditions for us to develop the optimal responses for living.  Sometimes we can come to believe that our human nature and our environment totally determine us toward losing or unsuccessful outcomes.   When we feel as though we are helpless against our nature and the challenges of our environment we can be living lives of dread and anxiety.

  Certainly we should not minimize the environmental factors in healthy living and healthy lives of faith.  And even though we can find heroes who have overcome great odds to triumph in seemingly hopeless situations, we know that such stories may just make us in middle class and upper middle class setting feel guilty about our lack of triumphs.

  I believe that the message from the Grapevine today is something akin to the Serenity Prayer:  God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change; the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

  Taping into our Vine being branches that can grow from the Christ Nature means that we first look for wisdom to assess and choose our battles.  The majority of our problems in life are caused by environments that have presented us with unrealistic vision of who we think that we should be and so we are invited to perpetual failure involving futile attempts to be richer, smarter, more acceptable to other people, or more beautiful than we think we currently are.

  A first sign of abiding in our Christ Nature is to have the wisdom of realistic vision of our lives and the current setting of our lives.  With this realistic vision, we can then deploy the limits of our freedom in effective ways to make actual incremental choices towards what the next step in excellence means for us today.

  What do you hear through the grapevine of John’s Gospel today?  Abide in Christ; abide in the Christ nature that we can access in our lives, not to escape the imperfections of our human nature or the imperfections of the nurture of our situations, but to have the power and authority to orchestrate new excellent outcomes for this day.  And if we practice doing this each day, then we find in ourselves a habit of faith, a habit of abiding in our Christ-nature who is the true vine of our lives.  Amen.

Gospel Puppet Show on Good Shepherd Sunday

4 Easter b  April 29, 2012

Acts 4:5-12  Psalm 23

1 John 3:1-8     John 10:11-16

Puppet characters

Jesus

Shepherd boy: Pete

Goat: Shoe

Pete and Shoe are together

Pete: I am sad today because I want to be a famous shepherd like King David but my big brothers and sisters get to watch the sheep.   My dad gave me just one goat to watch.  And my goat is named Shoe.  I named him shoe because when he was younger he ate someone’s shoe.

Shoe: Well, I was hungry and shoes are made of leather.  And leather is just like a very tough steak.  Leather is cow hide so it is steak meat.  And I have strong teeth to eat it and I have a very strong stomach to digest the leather steak.

Pete:  That’s silly.  And you can’t be eating our shoes.  We have to wear our shoes.  And I have to watch a goat named Shoe who eats shoes.

Shoe: I’m sorry but I’m sad too.

Pete:  Why are you sad?

Shoe:  Well, I wish I was not a goat.

Pete:  Why not?  What’s wrong with being a goat?

Shoe:  Well, I’d rather be a sheep.  The sheep have all of the fun.   They get to go on all of the good trips into the meadows.  They get to go to the best feeding spots and I get to eat garbage.  Is that fair?

Pete:  Well, my sister sure likes goat’s milk and we make good cheese from goat’s milk so goats are important.

Shoe:  I know but sheep have all of the fun and they get more attention from the shepherds.

Pete:  Well, Shoe, I’m just like you too.  I don’t get too much attention and my big brothers and sisters get to lead the big herd of sheep in the meadow and I have to stay home near you.

(Suddenly Jesus Appears)

Jesus: Hello guys!  Why are you so sad?

Shoe:  Well we can’t go into the meadow with the sheep.  And I’m just a goat and I’d rather be a sheep.  That’s why I’m sad.  And who are you?

Jesus: My name is Jesus.

Pete:  Oh, I’ve heard about you.  You are very famous.  You have been helping people to learn about God.  So why have you come to see us?  Have you come to see my mom and dad?  Have you come to see my brothers and sisters?  They are out in the meadows with the sheep.

Shoe:  Jesus, are you a shepherd?

Jesus:  No, I’m not.  My earthly father Joseph was a carpenter so I learn to build things with wood.

Pete: Why did you come here?

Jesus:  I came to see you?

Pete:  Why did you come to see me?

Shoe:  Why did you come to see me?

Jesus:  I came to see you because I know that you are sad.  I know that you are feeling left alone.  I know that you are feeling neglected.  I want you to know that I care for you.  You know that I am like a shepherd of people too.  Whenever I see someone who is sad or in need I want to come and help them.  So I came to see you.

Pete:  Wow, Jesus, you are a very good Shepherd!  It is wonderful that you came just to see us and to help make us feel better.

Shoe:  Yes, that is very nice.  And now I don’t feel so bad about being a goat because I know that you care for me.

Jesus:  Shoe don’t wish to be a sheep, just be yourself.  That is the way you are and the way I like you….except you should stop eating shoes; that might get you into trouble.

