Here is today’s sermon based on John 10:1-10:
There are significant days in our lives and sometimes we realize them and sometimes we don’t. Yesterday was a significant day in my life. Lisa and I talked on the way home and I had a chance to do some reflection and I realized something – the faculty and staff of MTS are in many ways shepherds. I think back that I arrived at seminary green and naïve. The faculty took my by the hands and lead me down new paths and opened my eyes. Then there were days when they kicked me in the ahhhh well pants. They gave me that prodding that I so needed to keep going on this journey.
In a similar way, there is not-so-gentle kick out of the sheepfold in today’s Gospel reading, although I doubt you noticed any mention of being kicked through the gate in Jesus’ words. We’ll get back to this shove in a moment. First, notice that in John chapter 10, Jesus employs the imagery of first-century shepherding practice in an attempt to reveal his own identity and his relationship to us. Now, the most experience I’ve ever had with sheep was the kid’s summer program I worked at during college. We would take the children on field trips during the summer and one day we went to a farm. I learned you have to dodge sheep poo. If you’re anything like me, you have no clue about shepherding practice of any sort, ancient or modern. Therefore, in order to access what John calls a “figure of speech,” we first acknowledge our lack of personal contact with Jesus’ choice of image, and second we embrace the opportunity to use our imaginations.
So imagine with me a rolling plain, dotted with humps and hills. Dusk descends, and the shepherd leads his flock into the sheepfold. One of the hills has been hollowed out, and the sheep huddle inside next to the sheep of several other shepherds who share this particular fold. A pair of piled rock walls extends out a few feet from the sides of the hill. The shepherd lies down in the space between the low walls, effectively sealing the enclosure. Thieves and bandits and wolves will have a difficult time getting in with the shepherds on guard. The sheep are safe in the sheepfold.
When the shepherd arises the next morning, Jesus explains, “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” The sheep can’t spend their whole lives in the sheepfold, no matter how safe the enclosure may be. There’s no food in the fold, after all. The sheep may be comfortable and safe, but the sheep must follow the shepherd out of the fold in order to find sustenance, in order to live.
Jesus’ choice of words here is telling, but our translation into English hides the special word that Jesus uses. “When he has brought out all of his own, he goes ahead of them,” says Jesus in the version we use in church. In this verse, there’s a fairly weak rendering of a Greek word that appears over and over again in the Gospel. We hear this word every time Jesus casts out a demon. We hear this word when Jesus makes a whip and throws the moneychangers out of the temple. We hear this word when Jesus speaks of driving out the “ruler of this world.” In every instance of this word in the Gospel, Jesus is doing some sort of battle: he is pushing, pulling, throwing, yanking, driving, exorcising, casting out. But in this instance about the shepherd and the sheep, the translators decided a nice, safe, neutral translation was better. The shepherd simply “brings” his sheep out of the fold.
Now, perhaps those dimwitted, wooly animals trod placidly from the fold every morning at the beckoning of the shepherd. But Jesus is, of course, not talking about real sheep. He’s talking about us, about you and me. He’s talking about calling out to us, about speaking the word that will bring us forth from our own sheepfolds, from those places of comfort and safety that we have built up around us. The seductive force that pulls us into these personal sheepfolds tells us that everything will be okay as long as we keep quiet and stay put. Play another hour. Have another drink. Watch another show. I don’t know about you, but I need to be pushed, pulled, thrown, yanked, kicked, and driven out of that place of stagnation and dormancy every time I start settling into my comfortable enclosure.
Too often, we simply exist or breathe. We do not live. We exist. We have simply settled ourselves in our sheepfold. The sheepfold is the comfortable “life” that we exist in. The sheepfold is our unchallenged beliefs and assumptions. Our minds have numbed. Our hearts have hibernated. Our spirits have deflated. But we don’t notice because we are safe and we are comfortable
This existing is the complete opposite of the message of the Resurrection and of Easter: life cannot be conquered– not by death, not by sin, not by the powers of darkness. Life happens–fully, intensely, and eternally. Indeed, Jesus tells us this morning: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” The Resurrection of Jesus Christ ripples out to touch every life, all of creation, everywhere, for all time. The wonder of Easter morning shows us the utter lengths that God goes to offer us abundant life and the wonder of Easter cannot be contained to one day or one Sunday.
And yet, while life cannot be conquered, life can be delayed, put on hold, made dormant. When we retreat to the safety and comfort of our own personal sheepfolds–whatever they may be–we refuse to participate in the fullness of a life lived in God. Of course, existing in the sheepfold is easier, less demanding. But existence is not life. Ease does not bring joy. And less demanding often means less fulfilling.
In the movie The Matrix, one of the characters, Neo, is offered a choice between a blue pill and red pill. The blue pill will return him to the life he knows – comfort, safety, familiarity, and existence in the sheepfold. The red pill – ahh the red pill will open his eyes to the world around him. It will challenge him and give him a new life a life beyond simply existence. Jesus is doing the same thing. He is calling us out of the sheepfold to a new life beyond simply existence. Listen for the voice of the shepherd calling you by name, calling you out of complacency. And give Christ the chance to cast you out of your sheepfold so that you may find the fullness of a life lived in the abundance of God. Amen.
Here is today’s worship bulletin.
The Timothy Blog 