Sermon Tone Analysis

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.