Sunday, April 29, 2012

Good Shepherd Sermon


Acts 4:5-12 ~ Psalm 23 ~ 1 John 3:16-24 ~ John 10:11-18


When I was in high school, I worked at a Catholic Shrine in my hometown which is dedicated to the appearance of the Virgin Mary to two small children in La Salette, France. Every year, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, the shrine is decorated with approximately 300,000 lights – hanging in the trees, decorating the bushes and lighting pathways amongst statues to the Virgin Mary as well as other religious displays. According to their website, they host approximately 500,000 pilgrims during this celebratory time; and to be honest, it’s no surprise to me. During this month and half, I would work in the shrine’s gift shop and all 500,000 pilgrims would come in and look around – or so it seemed. We sold everything: rosaries, religious jewelry, nativity sets, crosses, gift cards, prayer cards, Bibles, and other religious gifts. I got pretty good at my saints having worked there for three seasons!

What always tended to catch my eye were the pictures of Jesus that we sold. There were so many! Each capturing a biblical image of Jesus (on the cross, on the mountain with his disciples, gathering the children) and also some images of Jesus that have developed over time (the handsome white Jesus gazing off in the distance, Jesus guiding a firefighters out of burning buildings, that sort of thing). Some of the images were even holographic and would change as you walked by them: sometimes it was a little creepy! Even before I even knew seminary was part of my path, I was always intrigued by these images of Jesus and how they spoke to our understandings of who Jesus is.

One image that we carried often in the store was Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Not only was this image depicted in these drawings, but also on the prayer cards and other gifts: if Jesus as the shepherd was not directly depicted, a staff or sheep or a lamb were often the substitutes. Jesus as the Good Shepherd is a well-known image of Christ that has formed our thoughts on who Jesus was and who Jesus is.

Which is funny, isn’t it? There are still shepherds in some parts of the world, but in North America they are hard to come by. But, because of the images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, I can tell you a lot about a shepherd! Or, perhaps, I can tell you a lot about what a good shepherd should be: a shepherd should be like Jesus.

This understanding of Jesus has also been set as the ultimate example for church leaders. The word “pastor” itself is a Latin word that means “shepherd.” The staff that is carried by many bishops is designed to look like the staff shepherds use to herd their flocks: symbolizing the “herding” bishops do of their own “flocks.” And it all comes down to the fact that in John’s gospel, Jesus says “I am the good shepherd.”

In the gospel of John, there are seven “I am” statements made by Jesus which are all meant to help us gain a deeper understanding of just who this Jesus is. However, many of them are quite figurative: “I am the bread of life” in John 6 has Eucharistic overtones and we certainly understand the bread on our communion table to be the body of Christ; however, “I am the light of the world” in John 8, “I am the gate” in John 10, “I am the resurrection and the life” in John 11, “I am the way and the truth and the life” in John 14, and even “I am the vine” as we’ll read in John 15 next week are somewhat more abstract than when Jesus says “I am the good shepherd.” John’s audience knew what a shepherd was and even to this day, we know what a shepherd is and was.

But, Jesus seems to sum up what he means by calling himself the “good shepherd” when he says: “A good shepherd would die for the sheep.” We are post-Easter people and so for us, we know that Jesus did die on a cross for his “sheep.” This statement from Jesus seems like not only a summation of a shepherd’s role – a shepherd will die protecting his sheep – but it also comes across as the summation of our shepherd’s life – Jesus was crucified, died, and resurrected for us and our salvation. Which, okay, yeah, we know that story.

But, the reading from 1 John, gives this description of a good shepherd from Jesus a little more nuance when it says: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ died for us.” Ah, it’s about love! Jesus’s description is telling us what a good shepherd does, but in telling us what that good shepherd does he is telling us what true love is. The good shepherd is dependable, caring, steadfast, and trustworthy and through all of these things our good shepherd, Jesus, is showing his true love for us. This is what artists are trying to depict in those drawings. And, this is a great image for all of the shepherds of our churches.

But what about the sheep? What about the flock?

The reading from 1 John does indicate that “we, too, ought to lay down our lives for one another.” And, historically, it has been proclaimed that we as sheep are to lay down our lives for Christ (both figuratively and literally). I don’t know about you, but, this doesn’t seem to capture the whole meaning of the relationship between the sheep and their shepherd: the relationship between sheep their shepherd seems more intimate than that.

