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April 29, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Acts 9:36-43, Psalm 23, John 10:22-30
“Sheepishly Looking: Laying Down Lordly Liberation
and Life””
Greetings from many of the congregation on retreat this weekend at Zephyr Point
Presbyterian Camp! Former associate pastor here and longtime colleague at
South Reno United Methodist Church, Rev. John Ruby, led the working part of the
retreat. The theme? “The Gospel According to ‘The Simpsons’!”
Others may know this better than I did (Devoted watchers?), but “The Simpsons”--
longest running prime time animated TV show ever! -- touch on religious themes in
70 percent of their shows! 10 percent are entire shows about religion.
John introduced the Simpsons as a family that puts the “fun” into “dysfunctional!”
We began with excerpt where daughter Lisa imagines the Exodus story, with
a much stronger part for Moses’ sister Miriam. Then we watched “Homer vs.
Lisa and the 8th Commandment” -- Which is? Do not steal!
This time meaning, do not steal cable TV! -- and “Like Father Like Clown” -- meaning
Crusty the Clown whose rabbi father wanted his son to follow in his tradition.
We moved on to “Homer the Heretic” and reflected on varying approaches to
spiritual life – head, heart, mystic, and kingdom. We ended with “In Marge
We Trust.” Marge takes over some counseling for Pastor Lovejoy. Here’s
my appropriate nametag with Pastor Lovejoy on it! By her example, he learns
once again “There is more to life than not caring about people!” Spoken like
a true shepherd of a real flock!
Last night retreaters reprised the “Lack of Talent Show” and prepared for worship
this morning. Meantime we returned to be with “the flock” at home this morning
-- called “Good Shepherd Sunday” because the 23rd Psalm anchors the readings
every Fourth Sunday of Easter. I remembered our first retreat with this congregation
– around the theme “It Is Well with My Soul” -- which we sang throughout.
And when I came back to preach that weekend, I invited us after each phrase of the
psalm to repeat those words, “It is well with my soul” --
The LORD is my shepherd, / I shall not want. / He makes me lie down in green
pastures; / he leads me beside still waters; / he restores my soul. / He leads me
in right paths for his name’s sake. / Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
/ I fear no evil; / for you are with me; / your rod and your staff comfort me. /
You prepare a table before me / in the presence of my enemies; / you anoint my head
with oil; / my cup overflows. / Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me / all
the days of my life, / and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD / my whole life
long. How abundant and deep lie the “wells of our souls” – even
as we in Nevada agonize over how to share justly and wise the “wells of our state.”
Matthew Fox cites Meister Eckhart: “Divinity is an Underground river that no one
can stop and no one can dam up.” “There is one underground river,” Fox says
of the one we call “God” and many names, “ but there are many wells into that river:
an African well, a Taoist well, a Buddhist well, a Jewish well, a Muslim well, a
goddess well, a Christian well, and aboriginal wells. Many wells but one river.”
Fox continues, “To go down a well is to practice a tradition, but we would make
a grave mistake (an idolatrous one) if we confused the well itself with the flowing
waters of an underground river. Many wells, one river. . . . It is necessary
to travel deeper, to let the superficial go, to go to the center, the cave,
if we are to connect to the underground river. This is what the mystics mean
when they instruct us to seek out our inner person [as well as] our outer
selves.” Surely, a good shepherd knows the sheep by their inner, their
deeper selves and calls to us there. How deep lie the wells, and well-beings,
of our souls.
“All shall be well,” adds Julia of Norwich, “and all manner of things shall be well.”
“We drink from our own wells,” writes Gustavo Gutierrez of the spiritual journey
of a people: “Spirituality is a community enterprise. It is the passage
of a people through the solitude and dangers of the desert, as it carves out its
own way in the following of Jesus Christ. The spiritual experience is the
well from which we must drink. From it we draw the promise of resurrection.”
We drink from our own wells. We drink at our own risk. How deep lie
the wells of our souls. In Resurrection Jesus absorbs our own private deaths into
one death for all. Jesus is raised that we might be freed from powers
and fears of death over us.
So it is with seeing our souls as part of one soul, salvation as a promise to all!
Tom Joad, coming off retreat, so to speak, speaking with his mother at the
end of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, resurrects preacher Jim Casy,
even as the disciples do Jesus: “’Lookie, Ma. I been all day an’ all
night hidin’ alone. Guess who I been thinkin’ about? Casy! He
talked a lot. Used ta bother me. But now I been thinkin’ what he said,
an’ I can remember – all of it. Says one time he went out in the wilderness
to find his own soul, an’ he foun’ he didn’ have no soul that was his’n. Says
he foun’ he jus’ got a little piece of a great big soul. Says a wilderness
ain’t no good, ‘cause his little piece of a soul wasn’t no good ‘less it was with
the rest, an’ was whole. Funny how I remember. Didn’ think I was even
listenin’. But I know now a fella ain’t no good alone . . . . Well, maybe
like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a big one.
. .”
Congregational retreats are about are about the well of our soul together.
