HOW TO BE A SHEEP
Scripture
You
sent me to a conference this last week in Richmond, Virginia. I took a day to look around this great old
city of the South, the former capital of the Confederacy during the dark days
of this nation’s Civil War. I saw the
Museum of the Confederacy, the Confederate White House, old Hollywood Cemetery,
where many of the heroes of the Confederacy are laid to rest, and Monument
Avenue, where huge statues of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson,
and Jeb Stuart are inscribed with flattering words of eulogy praising the high
ideals these men defended. In other
words, I felt like I was on another planet, one where the Civil War, or as the
inscriptions on the statues put it, the “War of Northern Aggression,” was never
won or lost, depending on your point of view.
And the “peculiar institution” of slavery was never overturned.
But
then I saw something that took me completely by surprise – tucked away, down by
the James River, was a small statue of Abraham Lincoln sitting on a bench with
his young son, Thad Lincoln, sitting beside him. Why, in the heart of the Confederacy, would
there be a statue of the great enemy of the Confederacy, Abraham Lincoln?
Here’s
a Civil War story you may have never heard before: after its third try to take Richmond was a
success, the Union Army prepared to take control of the city. Before fleeing, Jefferson Davis and the
Confederate troops set fire to the city so there would be nothing of value for
the Union to recover. The factories and
warehouses and supply houses were all put to the torch. In the high winds of the evening, the fires
spread, consuming nearly one-third of the city.
The very next morning, even as Richmond lay in smoking ruins, President
Abraham Lincoln decided to make the rather short trip from Washington D.C. down
the James River to visit Richmond. All
of his advisors urged him not to. The
people of Richmond would be too angry.
It would be too dangerous. But
Lincoln wouldn’t be deterred.
He
travelled down the river on a military barge filled with soldiers. The barge became stuck on a sand bar in the
river. Lincoln grabbed a rowboat, and,
with his son and a mere handful of soldiers, completed the journey. When he arrived in Richmond, he walked two
miles down Main Street, through the smoke and lingering fires.
You
can imagine the reception he got. From
two thirds of the residents, he was given nothing but abuse and angry
stares. From one third of the residents,
he received adulation and cheers. You
know why – the two-thirds were white, the one-third were former slaves in their
first day of freedom.
His
journey’s end was the Confederate White House which Jefferson Davis had vacated
less than 12 hours before. When Lincoln
walked in, he could probably catch the lingering smells from Jefferson Davis’
dinner the night before. Lincoln sat at
Davis’ desk. Someone handed him a
lemonade. He drank it down. And then he walked back to the boat to return
to Washington.
He
didn’t say a word, but his presence there made the point more clearly than any
words could: I am your President. We are one
nation. I will not let you go.
In
our Gospel Reading this morning, Jesus makes the same point in these words: “I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Jesus will not
let us go. No matter how lost, how
lonely, how lovelorn, how sinful, how rebellious, how bereft, Jesus will not
let us go. In this he is truly the image
of the Invisible God, the One of whom the Psalmist sang: “The
Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still
waters. He restores my soul…”
It’s
not simply coincidence that these words, next to The Lord’s Prayer, are the
most remembered from Scripture. We
treasure them. They are at the loving,
living, beating heart of our faith: The Lord is my shepherd…. I am the Good
Shepherd… you and I are looked after.
We are cared for. We are loved.
The Lord is my
shepherd...
Then
what does that make us?
Well,
sheep. Right? If God is a shepherd, then that makes us
sheep. And how do you feel about
that? Maybe not so good. I mean, everybody loves to think of God as a
shepherd, but nobody wants to think of themselves as a sheep. Don't believe me? How many times have you been offered the
opportunity to participate in a seminar on how to be a good follower? When is the last time you read a book on the
art of followership? The answer, of
course, is almost never. Nobody dreams
big dreams about being a follower.
Nobody wants to grow up to be ... a sheep.
And
yet, there it is, our best loved of all Psalms, the beautiful words of Jesus,
that tell us that if we would follow God, the way of Jesus Christ, then we
would be cared for like a shepherd cares for his or her sheep. That’s pretty good motivation, isn’t it, for
being a sheep?
So
today I’d like us to think about how to be a good follower, a good member of
the flock. I'd like to give you THREE
KEYS TO BEING GOOD SHEEP.
The
first is: LISTEN TO THE SHEPHERD.
The
sheep are the ones who “hear the
shepherd’s voice,” as Jesus puts it.
There are a lot of noises in the world, a lot of voices, some wonderful,
some not so wonderful. It's amazing how
often commercial jingles get stuck in our heads. Not very good voices to be listening to, are
they? And yet there they are, stuck in
our heads.
Research
tells us that the one sound people like to hear most is the sound of their own
name. Has it ever happened to you that
you think you hear someone calling your name?
