Sermon
April 12 and 13, 2008
Good Shepherd
This is Good Shepherd weekend/Sunday.
Each year,
on the 4th weekend/Sunday of the Easter season,
we
hear the Bible readings about the Good Shepherd—
--especially
the 23rd Psalm
--and
John 10.
Those
are the two places in the Bible
where
the image of the Good Shepherd
are
developed.
This week is also a tough week
for us at
Good Shepherd.
On Wednesday,
we had the
funeral for Alvera Heck.
Today/yesterday
was the funeral for Katie Noble.
We
have received word of Ernie Whorton’s death.
It’s a lot
of grief in a short time.
It makes me think about
my own
mortality.
Makes me realize
that I won’t live forever.
Makes me
wonder about what I’m doing with my life.
Makes
me think about what’s really important.
A pastor, Ben Patterson,
wrote about
his wife’s grandmother,
and
how you could see what was really important to her.
When she
died in her mid-eighties,
she
had lost most of her memory,
and
didn’t know the people around her.
But when
she was asked to pray before dinner,
she
would reach out
and
hold the hands of those sitting beside her,
a
broad smile would spread across her face,
her
dim eyes would fill with tears
as
she looked up to heaven,
and
her chin would quaver
as
she poured out her love to Jesus.
That was
Edna in a nutshell.
She
loved Jesus
and
she loved people.
She
couldn’t remember our names,
but
she couldn’t keep her hands
from
patting us lovingly
whenever
we got near her.”
When life
whittled her down to her essence,
all
that was left was love:
love
for God and love for people.
If I’m whittled down to my essence,
what is it?
If you get down to
your basic essence,
what
is it?
And how do
you feel about that?
Jesus is the Good Shepherd.
He goes
ahead of us, his sheep,
and
we follow him
because
we know his voice.
And as I
listen to that voice,
the
voice of Jesus,
one
of the things I hear again and again is this:
Love one
another,
as
I have loved you.
Love one
another,
as
I have loved you.
That gives me great joy to hear that.
And it also
makes me nervous.
Because
I know I can’t do it.
I do not
love the way God wants me to love.
I
don’t follow the shepherd.
I
sin and fall short,
as I seek to follow Christ.
I can’t do
it.
And that can make the good news
sound
like bad news.
If Jesus is
telling us to do something we can’t do,
then
it’s hard to hear.
And you know what,
if it’s up
to us and our power,
it
is bad news.
Because
again and again,
we
sin and fall short of the glory of God.
But it’s not up to us.
Our love
grows—
--not
because we try so hard.
But because
of our relationship with Jesus.
We
love because we follow the Good Shepherd.
When we lived in Kansas,
we had a
milo field right out our back door.
We
saw cattle out our front window
and
milo out the back door.
And when I
think about following Jesus,
I
get a picture of a farmer
standing
next to the field
yelling
at his crops:
“Grow,
milo grow.
Come
on—grow.”
And
thinking that will make it grow.
Well,
the farmers
in Kansas
didn’t do that real often,
because
they knew it wouldn’t work.
And
everyone would laugh at them, too.
Without sun and water and soil,
and tilling
and planting
it
just won’t work.
It takes
more than just hopes and wishes.
You
need to be connected to the source of power.
And that source of power for us
is Jesus.
Our love grows,
not
because we yell at ourselves:
“Grow,
love, grow.”
Our love grows
because we are connected to Jesus,
the
Good Shepherd.
Because
we are in a relationship with him.
That’s why I brought out this shepherd’s staff.
This is a
reminder that the Good Shepherd
continues
to shape us and guide us
throughout
out lives.
And more
than anything else,
God
shows us God’s love.
When you are close to the Good Shepherd,
you love
because
you are loved.
Someone wrote:
“The
greatest happiness in the world
is
the conviction that we are loved,
loved
for ourselves,
or
rather loved in spite of ourselves.”
Have you felt that?
It’s a
wonderful feeling.
And that’s the kind
of love God has for you and for me.
God
loves you
in
spite of all you do
and
all you are.
And being loved,
we love in
return.
We reflect the love
that God
first gives us.
I read a story.
It was May 21, 1946.
The place—Los Alamos.
A young and daring
scientist
was
carrying out a necessary experiment
in
preparation for an upcoming atomic test.
He had successfully performed the experiment
many
times before.
In his
effort to determine the amount of U-235
necessary
for a chain reaction—
--critical
mass—
--he
would push 2 hemispheres of uranium together.
Then,
just
as the mass became critical,
he
would push them apart with his screwdriver,
thus
instantly stopping the chain reaction.
But that day,
just as the
material became critical,
the
screwdriver slipped.
The hemispheres of
uranium came too close together.
Instantly
the room was filled
with
a dazzling bluish haze.
The young
scientist,
instead
of ducking
and
possibly saving himself,
reached
out with his hands
and
tore the two hemispheres apart.
The
chain reaction was stopped.
By this instant,
self-giving
act,
he
saved the lives of the 7 others in the room—
--and
perhaps many more.
As he
waited for the car
that
was to take them to the hospital,
he
said quietly:
“You’ll
come through all right,
but
I haven’t the faintest chance myself.”
And we was right.
He died in
great pain 9 days later.
Jesus says: “I am the
Good Shepherd.
The
Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
Greater love has no one than this,
to lay down
their life for a friend.
Jesus loves us enough
to give up
his own life
for
you and for me.
He broke
through the power of sin
and
showed us instead his love—
--the
love we have the chance to share
--the
love we reflect to others.
Where do you find the strength
to give so
completely?
Not by our own
power.
We can’t do
it.
But
because you are in relationship with God,
because you have been loved so much,
you
can love in return—
--reflecting
that love to those around you.
A few of us may be called to great sacrifices.
But for
most of us,
it
will be perhaps even tougher.
It will be
living and loving
in
the midst of the ambiguity of each day.
It will be
living out the little sacrifices:
--learning
to love in the little ways
--balancing
out what appears to be the more loving path,
and
then doing it
--loving
as God created us to love
--following
the Good Shepherd
into
lives of love.
Fred Craddock paints a picture,
and I’ve
used it before.
He says when Jesus calls us to follow,
we tend to
think in terms of a big sacrifice.
And
we’re ready to take all we have a plunk it down on the table—
--giving
ourselves completely.
Like
plunking down $1000.
But what
happens for most of us,
is
that we get the $1000 back—
--in
quarters and nickels and dimes
--and
a few dollar bills
and we are
called to give ourselves
a
little at a time,
in
all those little things we do each day.
For most of us,
following
Jesus
isn’t
one, big, dramatic act.
Instead,
it’s
harder than that.
It’s
following Jesus right in the midst
of
the little things we do each day—
--with
our family
--and
friends
--at
school
--and
work
--and
church.
And where do we get the strength
to keep on
following,
even
when we’re tired,
even
when we’re grumpy,
even
when we’d rather do it our way
and
focus on ourselves?
Our
strength comes from following the Good Shepherd,
who
laid down his life for us—the sheep.
And
connected to that Good Shepherd,
we
love
as
we have first been loved.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
