Why Sheep?
Call to worship In the name of the Good Shepherd. I remind us that worship is a celebration, not a spectator sport. As celebration, it involves the whole person -- arms, legs, body, mind, voice, heart, will. Which parts of you have you brought, in order to celebrate the Good News of the Good Shepherd? Which parts of you do you hope that God will choose not to touch? (Thirty seconds of silence.)
Praise Songs # 788 There’s a Quiet Understanding
# 796 The Lord is In His Holy Temple
# 87 His Name is Wonderful
Greetings
Prayer The act of confession is to allow God's Spirit into our being for the purpose of cleansing us. This means that we bring our whole self, not only selected portions of our I-centeredness, brokenness, rebellion."... we have erred and strayed from God's ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts ..." No longer, O Lord, can we live this lonely life of spiritual retreat. Help us, we pray, to open ourselves to a newer, deeper experience of your life-giving presence. Fill us with new life and grant us the energy to serve you in the many ways for which we were created. // Help us to understand, how we follow and where we wander from Jesus our shepherd. Also, what does Jesus mean by sheep not of this sheep pen? We praise you that Jesus chooses to lay down his life for us! Amen.
Hymn I Sing the Mighty Power of God # 52
Revelation 7:9-17
Stewardship Challenge What does our faith in Christ cost us, in time, money, energy; or is it basically a leisure-time activity? (One minute of silence before receiving the offering.)
Hymn Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us # 522
Baptist Heritage Sunday
John 10:22-30
10:22 At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter,
10:23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon.
10:24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly."
10:25 Jesus answered, "I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me;
10:26 but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.
10:27 My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.
10:28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.
10:29 What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand.
10:30 The Father and I are one."
Sermon: Why Sheep?
Why sheep? I wondered as I read these words, why sheep? Why not eagles? Why not think of you and me as eagles in a gorgeous blue sky, instead of sheep in some muddy pasture. Isaiah writes "They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31). That sounds good - that's the verse that goes with the meaning of my name. Why not call you and me eagles? Why sheep!?
Maybe it's because the prayer of confession got it right: "... we have erred and strayed from God's ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts". We seldom soar, like eagles; we often act like sheep.As the song puts it:
We are poor little lambs who have lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa! We're little black sheep who've gone astray, Baa! Baa! Baa! Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, damned from here to eternity, God ha' mercy on such as we, Baa! Baa! Baa! Some of you are old enough to remember that as the "Whiffenpoof Song," popularized in the '30s and '40s by the singer Rudy Vallee. It was originally part of a poem by Rudyard Kipling. And I thought it would make a great prayer of confession, if we could sing it or say it with a straight face. //Let's try it. Repeat after me: We're poor little lambs//who've lost our way// We're little black sheep//who've gone astray//God have mercy on such as we!// Baaa! Baaaa! Baaaaa!
But whatever our words, our confession is still only a refrain to our lives, as Kipling's words are only the refrain to his poem. Kipling's poem reads, in part, like too many lives:
We have done with Hope and Honor, we are lost to Love and Truth, We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,And the measure of our torment is the measure of our
youth. God help us, for we knew the worst too young! Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence, Our pride it is to know no spur of pride, And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us And we die, and none can tell Them where we died. We're poor little lambs who've lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa!1
We have erred and strayed - like lost sheep. I know that. You know that. The Bible knows that, and uses that as a metaphor for the reality of our lives. Lives we live together in our families, at our work, in our community, in this church every day.
And it's our life lived together that the Frugal Gourmet, Jeff Smith, sees explaining why the biblical metaphor for you and me is "sheep." He says the sheep metaphor finds its meaning in the fact that "sheep are communal by their very nature. As a matter of fact we do not even have a word for one sheep. The term is always understood to be plural."2
Maybe the Frugal Gourmet, who happens to be a Methodist minister, as well as a good cook, is right. The meaning of the metaphor is simply that you and I together, like sheep - plural - are a community, a flock of faith in which we are cared for by God as a shepherd cares for sheep, and that's what God intends. We're in it together, and together we are shepherded by Jesus Christ. // That's a good corrective to the excessive individualism of our day that leaves so many of us feeling very much alone in the presence of almighty God. More like a sheep at the mercy of a predator, than a lamb in God's arms of protection. Protection provided in Jesus' story by the sheep being together in the sheepfold - not just in his willingness to run around willy- nilly to find them.
The nineteenth century Princeton theologian, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, considered this to be fundamental: "That in Jesus Christ, God was 'saving the world and not merely one individual here and there out of the world.' "3 That in Jesus Christ God came as a shepherd, to his sheep.
The children's poem says, Mary had a "little lamb." And the classic picture of Jesus, the good shepherd, has him carrying a single lamb on his shoulders. But the biblical picture has him surrounded by an uncountable herd of sheep. To paraphrase the children's book by Wanda Gag, there are sheep here, sheep there, sheep and little lambs everywhere; hundreds of sheep, thousands of sheep, millions and billions and trillions of sheep. All being sheep and all in need of a shepherd.
