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| The Good Shepherd, watercolor, Yu Jiade, Shanghai |
Now I also am pretty certain, that, beside Miss Sherrie, and my spouse who grew up in the midst of the Navajo Reservation, not many of us would have much experience with actual sheep or lambs outside to the petting area in the children’s section of the St. Louis Zoo. And if you have ever been there, you might also have noticed that while sheep and lambs are certainly cute and fluffy, so adorable when they are being bottle or hand-fed, they produce some incredibly pungent poo even in an outdoor area. So see? They really are just like us humans. We can be cute, but we also can be mighty stinky and prone to head butting when things make us feel anxious.
The metaphor of a shepherd is also meant to remind us of two central claims echoed in our readings today especially our gospel and epistle, intimately related as they are: That at the heart of the life of faith is living in community, held together by the love of God and the love for each other. Herders of animals all know—and usually so do the herdees, themselves, that if the flock scatters, those on the fringes are easier to be picked off by predators, either animal or human.
Jesus called his friends and followers into community that was meant to be a tight as any well-tended flock. But the ingredient that was meant to hold the flock together was not fear or animal instinct. No, it was something infinitely better: love. But not the words. Love in action, as our readings, especially our epistle, emphasizes.
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| The Good Shepherd, mandala, Jhoti Sahi, India |
It’s hard to be the kind of sheep that puts the needs of the flock first. It goes against our natures, sometimes, and our instinct to only think about now rather than the future. But Psalm 24 makes some specific comforting promises and uses images of comfort and encouragement.
The first 4 verses of Psalm 23 has the psalmist, and therefore us, imaginatively, on a journey with God; verses 5 and 6 depict God as a host at a wonderful feast of blessing. The image is of a dedicated, loving shepherd leading his flock into a fertile, verdant valley where the flocks can rest and have all needs fulfilled in peace and security; even if wolves lurk in the shadows, the sheep know that the strong hand of their shepherd will drive away any danger. Note that the right pathways have taken the sheep and their shepherd through the “valley of the shadow of death.” We are not promised that we will not face trials, even as we seek to follow God. The right pathways God wants us to follow may lead us into danger, even crisis, yet if we remember that God is with us and is OURS as well as we being God’s we cannot be afraid. Verse six uses covenantal language to emphasize that God’s promises are trustworthy and the foundation of all blessing.
Expanding upon this, our epistle continues imaginatively to pick up the theme.
Here’s the heart of it for me: “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” We cannot do everything. But we can do something. Every day.
Some scholars believe that the first letter of John is an expansion upon the messages in the gospel of John. Ironically, 1 John 3:16 expands upon John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him would have everlasting life.”
Yet what does it mean to have everlasting life? Is this promising us that if we believe in a personal Jesus, and avow our belief, we will get to live in heaven forever? Many, many people believe exactly that. Yet to me, that makes faith a transaction: I do X and God saves me from eternal torment. How can you really “have something if you only have it after you die? Yet that is what millions of people believe. But when you study scripture broadly, which a lectionary forces us to do, you begin to see a broader message emerge: having the eternal life is a present tense statement.
Yet what if it is our actions right now that bring us either eternal bliss and peace or eternal torment? What if we realized that every time we treat with contempt, or callousness, we are wrapping around ourselves what songwriter Aimee Mann reimagined via Charles Dickens as “Jacob Marley’s Chain?”
Well, today a friend told me this sorry tale
As he stood there trembling and turning pale
He said each day's harder to get on the scale
Sort of like Jacob Marley's chain
But it's not like life is such a vale of tears
It's just full of thoughts that act as souvenirs
For those tiny blunders made in yesteryear
That comprise Jacob Marley's chain
Well, I had a little metaphor to state my case
It encompassed the condition of the human race
But to my dismay, it left without a trace
Except for the sound of Jacob Marley's chain
Now there is no story left to tell
So I think I'd rather just go on to hell
Where there's a snowball's chance that the personnel
Might help to carry Jacob Marley's chain (1)
Ms. Mann makes a more subtle point than in Dickens’s fable: the chains we ourselves forge from our actions (for even refusing to act is a choice) are carried with us in this moment, right now, often as regret and guilt. Mann’s 4th verse regarding to preferring hell speaks to another difficulty of our modern times—that people who think themselves righteous often have little sympathy for those whose consciences are burdened by things they have done. It is often the other acknowledged “sinners” who have the most sympathy for their fellow sinners, and may help to carry those chains of regret and guilt, forged by being … human.