“Yes, dear?” you say, because
you thought your wife or your mother, or your dad or your father was calling
your name. They say, “What is it?” “Didn’t you just call for me?” “No, no, I didn’t.” “Oh,” you say with disappointment and turn
away.
Well,
according to John’s Gospel, Jesus is calling your name right now. In fact, all the time, trying to get you to
listen, to hear what God has in store for you.
But you have to listen. And in
order to really listen, you have to block out all the competing noises in your
life.
From
the Hindu faith comes a classic conversation between a guru and a pupil that
goes like this:
Guru: Aranda,
do you know the sacred scriptures?
Pupil: Yes, teacher, I have been studying them.
Guru: And, do you know the phrase, 'Thus have I heard?'
Pupil: Oh, yes, that is throughout the scriptures.
Guru: Aranda, what have you heard?
What
have you heard? Have you heard
the voice of Jesus, the Great Shepherd, or have you been distracted by all the
other voices of the world. Stephen
Carter writes, “A religion is, at its
heart, a way of denying the authority of the rest of the world; it's a way of
saying to fellow human beings and to the state those fellow humans have
erected, "No, I will not accede to your will." The voice of Jesus needs to be the
authoritative voice in our lives. Not
the voice of your mother or father, not the voice of your partner or your boss,
not the voice of the President of the United States, not even the voice of your
preacher. The voice of Jesus. Are you listening?
You
need to listen to the voice of the shepherd if you’re going to be a good sheep.
That’s the first key to being a good
sheep: Listen to the Shepherd.
Here's
the second key to being a good sheep: DON’T COUNT SHEEP.
The
words in John’s Gospel about separating the sheep from the goats can provide us
with a dire temptation – to do the separating ourselves, to decide who are the
sheep and who are the goats. But it’s
not up to the sheep to do that work.
It’s up to the shepherd. A good
sheep leaves it up to the shepherd.
Poet
Yevgeny Yevtushenko's autobiography tells how, in Moscow in 1941, the streets
were lined with people, mostly women, waiting for a great parade of German
prisoners of war. On the street, you
could feel the atmosphere of hatred.
Nearly every woman there had lost a husband, father, brother or son who
had been killed by a German soldier, and now was their chance to enact at least
a symbolic revenge on some of those who had killed their loved ones. The Germans came into view, as Yevtushenko
writes, "... thin, unshaven, wearing
dirty bloodstained bandages, hobbling on crutches or leaning on the shoulders
of their comrades ... the streets became dead silent. An old woman pushed through the crowd, past
the police cordon, and, taking something from her coat, pushed it into the
pocket of an exhausted soldier - a crust of black bread. And now suddenly from every side women were
running towards the soldiers, pushing into their hands bread, cigarettes,
whatever they had. The soldiers were no
longer enemies. They were people."
A
good follower of Jesus doesn't try to decide who is worthy and who is unworthy
of our love and caring. Sheep or goats,
they are all just people, all loved by Christ, and should be treated in a
loving manner by us. Don’t count sheep.
Last
of all, the third key to being a good sheep:
LET THE SHEPHERD DEAL WITH THE
WOLF.
Sheep
aren't supposed to fend off wolves.
That's the shepherd’s job. What
does that mean for us?
The
late Dr. Wallace Hamilton, a novelist and playwright, liked to tell about a sheep
farmer in India who had a big problem.
His neighbor's dogs were killing his sheep. It got so bad, he had to do something. So he examined his options:
n
First,
he could have brought a lawsuit and taken his neighbor to court.
n
Second,
he could have built stronger fences so the dogs couldn't get in.
But
Dr. Wallace Hamilton had a better idea.
He decided to give some lambs to his neighbor's children. When these lambs began to multiply and their
little flocks began to develop, the neighbor tied up his dogs and that’s how
the problem was finally solved.
Followers
of Jesus will have difficulties. They
will have enemies. Our temptation is to
try to dispatch these enemies in our own way and using our own power. But the wolf is not turned away by our
strength, by the use of our weapons.
Didn't Jesus say, "Those who
live by the sword will die by the sword"?
No, the wolf, the enemy, can only be turned away by the Shepherd,
and the Shepherd only fights evil with love, a love that was most fully
expressed on the cross. So if you face a
wolf, don't try to send it away by yourself.
Let the Shepherd do it. Let the
ways of the Shepherd be your ways. For
Jesus also said: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons
and daughters of God."
So,
fellow sheep, fellow followers, fellow disciples of Jesus, here is a last reminder
on how to be a good sheep:
The
first key: LISTEN TO THE SHEPHERD.
The
second key: DON’T COUNT SHEEP.
And
the third key: LET THE SHEPHERD DEAL WITH THE WOLF.
If
we practice these lessons often enough, then the prayer of our hearts will
truly be, “The Lord is my shepherd, I
shall not want…” Amen.
Sermon
preached by Reverend Steve Savides at First Congregational United Church of
Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on April 13, 2008.