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“The Shepherds’ Joy”
John 10:1-10
Psalm 23
A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Shepherds are not people we think about much these days. If we think of them at all, we think of either children dressed up in awkward outfits at Christmas pageants or we think of quaint humble people living solitary lives surrounded by intellectually challenged animals. Maybe we can relate to them.
But a shepherd back in Biblical times was common. Shepherds were a dime a dozen. They were all over the place with their smelly sheep. But they were in charge of the sheep. They kept the coyotes and other predators away from the scared and vulnerable sheep. Even the boldest of sheep could go astray.
The shepherds were an essential part of the survival equation. If the shepherd didn’t take care of the sheep, there would not be wool or meat or milk for the family or the village. But by definition, the shepherds were better left off by themselves with the sheep. A shepherd is not someone you would want to become a person of business. They were not the savvy folk of the city. They were the weird brother no one talks about, and who folks can’t stand, but who seems to do the sheep thing just fine. Or, they were the ourcast, the economically challenged, the slave.
I think of
the garbage collectors in
So it is with a thumb at the nose of hubris that Jesus declares that the one we are to emulate is not the merchant or the business person, but the shepherd. It’s one of those characteristic reversals in the Gospel. Jesus said that the first should be last and the last shall be first. Any of you who want to be first need to be servants of all.
The Psalmist declares that God is the shepherd. God watches over each and every one of us lost sheep, even goes to the highways and byways to rescue us when we get lost. God gently guides us and leads us in the right paths. This image of God liberates us from the previous images of God as a warrior or even a creator. This God does the miraculous but also cares for even the dumbest and slowest of us all. That shepherd is our God. That’s good news, eh?
But this sermon is called the shepherd’s joy.
So how does a shepherd find joy?
Are we glass half full or glass half empty people? We don’t necessarily have control over everything that is out there, but so far as we can chemically do it, we can control how we react to a situation.
I was on the swim team in
I think a shepherd has to choose joy. Those of us who have bad hands dealt to us can choose despair. Who could blame us? We could choose numbness. We can deny the pain and challenge that is there. We can also choose joy. Choosing joy is more than saying “don’t worry, be happy.” Those who have been beaten down have a higher mountain to climb in order to reach joy. Some never get there. But when a shepherd has joy, it is something to really pay attention to. Now, I’m not trying to minimize pain or trauma, but I am saying that we can choose how we react to outside stimuli.
A shepherd, it would seem has a long time to reflect and brood as she or he looks over the sheep.
A shepherd finds joy, I think, by remembering who’s in charge really. The shepherd can see rain and danger from afar and can do what they need to do to keep the sheep safe.
Though powers and principalities move against you, you can move forward. We can declare I am a man or I am a woman.
A shepherd finds joy in seeing the sheep safely home.
A shepherd finds joy not so much in preserving life but sharing it.
A shepherd’s joy arrives in those meditative moments on the hillsides where time stands still and you enter into another plane of existence that is not bound by a clock.
Many of you know that this is the third year our family has delved into maple sugaring. In the past, we distributed four spiles in our 2 maple trees. This year, our neighbors let us use their trees, so now we have 19 spiles in six trees. We have a lot of sap and we’ve bottled a good four gallons of syrup. If you do the math, that’s forty gallons of sap for each gallon of syrup. And the sap keeps flowing and we have a lot of sap waiting to be boiled down. The boiling takes forever. While people have often wondered about my sanity for sitting around a fire watching sap boil from dawn till dusk in the snow, I have found it a meditative process. The clock stops. The weather dictates the beginning and the duration of the sugaring season. While we probably have more than enough syrup to last us for the year and then some, I will continue to enjoy those hours that I am forced by the sugaring process to slow down and reflect. And when I taste that syrup at the end of the process, I pause and reflect again upon the sweet joy that pervades my life.
Choose joy so that you and your descendants may live.
I read one book by a church growth guru who said that we should not think of the pastor as a shepherd. He said it’s a bad metaphor for a shepherd eventually kills the sheep for food. In other words, he or she uses those under his or her guard. I’m not sure I buy all of that.
I actually think it’s a pretty good metaphor. A good shepherd stands at the gate of the sheepfold. He says that the sheep know his voice and trust him. The guardian of the gates keeps out the bandits. The sheep may not have the capacity to discern between good people and bad, but they know a familiar voice when they hear it.
It occurs to me that we trust those with whom we spend time. We know the lilt and the tilt of their voices. We know when they’re telling the truth and we know when they’re hedging a bit. How well do you know the guard of the gate? If you know that person well enough you know that voice in the good times and can pick that voice out of the crowd when challenges arise.
I think of
my friend and colleague Bill Englund this morning. He lost his daughter in that awful house fire
in
It’s trite and even violent to say that he should choose joy. That may come, but not today. Today, everything is raw and rage and despair. I’m sure he and his family will look back on a life well lived and the way that they raised a creative freethinking woman, but focusing solely on that joy without the immense tragedy of the loss is not at all helpful.
What I do know is that brother Bill knows the voice of the great shepherd. Brother Bill knows that in the good times that voice has been there, and in the bad times, he will still recognize that voice. That voice that is there in the valley of the shadow of death is the same one that leads us besides the still waters and restores our souls. This voice, this shepherd will not leave any of us comfortless. This shepherd will seek us out in the valleys of our despair and find us, bringing us safely home, in this life or in the next.
Let me close with a musical reflection on the shepherd who guides and guards us all.
The
Master of the Sheepfold
Chorus:
Oh the master guards the sheepfold bin and wants to know is my sheep bring in. And he’s calling, he’s calling.
Calling softly, softly calling for them all to come a-gathering in.
Oh the master of the sheepfold who guards the sheepfold bin, went out on the wind and the rain paths where the long night’s rain begins.
And he said to his hireling shepherd “is my sheep is they all brung in?”
He says to his hireling shepherd “is my sheep is they all bring in?”
But the hireling shepherd answered, “There’s some that’s waning thin. And there’s some that’s got all wettered and they won’t come a gathering in.
They is lost and good for nothing but the rest they is all brung in.
They is lost and good for nothing but the rest they is all brung in.”
Then the master of the sheepfold who guards the sheepfold bin, went out on the wind and the rain pads where the long night’s rain begins.
And he let down the bars of the sheepfold calling soft “come in, come in.”
He let down the bars to the sheepfold calling soft, “come in, come in.”
Then up from the gloom and the meadow from the long nights rain and wind, out from the wind and the rain paths where the long nights rain begins,
Come the long lost sheep of the sheepfold. They all come a gathering in.
Come the long lost sheep of the sheepfold. They all come a gathering in.