Charles Cousar wrote, "The language in John's gospel is reminiscent of the Twenty-third Psalm. What is eloquently sung there about the Lord's care, guidance, and protection of the flock is in John reaffirmed in terms of Jesus."4 // "it's possible to encounter Christ anywhere, but the biblical witness is that that encounter is most likely to happen in a place where people are gathered ..." People gathered, like sheep in a sheepfold, are those most likely to encounter the shepherd. People gathered like sheep in a sheepfold can be shepherded - brought together in warmth, and the safety of life together. Yes, the Good Shepherd goes after one lost sheep - but why? - to return him to the fold, to the flock.
The book called Approved Practices in Sheep Production says that in caring for sheep, "Most important is that continuous attention is required. Sheep are often quite helpless and fall easy prey to predators, especially dogs, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and eagles. They might even fall prey to such hazards as picket or woven wire fences, or to ditches and gullies in which they might lie and suffocate unless aid came quickly. Parasites and disease are also ever present problems to guard against." 5
Approved Practices in Sheep Production says sheep have a lot of problems. So do we. The book says sheep face a lot of dangers. So do we. The book says sheep are best tended together. So are we, the book we call the Bible says with its image of God as our shepherd. But what about us? Well, what about us? The image of the sheepfold and you and me as the sheep is not intended to make us feel sheepish, or to make us feel individually unimportant; rather it is intended to reinforce the importance of all of us to the shepherd who is God in Jesus Christ. The sheepfold, then, while constraining and confining and sometimes crowded is not claustrophobic. Rather, by setting limits on how far we can stray, and what can get at us, it frees us to live life as God intends: to live each day to the fullest - what Jesus meant when he said, "I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10 NRSV). "I came so that everyone would have life, and have it in its fullest" (John 10:10 CEV). "Live Each Day to the Fullest," describes what life lived that way - what Jesus called abundant life - might look like.
LIVE each day to the fullest GET the most from each hour, each day, and each age of your life. Then you can look forward with confidence and back without regrets.
BE yourself - but be your best self. DARE to be different and to follow your own star. And don't be afraid to be happy. ENJOY what is beautiful. LOVE with all your heart and soul. BELIEVE that those you love, love you. LEARN to forgive yourself for your faults, for this is the first step in learning to forgive others. LISTEN to those whom the world may consider uninteresting, for each person has, in himself, something of worth. DISREGARD what the world owes you, and concentrate on what you owe the world.
FORGET what you have done for your friends, and remember what they have done for you. No matter how troublesome the cares of life may seem to you at times, this is still a beautiful world - And you are at home in it, as a child is at home in his parents' house.
When you are faced with a decision, MAKE that decision as wisely as possible - then forget it. The moment of absolute certainty never arrives; ACT as if everything depended upon you, and PRAY as if everything depended upon God. -- S. H. Payer
If you live like that, if I live like that, if we live like that together, and even when we don't live like that, or think we can't live like that, we can depend upon God, the good shepherd, whom we know in Jesus Christ, our shepherd, who is well described in the shepherd David's most famous Psalm.
Twenty-third Psalm from Contemporary English Version Listen:
You, LORD, are my shepherd. I will never be in need. You let me rest in fields of green grass. You lead me to streams of peaceful water, and you refresh my life.
You are true to your name, and you lead me along the right paths. I may walk through valleys as dark as death, but I won't be afraid. You are with me, and your shepherd's rod makes me feel safe. You treat me to a feast, while my enemies watch. You honor me as your guest, and you fill my cup until it overflows. Your kindness and love will always be with me each day of my life, and I will live forever in your house, LORD. -- Psalm 23 (CEV)
Without fail, when someone has died someone will say, "Please read that." What the Bible says is live that - every day! In this world where the closest most of us ever get to a sheep is a book or the wool in our suit, our skirt, our slacks, or our socks, we still need a shepherd - to lead us and guide us and occasionally prod us in the way we should go. And the good shepherd, who gives his life for the life of the sheep, for your life and mine, that we might live and have life abundantly, is Jesus Christ.
1. "Gentlemen Rankers" by Rudyard Kipling.
2. Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet Keeps the Feast: Past, Present, and Future (William Morrow & Company, November 1, 1995), p. 20.
3. Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists and Moderates (Religion in America) (Oxford University Press, November 1, 1993), p. 45.
4. W. Brueggemann, et al., Texts for Preaching, A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV -- Year A (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995), p. 290.
5. Elwood M. Juergenson, Approved Practices in Sheep Production (Danville, Illinois: Interstate Printers & Publishers, 1981), p. 6.
I will sing the wondrous Love of Jesus # 500
faith is my response to God's ability.