Entrenched Sheep

Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Introduction

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. You may not know this but it is the half-way point in the Easter Season. There are 50 days and 7 Sundays in the Easter Season every year. Good Shepherd Sunday is ALWAYS the 4thSunday of Easter, every year. And, it’s not unusual, that on Good Shepherd Sunday we talk about sheep… and we talk about how very not smart sheep can be sometimes.

There’s a video going around Facebook that highlights just that very point of just how NOT smart a sheep can be!

Sheep Scene (Spoken or Video)

[The scene opens up with a sheep that has managed to get itself very firmly wedged in this long tight trench in the ground. A young farmer has a belt around the sheep’s back leg as he works to pull it up and out to safety. With a tug on the belt as well as a firm grip with the hand, the sheep is slowly dragged out of the dirt-lined trench.

Immediately, the sheep bounds off into the grass nearby with a joy of being free. It hops up and down, as it moves down the roadside… until it takes a particularly large leap and lands right back in the trench just a little farther down the way.

And the clip closes with the farmer who just spent all of this effort just staring on in disbelief at what he has just seen.]

Relating to the Sheep being in a Rut

I don’t know about you, but there are times in my life that I can probably relate more to that sheep than I would want to admit. As we imagine the Good Shepherd pulling us up and out of safety, we bound around in joy for a few brief seconds before dropping ourselves right back in almost the exact place we started out in.

Now there’s all kinds of directions we could go with this as we think about the ruts that we get stuck in. Maybe we get stuck in a rut of depression because of health issues. Just as we seem to have some good news and things are moving along in a direction that we are hopeful about, there’s a shift in the winds and we feel like we get blown right into the same rut of fear and concern for the future.

Maybe we get stuck in the rut of selfishness. Here we are in life, moving along and feeling entitled to the things that belong to us. And then, for a brief moment, we make a donation through a facebook charity or some mailed-in request for assistance. And we feel good about our contribution… and then we go back to our ways of keeping what is ours as ours alone.

Gospel Connection

If there were ever a question as to whether or not scripture proclaims an important word to our world today that speaks in a way that challenges our preconceptions of the world around us while also making us free in the name of Christ from that which binds us… it is this text.

What is it that Jesus proclaims in this moment as he speaks to the people around him? As he speaks to fellow Jews or, as I have recently come to call them, fellow bringers of food to the potluck?

Jesus tells them that HE is the Good Shepherd.

He tells them that he will lay down his life for the sheep.

He warns them of the hired hand that will abandon them… but promises he will never do so.

He says that he has -other- sheep that do not belong to this fold… and that they will all come and that he will unite them all as one flock.

And again, he tells the Jews or, the fellow potluck goers, that he will lay down his life for the flock and that he trusts that he has been commanded by the Father to do so.

And what is their response? Verses 19 and 20. “Again, the Jews were divided over these words. Many of them saying, “He has a demon and is out of his mind! Why listen to him?”

When faced with one who is willing to lay his life down for the sake of others, the people called him possessed. They called him demonic. They said that he was CRAZY! And so why should we listen to him?

Still others pointed back to when Jesus healed the man who was blind and said… could a demon do that? No! There’s gotta be something to this guy.

What is it about Jesus’ words that is causing such a stir here? Why are some of these people so quick to condemn him?

Is it because he said he was willing to lay his life down for the sake of others? No… No I don’t think so. I can’t imagine many people believing someone is possessed by a demon because they are willing to sacrifice themselves for others.

Is it because Jesus claimed that he was from Father and that the Father had commanded him to do this? Maybe. But I still don’t think that’s it. Jesus certainly wasn’t the first person in Jewish history to claim that he was, to quote the Blues Brothers, “On a mission from God.” Generally when one said that they were doing God’s work… people offered some respect… especially when this person is going around HEALING people.

So if its not that… what is it?

Here’s what I think is eating at them, listen closely:

(picking up in verse 15) And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I have othersheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

I think the big challenge for that group of listeners to hear was that Jesus was not there just for them. Jesus was there for other people as well. Jesus was there for the groups that were being left out, intentionally or not. Jesus was there for those who were outside of the normal circles. That meant the Moabites, the Samaritans, the Assyrians, the Turks, the Greeks, the Romans… all of those folks that were supposed to be outside of God’s purview of interest were suddenly in the scope of Christ’s love.

And beyond Christ’s declaration that he came for others beyond just Israel… he makes the astounding claim that there will be -one- flock and -one- shepherd. And the people resist that idea.

How true that is. As we think about the state of our union today, we like the flocks that we are accustom to being in. And, more to the point, we tend to like people who are in other flocks to stay over on their side of the fence so we don’t have to deal with them.

We will cast labels on those sheep that are outside the flocks that we are comfortable with when we start hearing things that we disagree with. We’ll cast labels so that we can disregard what they are saying… perhaps so we can even disregard the person all together.

“Oh, they’re just a liberal.” Or… “They must be a Trump follower” or “That’s one of those Black Lives Matter folks” or… I’m sure if we worked together we could name a few more.

I suspect that if we were called to be one flock with people in those other camps, there would be many who would resist that idea as well unless the other group converted to our own understanding.

Going back to that sheep that was stuck in the trench only to jump right back in… as Christ pulls us up and out of the divisive trenches that we find ourselves in there is a significant temptation to jump back in. The world is simpler when we only have to see one point of view… the one we want to view. We don’t have to see sheep from the other flocks… we don’t have to hear their incessant baaing. We can just hide out in our own little trench where things are safe and secure and relatively comfortable.

And, honestly, as we look at our world today it can be a challenge to imagine us ever being ‘one flock.’ Perhaps the Jews of Jesus’ day were not resisting it because they were against it… but because they simply didn’t believe it was possible. You’d be surprised how many conversations I’ve had lately where someone has voiced that very thing to me… that finding unity… not uniformity… but finding unity in such a time as this seems impossible.

And yet, that is the radical message of Good Shepherd Sunday. A shepherd that somehow, someway brings people together despite their differences… and helps them see each other as sheep of the same flock… sheep of God’s flock.

How radically different might this world be if when we looked out at the bouquet of humanity in the variety of understandings we have of the world that we saw each other first and foremost as fellow sheep belonging to God… fellow sheep in need of God’s grace just as much as the next person… fellow sheep who all continually make the leap back into the trench even as the good shepherd comes to pull us out again. And that though we are diving into different trenches… we are -all- doing it in some form or fashion. Because we -all- need the Shepherd. How different would the world look if we began to think of the world as such? How might we bridge gaps of understanding? How might we hear one another? How might we love one another?

To bring about a change like that would take extraordinary and persistent work from the shepherd that we might get the wool out of our eyes and begin to see. Thank God that the shepherd on the job to bridge the gaps of the world to pull the scattered flocks together to make that which is fractured one… Thank God that the shepherd on the job is Christ.

The Good Shepherd, willing to lay down his life for the sake of the flock no matter which trench we try to jump into. We rely on Christ to see us through, to gather us up, and to unite us with him.

May we be reminded going into this week what kind of work the Good Shepherd takes on. And may we be just a little more hesitant about jumping back into our trenches as we listen to the guiding voice of our shepherd.

Peace be with you. Amen.