Baaaaa!

Acts 4:5-12

The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

Psalm 23

1 John 3:16-24

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us - and we ought to lay down our lived for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

John 10:11-18

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away - and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep 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. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

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Time for another camp song this morning, are you ready? “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord. And we pray that our unity will one day be restored. And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. And they’ll know that we are Christians by our love.”

Anybody else learn that one at camp or in Sunday School? It seems we give the most complicated truths to our kids while they’re young. We are one? There’s unity?

I was away at a continuing education conference last weekend with other openly identified LGBTQ Pastors and seminarians from across the ELCA, and we’ve got a whole long history of being kept out of churches for our sexualities and gender identities. We happened to be at a retreat and conference center that was hosting three other groups while we were there, one of which was of the Missouri Synod. I didn’t even know that there were other ways to be Lutheran while I was growing up, but there are a lot of ways, and somehow the easiest way to distinguish between us has become who we allow inside and who we keep out. The ELCA has been ordaining women for ages, and Missouri Synod does not. The ELCA was formed out of a major split in the Missouri Synod back in the 1970’s, and that break still brings many people to grief over community lost. They will know we are Christians by our love? It hardly seems right to say they will know we are ELCA because we Ordain women, transgender folk, and homosexuals, but so goes the basic, face-value descriptor. And of course there’s more to it than that, but the outward appearance, the effects, are what we recognize, far more clearly than the debating and the praying and the stories shared.

Even when the conflict arises out of love, out of deep and faithful wrestling with how to love. Do we protect people from harm by staying out of the way? By protesting? By voting? Do we love only our own close friends and family because anyone on the outside of those circles might be a threat to us? As one who is so easily distracted, I often wonder how far my love can reach when I want to reach out to every cause I see, but I can only run so many 5K races, I can only shave my head so many times. There’s got to be a balance. Besides, I’m only the hired hand, I can’t save the world. And it’s not that I don’t care. It’s just that I’m completely finite. Mortal. One grain of sand on the beach.

Or at least it feels like it sometimes. I’m just one person, connected to this one denomination that is the one which isn’t the other denominations. And, unless I’m reading the numbers wrong, this one denomination is looking less and less like it used to in the good old days. We tend to be a bit more... scattered than gathered lately. Geographically, politically, socially, personally. The tides keep changing, the trends keep updating, we keep being left behind, playing catch up, trying to stay relevant and important so we can keep our get that job or that status in the community. It’s hard, following everything that’s going on, having something to say about it, knowing what to do with it all. I’m not even talking on a global, national, or pop culture scale. Even in our own families it can be tough to keep track of who needs what and how and when, of whose feelings were hurt and who has something to celebrate. I’ve got to put a calendar event reminder on my iPhone some days just to remember who I said I’d pray for.

And then we come to today. Good Shepherd Sunday. The Lord is my Shepherd, we pray, I shall not want. God leads me beside still waters, restores my soul, leads me in paths of righteousness. And when I work myself up over who I ought to be making sure I take care of, as my Christian duty, when I remind myself of who I haven’t taken care of, neglecting my Christian joy, the author of that first letter of John reminds us: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before God whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and God knows everything.”

It’s not so much ‘they will know we are Christians by our love,’ as it is ‘they will know we are Christians by God’s love.’ 

We don’t work our way into God’s flock and fold. We don’t earn a place there at the Table. There are many sheep who belong to Jesus. Some we know, most we don’t. Jesus told us: “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep 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.”

We are promised that unity will be restored, that we will all be one, and that it has nothing to do with our striving for it. Jesus is the one who will make it so. The Good Shepherd is the one who gathers the scattered flocks into one fold. I am not a lone sheep. You are not a lone sheep. We are not a lone parish. We are not a lone denomination. We are not a lone church. Jesus the Good Shepherd holds us, gathers us, makes us one, even when we’re just standing around eating grass or wandering off or butting heads.

For another hymn, less a camp song, ‘Oh, to Grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be. Let that Grace now, like a fetter, bind my wand’ring heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Take my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.’

And he does. Jesus does this freely, no matter what sort of pain our hearts are in, what sort of pain we’ve carried or caused. He does this because he is the Good shepherd. So Good, in fact, that he not only leads and gathers and calls and feeds us, but Jesus takes on those hired hands and all those things that come between us and life with him. He lays down his life and takes it up again just because he can. Well, not so much to show off that he can, but, you know, he’s the only one who really can do that sort of thing. He’s the source and author of life, and we killed him, and he let us do that, and then he picked up his life again and got back to work, loving us into wholeness over and over again while we sheep stumble around the green pastures wondering if it really is greener on the other side. Then we stumble around pushing each other out of the pen. Then we stumble around getting pushed out of the pen. And so on and so forth. Over and over again, we sheep deciding which sheep are sheep enough for the Good shepherd to shepherd.

But every time we do that, every time we sheep make mutton out of each other, Jesus is right there to lay down his life and pick it up again. Every time we sheep stumble over the cliff, Jesus is there to lay down his life and pick us up again. Every time we sheep drink and drive, or put another needle in our arm, or turn away from someone in need, Jesus is there to lay down his life and pick us up again. The Good shepherd, for some odd reason we cannot explain or fathom, loves the ridiculous sheep, and the self-righteous sheep, and the worn out sheep, and the lonesome sheep, and the boastful sheep, and the popular sheep, all the same. Even the sheep whose lives we can not begin to understand, sheep from completely different flocks, every last one of them belongs, every last one of us belongs, to the Good Shepherd, who has laid down his life for us, whose resurrection has raised us all up to newness of life. For Christ is risen, indeed.