But both Dickens and Mann agree that we can unmake them, too. Rather than move from the negative, our scripture reading in this epistle points us to a brighter truth, rooted and grounded in the love that we have to declare our allegiance to if we are disciples of Christ: God’s love abides when we choose to let go of our chains of anxiety, and instead take care of each other, without wondering about whether they are “deserving”--or not. The first letter to John reminds us that God so loved the world, even when it did not and sometimes does not deserve it—and so we are drawn to behave in the same way if we allow God’s love to overflow within us, if we allow our cup to run over. We are reminded that our shepherd will supply our need—and that our shepherd expects us to help with that mission of abundance, total trust, and compassion, for we are, as St. Teresa of Avila reminded us, God’s hands and feet in the world. Love in action.
Some people have a hard time saying the word “love”—and some people cheapen it by throwing it around as a descriptor for anything pleasing: “ I love this hairdryer! I love this fabric softener! I love these shoes! I love this toilet paper!” My dad had a hard time saying “I love you” in words—at least where he though anyone might hear it. But he showed me he loved me in a million ways.
Or the time there was an ice storm while I was in high school, and at dismissal everyone’s cars were coated in an inch of solid ice—everyone’s cars except mine—as he came before he went to work on the afternoon shift and spent thirty minutes de-icing and opening my car, turning on the engine so it could warm up as he scraped the ice off of every window and door in case I needed to take some friends home who didn’t have daddies that could do that.
In the end, of course, love is about selflessness, not about self-gratification. It IS about being willing to lay down your preferences and comforts in the name of making the beloved’s happiness a guiding goal of your life and relationship. Consider in your own life which is better—to hear someone say “I love you” when their actions show nothing but self- involvement, or to not hear the words but to know that someone will act to care for you, to feed you, to shelter you, and to help you bear your burdens.
That’s the kind of love Jesus in his earthly existence exemplified for us—and often for people who were considered less-than, or undeserving.
Let’s face it, we are not sure if shepherds actually sat around telling their sheep they love them. But they certainly cared for them, watched over them, made sure they were sheltered, made sure they had green pastures and still waters, and stood between them and the wolves and hyenas and thieves who often were just watching for the flock to scatter so they could scoop off the stragglers or the weak.
The command that we love one another in action and deed, not only in words, is not a contract, an agreement of tit for tat, that gains us everlasting life in exchange for mouthing a few platitudes while leaving our precious hearts and lives undisturbed. God’s love as revealed in Christ cannot be hoarded for our own benefit, just as manna cannot be stored, but each day we, like the Israelites in the wilderness, rise and trust that God has prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies, even when those enemies are us.
Lovelessness and loneliness are overwhelming too many people in our world right now. Yet just before our reading, at verse 11. John makes a concise statement: “This is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. “
What does a modern application of John urging us to love one another in deed and action lead us toward? Perhaps to a reconsideration of the violence, contempt, and hatred that plagues human life all around the world and in our own backyards. In the verse immediately preceding our reading today, John claims that hatred is basically equivalent to murder.
The cornerstone for the Christian life is Christ, and Christ is rooted in love and mercy. Therefore, if we are truly aligned with Christ, we too must align our lives in truth and action to that imitate that same love and mercy in our own lives. As beloved sheep, and ourselves called to be loving shepherds, enacating love in the world. For God’s sake, and our own. So that we will proclaim one love, one flock, one shepherd.
Readings:
Preached at the 505 on April 20 and the main service of holy Eucharist on April 21 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.
Citations:
1) "Jacob Marley's Chain," written by Aimee Mann, from her album Whatever, 1993.
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