A shepherd knows the sheep and is known by the sheep. This goes beyond the mere instinctual needs for food and that sort of thing. According to Henry Wansbrough, a monk and biblical scholar, "Sheep, often thought to be hopelessly witless and contrary creatures, will respond individually, at least to a caring and affectionate shepherd who treats them individually" .The sheep respond to the sound of their shepherd’s voice and not to the voices of others, not to the voices of strangers.

 Is this the same idea that’s being referenced in 1 John about laying down one’s life? Perhaps. It does seem like it’s along the same lines. These things all feel related, or inter-connected. But it doesn’t seem to capture all of what’s going on between the sheep and the shepherd.

The author of 1 John uses the Greek word “agape” to describe Christ’s dying on the cross. Many of us might be familiar with this word because it is the Greek word for love used most often in terms of the love Christ has for creation. “Agape” is an unconditional love: the kind of love that would convince one to lay down one’s life for another. But, there are three other words in the Greek language that also mean “love:” “storge” (which means more “affection”), “philia” (which means more “friendship”), and “eros” (which, according to Wikipedia, means more “passionate love, with sensual desire and longing”) . So which one might we use to describe this relationship between the shepherd and the sheep?

It seems to be more than mere “affection” for one another – in a “I like Jesus, he’s alright” kind of way – and it also seems to go beyond a “friendship” – in a “Jesus is my homeboy” kind of way. What about “eros?”

Now, to clarify, when referring to “eros,” and its descriptive word “erotic,” I don’t mean it in the same sense as what has probably just popped into your head: I mean a love that stems from a desire to be in relationship with others or more succinctly let’s use the word that the Wikipedia definition used: “longing.” “Eros” requires us to self-reflect, to notice the feelings deep down in our core that drive us towards companionship with one and with a community.

Audre Lorde, in an essay entitled “The Uses of the Erotic,” notes that “the erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply…spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling.”  We often disregard our feelings and emotions and deem them irrational and undependable. Lorde points out that feelings have “been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, and…for this reason, we have turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with” the more negative understandings of “erotic:” of which, we know, there are many.

Lorde’s essay asks us to reclaim our feelings, to reconnect with that erotic drive for self-fulfillment and happiness that comes when we allow our longing for relationships to guide us into communion with others. “When I speak of the erotic,” Lorde writes, “then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of [humanity]; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives,” and I would add, our faith.

She writes: “When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs, when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone an individual's. But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering, and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like the only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.”

When we ignore “eros,” when we allow ourselves to live completely and totally in the ignorance of our feelings and emotions, when we deny our desire for relationship, we can get trapped in the need for scientific proof and the “because the Bible says so” reasonings that have so often caused more harm than good. And, it is when we ignore “eros,” that we allow dogma and doctrine to dictate what are right and true interactions with God instead of allowing our inner desires and longing to guide us each on a path to right relationship with the Divine. Bernard Brandon Scott, a New Testament scholar, writes that it's not doctrine that unites us but "God's knowing us and being for us....God is for us"  (New Proclamation 2006). For as much as we have an erotic desire for relationship with God, God desires relationship with us.

There is something to the expression “spiritual but not religious” that may be closer to this erotic understanding of Divine love than what we’ve previously attempted to articulate in our prayers, our creeds, and our hymns. How often is our faith and our religion questioned and criticized by modern secular thought – and often for good reason – and, for some of us, the best response we can come up with is “I just believe.” There it is! It’s in there: God’s “eros” draws us to God’s-self and to each other.

And, not just us: Jesus says in vs. 16 “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold - I must lead them too.” In our squandering of our erotic desire for community, we have allowed ourselves to build protective walls, not only so our emotions and longings don’t go too far, but also so that we might not be influenced by the uncontrolled “eros” of others. But who, or what, are we protecting ourselves from and who, or what, have we hurt in the process of building these walls?

God is “agape” and God is “eros.” God is unconditional love and God is a form of love which manifests itself in a desire for the affection, compassion, and pleasures of community. God’s agape love is the net that is wide enough for all to be reached and included, and God’s erotic love is the force that pulls that net in, reminding us whose we are. We can’t stand in the way of that kind of love. What a good shepherd indeed.

Amen.