So are capital campaigns such as the one we are sharing now! We are like a
living tree planted by the Truckee: deep roots in the past, strong trunk in the
present, outreaching branches into the future -- bursting with buds into blooms
of new life! Good shepherds, good stewards -- sharers and givers --are about
the well, the well-being, of our soul together – now and beyond. Remember
the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine to find the one lost sheep wherever it is.
The witness whose name is Peace Pilgrim writes, “Remember this: ‘Be still and know
that I am God.’ Don’t ever forget who you are! You cannot be where God is
not.”
Most of the time the good shepherd’s challenge is to keep the whole hundred together.
A good shepherd knows the territory, the setting, the context in which the texts
of our lives are played out. A good shepherd knows where dangers to collective
well-being lie -- as well as where to find sources to nurture wholeness and hope.
It seems we read this psalm most in times of death and dying. But it is a
psalm about life and living! The life that comes not after death but before
it!
Hear how alert, how attuned, how attentive, how active this shepherd is – Looking
to our every want! Making us to lie down! Leading us by still waters!
Restoring our souls! Leading us in right paths! Walking us through darkest
valleys! Comforting us with rod and with staff! Preparing a table before
us, in the very presence of our enemies! Anointing our heads! Overflowing
our cups! Following us with goodness and mercy! Dwelling with us in
the household of God. Good shepherds are so well-known to the sheep.
They are steeped in sheep life and the language to name it. When sheep of
several flocks mingle at water holes, each flock leaves separately, hearing the
voice of its own shepherd.
Sounds like a shepherd who’s “been there” where the sheep are – who knows what it
means to be so lost and alone. We said during Lent, with our theme “lost and
found,” it sounded like Jesus knew something of the “prodigal son” story for himself!
We learn in our time to move from “orthodoxy” to “paradoxy.” The paradox we
live today is not as either shepherd or sheep but as both! We need leaders
who have “been there” in our lives – who know about mental health, crime, addiction,
war for themselves – through real identification, compassion and solidarity with
those who have experienced them and endured. Maybe no one should declare a
war who has not had to fight one? The voice of God in our lives must be heard
from both above -- and below.
Thinking of “shepherd’s voices” I have known in my life – perhaps thinking of “The
Simpsons” as well! -- I remember my father’s loud piercing whistle! He didn’t
have to use his fingers or any means of amplification. He just whistled, and
we could heat him at least a block, maybe more, away. So each of us three
children had our own whistle. We called it the “Bob White” whistle.
Mine was the plain one. My first sister’s had one repetition, my second sister’s
had two. Our whistles always seemed to interrupt us at times we were least
ready to go home. What really horrified and humiliated me were the times I
would be hanging out so suavely at the “all ages” club across from the high school,
grooving on Buddy Holly with all my cool friends, and through the blanket of smoke,
above the din of voices, would come that piercing whistle! Yet what I would
give to hear it again.
It takes one to know one, we say. Let nothing human be alien to us.
Let us refuse to cut ourselves off from any lost sheep of our flock. And let
us stop scape-goating, or scape-sheeping, as it may be. Let us resist the
sacrifice of many, even of any, to satisfy needs and greeds of the few to lord over
others. The kind of life Jesus lived was so in tension with the world as we
know it that either the world had to die -- or Jesus did! There are powerful
connections between the “pastoral” and the “prophetic” – between pain and conditions
that cause it. Someone observed, “Had Jesus been a meek and mild babysitter,
he would not have been executed.” Good pastors are also good prophets.
In Jesus God is willing to be as sin-bearer, scapegoat, lamb of the world.
Are we? Clarence Jordan calls the world is “neurotic” today because “the Church
doesn’t want to bear the sins of the world! We don’t want to be anybody’s
dumping ground. We don’t want to have them throwing their dirty dishwater
on us . . . . God needs in this world available people who will bear the sins
of the world.” We still like to get resurrection without crucifixion – salvation
without sin. Jesus is a “sheepish looking” kind of a savior! A shepherd
who lays down lordly liberation and life for the sheep. A messiah who combines
divine dominion with suffering servanthood. For a people willing to follow
no matter how it may cost us. A people, like Jesus with compassion for all
the lost, and losing, sheep.
Another preacher has said, good shepherds lead from behind. They do not need
the glory and recognition of charging out front in obvious visible leadership.
Rather, they lead from behind – “encouraging those who are straggling, assisting
those who are injured or sick, directing those who cannot find food, helping the
unfortunate, the halt, the lame.” Like a shepherd, “Jesus picks us up when
we fall down, mends our broken spirits, feeds our famished lives, supports us when
we are limping along, sings to comfort our spirits.”
Good sheep make good shepherds, shepherds who do not forget where they come from
and whose they are. Good shepherds live out the motto of John 10 -- “That
they may have life – and have it abundantly!” Good shepherds find us in the
sheepfold (even hiding, or sleeping, in church!) and lead us out! Good shepherd
brings us to more open spaces, greener pastures, stiller waters, wider horizons,
deeper freedom than we ever have known before. One day, we will hunger no
more. W\One day, we will thirst no more. We will not be struck or scorched
any more. The Lamb at the center of life, of creation itself, will be our
Shepherd. We will be guided to springs of the water of life, and God, our
shepherd, our sheep, will wipe away every last tear. Every last tear!
Amen.
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