Pete:  Jesus you are a very good shepherd.  And I’m glad that you are our shepherd.  You have taken good care of us.

Jesus:  I came to this world to be a good shepherd for everyone.  And I came to this world to teach everyone to be good shepherds.

Pete:  How can we be good shepherds?  I really want to be a good shepherd.

Jesus:  You can be a good shepherd when you take care of the people and animals that need help.  Pete you are a very good shepherd for Shoe and he’s a goat.

Pete: Thank you Jesus for teaching us about being good shepherds.

(Jesus leaves)

Shoe:  Pete, can I ask the boys and girls a question?

Pete: Sure!

Shoe: Boys and girls, will you be good shepherds too?  Will you be kind and help everyone who is in need?  Will you be kind to goats?

Can I have your shoe to eat for breakfast?   No?  Bye bye.

Youth Dialogue Sermon on Good Shepherd Sunday

4 Easter b  April 29, 2012

Acts 4:5-12  Psalm 23

1 John 3:1-8     John 10:11-16

 

Katie: Why are ministers called pastors?

 

Conner:  Pastor is a word that comes from the Latin and it means shepherd.  So Pastors are called shepherds of their flocks.

 

James: Does that mean that I get to be a sheep?   Baa…thanks a lot.  I have nothing against Father Phil as my priest and pastor, but really is the difference between him and me the same as the difference between a shepherd and a sheep?  We’re talking about two different species of life.

 

Katie: There is a big problem when we take metaphors or allegories too literally.  There must be some other message in the story of Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  But what is the hidden message that we need to reveal in our sermon about this Gospel?

 

Conner: Well, you have heard the expression, “You are what you eat!”

 

James:  I guess that means you should be looking like a pizza by now.  What do you mean?

 

Conner:  Well, when we read the Gospel, we can say, “We are what we read!”  So how can you and I be this Gospel for today?

 

Katie:  Has your cheese slipped off your cracker?  How can you and I be this Gospel?

 

Conner: Well, the Gospel is essentially you and me and anyone who reads it.  We resemble at various times in our lives the various roles of the Gospel.

 

James: I can see at least three roles, a good shepherd, some sheep and a hired-hand.  I’ve never been a shepherd, I’ve never been a sheep and I’d appreciate you not calling me that, thank you very much.  And I’m not a hired hand to take care of sheep.  How do I relate to any of these Gospel characters?

 

 

 

Conner:  My friend, you are being way to literal.  No one is literally a shepherd, a sheep or a hired-hand.  Even Jesus was not a shepherd.  He actually grew up in the family of a carpenter.  This is an allegory and so we have to look at what each role stands for?  What do you think that sheep represent?  How could you and I be like sheep?

 

Katie:  I guess anyone who has to be taken care of or tended to would be like a sheep.  And that could be anyone.  Some time or any time a person may be a person in need of care.  It is obvious that babies and children are some times like sheep because they need to be taken care of.  And even though I feel like an adult, my parents suggest to me that that I won’t really be an adult until I am financially independent.  So I guess this is what I have to say to my parents for now: bah bah bah. And thank you for my allowance!

 

James: But adults can also be in very needy roles too.  When your car breaks down on the freeway, you are helpless and have to call triple A and then get a mechanic to fix your car. 

 

Conner: And when we are sick or when we need surgery, we are like dependent sheep, because we have to depend upon others who have more skill than we have in medicine.

 

Katie:  So do you see how we are this Gospel that we have read?  We are all sheep at some times in our lives because all of us at some time need the skill, the wealth, the knowledge, the help and wisdom of other people.

 

Conner:  The best thing that can happen to us when we are in need is to be able to have help.  But isn’t that the big trouble in our world?

 

James:  What trouble are you talking about?

 

Conner:  The trouble is that there are more sheep in the world than we have shepherds who can take care of them.  There are too many refugees, orphans in need in our world.  There may be shepherds but we do not know how to get help to all of the people in need.

 

Katie:  I guess that is why we have this Gospel because another role in our Gospel is the role of the Good Shepherd.  Jesus is the Good Shepherd and he asks all of us to learn how to be good shepherds in this life.  So how can we be good shepherds?

 

 

 

James:  I guess if we have wealth and ability to help someone in need, we become good shepherds by helping others in need.  There are so many people in need and sometimes we live our lives so isolated from people in need that we don’t see their needs. 

 

Conner:  Sometimes the need seems so great that it is easy to give up on trying to solve the big problems in our world like starvation, sickness, clean drinking water, literacy, freedom and justice.

 

 

Katie:  Well we don’t have to save the entire world all at once.  There is not such a super person who can do this.  We need to learn how to be good shepherds in our small corner of the world.  We need to help those who are around us and we can still help people in other parts of the world through our gifts and support to different relief agencies.

