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Armadale Uniting Church |
Sermon for Easter - 4
The Good Shepherd
Sermon for Easter 4
Martin Wright
Armadale Uniting Church, 13 April 2008
Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10
I want to begin by reading from a letter which was published in an article about 50 years ago. It is from a modern missionary travelling in the Middle East. He writes:
Many years ago I was travelling by donkey from Nishapur, the city of the poet Omar Khayyam, in eastern Iran to Sabsevar a three days journey to the west. We stopped in a tiny village of mud huts. . . .In the afternoon I set out to see the sights about the village. Not far away I came to a mound of earth piled up in a large circle, like a crude rampart, and on the top of the mound all around the circle was a heap of dry thorns. As I stood wondering what this might be one of the villagers approached me. “Salaam”, I said, “please tell me what this enclosure is for”.
“O, that is for the sheep”, he replied. “They are brought in here for the night for safety.”
“Good”, I said, “but why have the dry thorns been piled on top of the wall?”
“That”, he replied, “is a protection against wolves. If a wolf tries to break in and attack the sheep, he will knock against the thorns, and they will make a noise, and the shepherd will wake up, and drive off the wolf.”
“That is fine”, I said, “but why does the wolf try to climb over the wall? Here is the entrance to the enclosure, it is open. There is no door to keep out the wolf; he could easily enter here.”
“O no”, said my guide, “you do not understand. That is where the shepherd sleeps, the shepherd is the door.”[1]
All the priests, judges and kings of Israel were called shepherds. They were the ones who had been called by God to keep his flock together, to lead them in right paths and keep their enemies at bay. David, the paradigm of all Israel’s kings, was himself a humble shepherd boy when he was anointed for royal office—practised in keeping off the wolves and lions.
But of course you don’t have to read very far through the Old Testament to see how often this relationship between shepherds and flock breaks down: sometimes because the people won’t listen; more often because the shepherds just aren’t up to the job. So, time and again, the word of God comes to his people, saying: “I shall destroy these false shepherds, and I shall myself be the Good Shepherd of Israel. I will lead my people in green pastures, beside still waters, in paths of righteousness”, to invoke the beloved words of Psalm 23, one of many places where these promises of God are heard in Israel’s scriptures.
So when Jesus says “I am the Good Shepherd”, it’s this role that he is claiming for himself; he is the fulfiller of the psalmist’s words. He is contrasting himself with the Scribes and Pharisees, who are supposed to be the shepherds of Israel, but who instead teach a religious system which is more about themselves than God. The illustration that we’ve heard from modern Iran gives some clue to the risk and the cost associated with the shepherd’s office—between the sleeping lambs inside and the hungry wolves outside there is only the frail body of one man. Or, as Jesus goes on to say, the Good Shepherd is the one who lays down his life for the sheep.
How else could he fulfil the words of Psalm 23? How could Christ be at our side in the valley of the shadow of death, except that he went down there himself? How could he lead us in the path out of that valley, except that he himself has passed from death into life? This one man’s frail body, stretched and broken on the cross, is all that stands between us and the enemies who would devour our lives and tell us they have no meaning. In this body, once crucified and now forever alive, we see not only our shepherd, but our gate through which we are saved, our truth, our life, our way.
The image of Jesus as shepherd is widespread throughout the New Testament. We meet it also in today’s reading from Peter, in Hebrews, and in the synoptic gospels. Mark tells us that when Jesus was trying to get away for some peace, he looked at the crowds flocking after him, and his heart went out to them, “because he saw that they were like sheep without a shepherd” (6:34). It’s an apt description for the men and women of many generations, I imagine, but especially our own.
We live in a society which would condemn us to flee from one momentary pleasure to another, to consume without end, possessed by the need to possess; a society which has no way. As each little consumer seeks their own increase, God’s beloved children are scattered like sheep. And, the shadow side of the same phenomenon, we see an increased interest in “spirituality”, many people seeking some sort of enlightenment by looking within themselves, or choosing their own path among a smorgasbord of gurus and religious traditions. Each person finds their own way to a nameless god, in the end inventing their own god in the image of their own desires. Deaf to the voice of the shepherd, the sheep scatter.
It is easy to forget how pervasively this secularized culture has been shaped by Christianity. Many of the religious ideas still cherished by those who no longer call themselves “Christian” are shadows of our faith. The belief that there is, somewhere, one God—that’s a Judaeo-Christian idea, and a pretty novel one; the belief that we will “go somewhere better” when we die is a pale reflection of Christian hope. This society has chosen to turn its back on the good shepherd, seeking religion without Christ.
Against this we are called to proclaim one flock, one shepherd, who has borne our sins on the cross, by whose wounds we are healed. It is a message which will be increasingly unpopular. We might note in passing that Peter, writing to the young church, takes it absolutely for granted that Christians will suffer for their faith—that’s worth thinking about. The world is determined to teach us to think how it thinks, for each person to find their own way, their own truth, their own god. It will be increasingly difficult for us and our children to believe the strange mystery of the gospel: one God, made man, revealed in the flesh; crucified, died, buried and descended into the depths of hell; risen from the grave and present with his people.
As we listen to the voice of this God, and try to show the world that it is possible to live as disciples of the one true shepherd, we can take comfort that he is the one who leaves 99 sheep safely grazing to go and find the one who has gone astray. He was sent and he came to seek and save the lost.