St. Paul’s United Church Sunday May 3, 2009

Good Shepherd, Good Sheep – Rev. David Mundy

Psalm 23 John 10:11-18

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Everywhere we look these days there are signs that winter is well behind us and that spring is not just wishful thinking. On farms across the country spring is serious business, a time of hard work, and for our area sheep farmers this is lambing season, with the newest members of the flock arriving so fast at times that it is hard to keep up.

We have a sheep farmer in our congregation. Some of you may have thought that choir member Jim Coombes was notable for his rugged good looks and a nice singing voice, but he has also tended sheep for more years than he would like to count.

I went to Jim’s farm this past week to get a look at this year’s lambs and to watch him in action.

I was reminded that while the lambs are adorable, even around suburban Bowmanville there is danger for these little ones. Last year the coyotes decided that Jim’s lamb was paw-licking good, and they killed seven of them, as well as two of his adult sheep.

Even when the lambs are supposedly safe in the barn there can be all kinds of complications at birth and in those first vulnerable days. So they need a good shepherd, one who looks out to their welfare, not just when it is convenient but each day, and sometimes in the night.

As Baabs, our resident sheep hand puppet, pointed out at the beginning of worship today, this is Good Shepherd Sunday. It is included in the lectionary every year and, appropriately, it is always around lambing season.

It’s not hard to find suitable passages for Good Shepherd Sunday because the bible is full of sheep. There are lots of stories of real sheep because flocks of sheep and herds of goats were portable wealth in ancient times. And we all know the story from Luke’s gospel that tells us shepherds were watching over their flocks who were the first to hear the Good News of Christ’s birth.

Then there are the metaphorical sheep of the bible, the people of Israel who are referred to as the sheep of God’s pasture. Over and over again God’s people are referred to as sheep who follow faithfully at times and willfully run away at other times, only to come back to the fold.

According to the gospels, Jesus chose to continue that sheep and shepherd imagery in his own teaching and ministry. He told a parable about the shepherd who gathers ninety-nine sheep into the pen, but then rather recklessly goes off in search of the one missing sheep. Instead of staying with the safe odds, he heads out to save the lost. He suggests that God is like that searching for the wayward sinner.

Today we hear Jesus take this all a step further in John’s gospel, when he says “I am the Good Shepherd.” Not “God is the Good Shepherd” but “I am the Good Shepherd.” This isn’t just a nice “soft focus” of image of sheep and shepherd in a field of wildflowers. It is a radical “I am” claim in John, to go along with I am the Light of the World and I am Living Water, and I am the True Vine. Through all these, Jesus says that when we follow him our lives will be transformed. And just in case we didn’t get it the first time, Jesus says again, “I am the Good Shepherd.”

Great, we get our little history lesson about sheep, and flocks and shepherds, but do you really want to be sheep, milling around with all the other sheep in the flock? For all the imagery of the Good Shepherd, we fancy ourselves as intelligent, thoughtful, and independent Christians and believers, rather than falling into step with the “party line.”

There is an old joke about two sheep who fall into a pit and can’t get back out. One of the sheep bleats out “help, help” for a while and when she is exhausted the other sheep cries “help, help.” Finally the first sheep says “maybe we should yell together.” The other says “great idea – “together, together!” I didn’t say it was a good joke.

Remember the cartoons of Gary Larson called The Far Side? One of those cartoons shows sheep in a bar and the pick-up line is “Well whaddya know!... I’m a follower too!” Sheep are stupid, the story goes, and they are mindless followers, willing to plunge over a cliff as long as they are together.

These days that’s the way people of faith of any description are often portrayed. There has been a phenomenon in the past couple of years of aggressive atheists lash out at religion in books and movies, ridiculing anything to do with faith or religion. They choose to ignore any examples of beauty, goodness, compassion, and truth that have developed as a result of religion. All religions, in their view, promote hatred and violence and fear of damnation. So if we believe we are stupid it is a minor miracle that we can walk down the street and chew gum at the same time.

Earlier this year an atheist group purchased ad space on the sides of the iconic double-decker buses in London, the United Kingdom. The message was quite simple since it had to fit on the side of a bus and it said, There is Probably No God: Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life. In other words, get on with it you silly sheep!

As simplistic as this concept was, it quickly spread across the ocean to cities in Canada and the United States – who are the sheep now? Predictably, some believers became quite upset and protested that the signs were offensive. Our United Church of Canada decided to be playful in response putting full page ads in newspapers saying There’s Probably A God: Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life.

While this may not seem like a cause for great concern, I read this past week that an organization in Britain called the National Secular Society is offering Certificates of De-Baptism for those who want to renounce this sacrament of the Christian faith. Over 100,000 people have paid the equivalent of five dollars to symbolically leave the flock of the Good Shepherd, which strikes me as a very superstitious thing to do.

I don’t know how you respond to all this criticism, as a person of faith, but some people have admitted to me that they are discouraged by being portrayed as mindless followers, feeling it is unfair. I confess that at times I have been angry because there is no attempt to be balanced or engage in a meaningful conversation about what faith may have to offer our troubled world.

So are we ready and willing to be the good sheep of the Good Shepherd? The truth is that those who have placed their trust in a loving God who would take the risk of entering into human life in the person of Jesus have always ridiculed by some and even persecuted. While we have lived in a bubble of protection in our culture over the past few decades, it may actually be a healthy thing for us to ask some hard questions about what it means to be Christ’s people.

Here is some good news about real sheep. Researchers have discovered that while sheep stick together in flocks for safety, they are not stupid. In fact they are sure that they are not that far off the intelligence of pigs. They can be very clever in escaping their enclosures, as most sheep farmers will tell you.

When they are shown the faces of other sheep after as much as two year’s separation they still recognize them and call out. They also recognize their former shepherds after that length of time!

I don’t know whether they put the shepherds in a police line-up and the sheep say “Oh ya, he’s the one,” but the point is that the sheep know the shepherd.

The Good News is that we can recognize the face of our shepherd and live up to the challenge of living our faith in Christ effectively, compassionately, bravely in the world we find ourselves in today. Perhaps we have grown complacent and passive about being good sheep, assuming that the church will always just be here and that we will just be Christians by some form of spiritual osmosis. At every stage of our lives we can deepen and grow in faith and understanding of what means to follow Jesus. I have often commented that the United Church is more a herd of cats than a flock of sheep because we are so independent in our attitudes and outlooks. We can use that to our advantage, demonstrating that we can use both our brains and our hearts as we listen for the voice of Christ.

One last thought about sheep and shepherds this morning. We also read in John’s gospel that after the resurrection Jesus appears to some of his disciples by the Sea of Galilee, after they have returned to their familiar life as fishermen. Jesus speaks directly to Peter who denied him and abandoned him. He wants to know whether Peter loves him, and Peter says, emphatically, “yes, you know I love you.”

Jesus asks Peter the same question three times, the same number of times Peter denied him and after every affirmation Jesus says “feed my lambs, tend my sheep or shepherd my sheep, feed my sheep.” Jesus lets Peter know that despite what happened in the past, he trusts him to be a good shepherd in the newly formed community which will become the Christian church.

If we love and follow the Risen Christ we will take on the role of shepherds within our community of faith with a deep conviction and a fierce determination. This morning we added two little lambs to the flock that is St. Paul’s congregation, but this isn’t just a ceremonial commitment on a pleasant Sunday morning. All of us, friends, family, congregation, promised God that we will be good shepherds, even as we baptized Sydney and Phaedra into the body of Christ, our Good Shepherd. Let’s make sure that we live up to the promises we have made together.

We have a Good Shepherd and we can be good sheep. Amen!