 

James: Jesus is the model good shepherd and he shows that it is better to give than to receive.

 

Conner: What about the third character in the Gospel lesson, the hired hand?  Why is the hired hand criticized?

 

Katie:  The hired hand is only working for money.  He doesn’t really care about the sheep.  They don’t belong to him so he does not care if a fox or wolf comes and steals the sheep.  He is not going to sacrifice himself to protect a sheep.  He only wants to get his pay and go home.

 

James:  I think that this Gospel lesson is about stewardship.  This means how we take care of what has been given to us.  God has given us a great responsibility to take care of everything in this world.  And the best way to do this is as a good shepherd.

 

Conner: In some way all of the three roles are about our relationship to power.  A sheep would be like a person who experiences great need and so does not have power to save him self.  So a sheep is like a person without power.

 

Katie:  The good shepherd is a model for a person who has power, wealth and knowledge.  How does a person use power, wealth and knowledge?  Jesus as the good shepherd calls all of us to use our power, wealth and knowledge to help others in need.  We should do so since when we are in need we too need good shepherds to help us.

 

James:  The hired hand is the person to has power but uses power, wealth and knowledge to exploit, ignore or even take advantage of the weak.  The use of power to abuse others is the wrong use of power.  That is why we need to model our lives after the Good Shepherd.

 

Conner:  I think that we have all learned some lessons from this Gospel.  We have learned about how we are related to power, wealth and knowledge.  We can be like needy sheep, we can be like a good shepherd who helps others or we can use our power, knowledge and wealth to bully, exploit or ignore people in need.

 

Katie: Well we are all  in need sometime, so we are all sheep-like.  Can you talk like a sheep?  Let all say baaaaa.

 

 

Conner: And let us all look to Jesus as the model for us to be good shepherds in this life.  Can you say “Amen” to that ?  Amen.

 

From Vulnerability to Good Shepherding

4 Easter b  April 29, 2012

Acts 4:5-12  Psalm 23 
1 John 3:1-8     John 10:11-16

Lectionary Link

   The Gospels just like much of the Bible reflects in metaphor the occupational situation that pertained in the lives of the original listeners and readers.  So during the time of Jesus it was common to use agricultural metaphors.  In John’s Gospel, there must have been familiarity with growing of grapes, because in the Vine discourse, Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches.”  But today on Good Shepherd Sunday, we have the adoption of metaphors that pertains to animal husbandry, particular in the care of sheep.  There was a long history of shepherding in Israel.  Before becoming settled in the Promised Land, the tribes of Israel were nomadic sheep herders.  The most famous King of Israel who was the archetype for the expected Messiah, was King David.  Perhaps the most famous Psalm of all is Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”  This Psalm is associated with King David who began as shepherd boy of his father’s flock and he rose to become the most famous Shepherd of the people of Israel. 
 In the Hebrew Scriptures leaders and Kings were referred to as shepherds; some were good shepherd and some were bad shepherds who forgot God and exploited their people.

   And while today is Good Shepherd Sunday, one must note that the writers of the New Testament used many, metaphors to speak about Christ, so many that one wonders about the explosion of metaphors that surround Christ.

  How is it that Jesus could attain so many titles and inspire such metaphorical descriptions of his life?   Each person within one’s community inspires contrast and comparisons.  Each person gets nicknames, titles and designations, and sometimes you really can’t repeat everything that you’ve been called.  We give our public heroes and athletes special names and title.  Who in popular culture is the King?  Elvis, of course.  Which athletes get called the Great One?  Muhammad Ali and Wayne Gretzky.  When one falls in love, it creates new language as well.  When in love people use superlative language, exaggerated language as an attempt to represent their feeling in language.

   On Good Shepherd Sunday, we can note some ironies about the use of shepherding metaphors.  Jesus is the good shepherd.  Jesus is also the gate to the sheepfold.  But in the Gospel of John, Jesus is also the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  Jesus is Shepherd, Gate, and Lamb.

   In ancient shepherding, the shepherd was literally the gate of the sheepfold.  The sheepfold was a stone walled enclosure with one entrance.  And the shepherd literally slept in the one entrance and exit from the sheepfold.  His body kept the wolves out and the sheep in.

  Jesus as the Lamb of God stands in the ancient tradition of God’s people understanding that God has found a way to provide for mercy and forgiveness.  When the human community practiced “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” the lamb of God was a message to humanity that God is so great that God forgives.  Jesus as the Lamb of represents the end of retaliation as a way of understanding our relationship with God and with each other.  God’s mercy is great enough to allow forgiveness as the way of relationship.

  Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, and we have read the famous discourse in John’s Gospel about Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and we've read perhaps Psalm 23 is the most popular portion of Scripture in the entire world.  This Psalm includes a discovery about God and so the psalmist wrote, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want.”

  Shepherds symbolized the leaders in ancient cultures and the church has adopted the image of the shepherd as a metaphor for the role of the clergy of the church.  A bishop carries a crosier or shepherd’s staff as one of the symbols of the pastoral office.

  I actually think that the shepherd image needs to be re-worked to be made applicable in modern and post-modern times.  The shepherd image was a metaphor with more richness of connotation when societies and churches were more paternalistic in nature.  By paternalistic, I mean when the educational gap between leader and the herd was so great that a lay person in the church was regarded to be in the role of a dependent child with a parent who made most of the important faith decisions on behalf of the child.

  We in the Episcopal Church retain hierarchical structures with bishops who carry shepherd’s staff but at the same time we do not regard lay people to be like children who are to follow the orders of the clergy.  Our baptismal vows are the great equalizer between clergy and laity since we both recognize only one Good Shepherd, Jesus himself.

  I believe that there is a fuller application for the good shepherd motif and I think that this motif has tremendous relevance for our lives and our world today.

  To simplify the Gospel lesson, we can say that the human condition can find us in one of three conditions: the sheep, the good shepherd and the bad shepherd.

  All of us in life are often in the role of the sheep.  By being in the role of the sheep, I mean that each person in life experiences the conditions of vulnerability.  Vulnerability can be seen in both extreme and benign ways.  If I am building and I don’t have architectural or engineering skills, I need the skills of one to help.  That is a benign sort of vulnerability and in the ways in which division of labor in society works, we are often dependent upon the experts in fields where we lack expertise.  There are other conditions of vulnerability that are more pronounced in terms of human need.  A young child is vulnerable and dependent for many years.  A sick person or a person weakened by the conditions of age or poor health lives in vulnerability.  A person can be in vulnerable conditions when in financial difficulty or relationship problems, loss of job, or loss of a family member or friend.  The conditions of vulnerability call out for good shepherding.

  Our world experience shows us that both good shepherding and bad shepherding happens in our world.

  The greatest dilemma in our world today is not that things happen that cause the conditions of human vulnerability—vulnerability is the human condition.  The greatest dilemma is that the skill and resources that are available within the human community do not always get applied to the conditions of human vulnerability.

  There is enough knowledge and there are enough teachers; and yet conditions of illiteracy and ignorance prevail in many places in our world.  There is enough money in our world, but the money does not get applied to the conditions of poverty in many places in our world.  There is enough food in our world, but that food does not always get to the people in our world who are hungry.  There is enough medicine and there are enough doctors in our world but equal health care does not get distributed to the needs of our world.

  There are enough religious people in our world, but the message of the Gospel and God’s good news for everyone does not get out to people who see their lives as dominated by bad news.

  We are not going to change the fact of vulnerability in the human condition.  The conditions of freedom means that vulnerability will continue in this life.  But since freedom is a condition of life, freedom figures prominently in whether this world will be dominated by good shepherds or bad shepherds.

  What is a bad shepherd?  A bad shepherd is someone who has power, knowledge and wealth and uses power, knowledge and wealth for either one’s benefit alone or actually uses power to exploit those who do not have power, wealth and knowledge.

  The good shepherd passage is a rebuke of bad shepherding.  Certainly just having the ordained offices of ministry does not automatically make one a good shepherd and there are many failures amongst ordained ministers to prove that office does not guarantee that one will be a good shepherd.  And it is also true that just having a medical degree will not automatically make one a good and compassionate doctor.

   What is the motivation for us to be good shepherds in our lives?  First empathy should be enough to motivate us.  When we are vulnerable, we want good shepherds to come to our aid and assistance.  We don’t ever want to be exploited by others.  Our experience with our own situations of vulnerability should motivate us to be good shepherds to those who are in need.

  The example that Jesus set for us is the chief inspiration for us to use our power, knowledge and wealth to be good shepherds.  The essence of the good shepherd is this:  The good shepherd lays down his life for the life of the sheep.

  We have lots of room to grow towards being good shepherds.  Can we lay down our financial lives, our power, our skills and ability to serve and lift up the vulnerable?  That calling to be better shepherds is always before us.

  So we have three images that simplify our life roles into three positions.  A vulnerable sheep.  A good shepherd.  A bad shepherd.  In our vulnerable conditions, I pray that each of us will always find good shepherds to help.  And when we are brought in the path of those who are vulnerable, let us respond as good shepherds knowing that the prime reason that God has blessed us with power, knowledge and wealth is to learn how to be good shepherds in life.  Let us give thanks for Jesus as our Good Shepherd and who has shown us how to lay down our lives in service for one another.  Amen.