Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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A little girl was practicing the twenty-third psalm. Her parents listened from the hallway, trying not to be noticed. She began, "The Lord is my shepherd. That's all I want." Bull's eye! All through the Bible, Old Testament and New, God is portrayed as a shepherd and we as sheep. That is troubling to some moderns (whose world view requires them to see themselves as totally self-sufficient and in control ), but it is still a right image for us faithful. In this created universe, hopefully we know our place. "It is he that hath made us and not we ourselves. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture and the flock of his hand." Admittedly, sheep are not very bright. It is a sheep's nature to wander off into danger. Without a shepherd, sheep are in great peril. In today's chapter of John, Jesus declares himself "the Good Shepherd." And who could argue? Millions have found him so. "The Lord is my shepherd. That's all I want." We don't like to think of ourselves as dependent. Most of the time we refuse to admit it. Children and old people, especially, want to be on their own. And for that reason they sometimes don't seem appreciative when others try to lend a hand. We've all known the toddler who pushes away when we're trying to assist, or the elderly person who takes offense when we suggest that he might need a little help seeing or hearing. A man was standing at a Post Office counter when a very old gentleman, obviously feeble, approached him with a post card. "Would you mind addressing this for me," the old man asked. "Well, I'd be glad to. What's the address?" The old man told him and the younger man wrote it. Then the old man asked if he would be willing to write a short message on the card for him. And that was done. "Now," the younger man asked, "is there anything else I can do for you?" The old man said, "Yes. Would you write at the bottom, 'P.S. Please excuse the sloppy handwriting.'" None of us likes to be dependent. But we all are. We are sheep who need a shepherd. And we resist it like the devil!

In fact, reading the rest of this chapter, we see that Jesus so infuriated the Pharisees by referring to himself as the good shepherd (and saying that the flock belonged to him) that "they took up stones to stone him." They viewed this lovely pastoral image (the Good Shepherd) as a direct attack on them. Jesus' words were seen as fighting words. Or, as Bessie Smith, sang it, "Them is graveyard words." Why? Because when men and women, who are essentially dependent on God, refuse to admit it, they transfer their dependence to someone or something else - they find a different shepherd to follow. And the Pharisees were the beneficiaries of that. People may refuse to admit that they need God, but they may be led (by a false shepherd) to need a priest, or a church, or some fanatical so-called "faith." They may be led astray by the false shepherd of drugs and alcohol. They may be led astray by the false shepherd of wealth. They may be enticed away from the good shepherd and his flock by a desire to be beautiful, or smart, or physically fit. These things, Jesus said, are thieves and robbers.

You see the picture? A sheepfold was a walled enclosure, with a gate. At night several shepherds might put their sheep in the fold to prevent them from wandering away in the darkness. Someone (a thief or a robber) might try to climb over the wall and steal a sheep. But he, of course, means the sheep no good. The rightful shepherd of the sheep comes in at the gate. He speaks and his sheep (only his) recognize his voice. They won't follow a stranger. He calls them by name, and they follow him out into the dangerous world. And he takes care of them. It is a beautiful picture of Christ and his faithful church. It speaks to that personal and intimate relationship we can have with God, to recognize his voice, to sort it out from all the din and babble, and follow him without fear. The shepherd's job is to take care of the wolf. The sheep's job is to stay near the shepherd.

But following the Good Shepherd involves more than a warm, loving relationship. It involves doing what the Shepherd says and going where the Shepherd leads. We like the Shepherd who loves us, and we like the Shepherd who provides for us, but we may not like the Shepherd who disturbs us - who, with his rod and staff, prods us go a certain way, and not to go another. We might, in our anger, even look for an easier, false shepherd to follow.

Anger can be a false shepherd - a thief and a robber of life. In 1941, in Moscow, the Russian generals had scheduled a procession of German prisoners of war down the main avenue. The people along the way were mostly women, for the men were away fighting, and many of these women were starving, and many had lost husbands and sons and brothers to the Nazi monsters. The anger in the crowd was palpable, and grew to a red-hot intensity. "Bring them out." "Let us see these murderers." But when the German POWs appeared around the corner of the street they were gaunt and bent, their hair was matted, their uniforms were tattered, some were on crutches, many had bandages stained with blood. The crowd along the street fell silent as the prisoners marched by. Suddenly one old woman rushed forward and shoved a crust of bread into one of the German's pocket. And then many in the crowd came into the street and gave the soldiers whatever they could. These POWs were no longer Germans, or Nazis, or murderers. They were boys, just like Russian boys, and they were caught in the throes of war just as Russia was caught, an they were suffering just as Russia was suffering. Anger and bitterness are false shepherds, thieves and robbers. They make us feel better in the short run, but at the end of the day they destroy us.

Greed, and status, and prestige, and importance are alluring, but they, too, are thieves and robbers of life. Marcel Proust, in Remembrance of Things Past, tells a story which, once you've read it, is hard to get out of your mind. Charles Swan calls on his friends, the Duke and Duchess of Gremantes, intending to tell them that he is mortally ill. But, when he arrives, they are scurrying about getting ready to leave for a party. The Duchess remarks that Charles does not look well, and says in an offhanded way, as she starts out of the room, that he must accompany them on their next trip to Venice. Charles, always polite, says, "But my dear lady, I shall then have been dead for several months." "You must be joking'" she says. At that moment her husband calls from the carriage begging her to come so they won't be late. As she steps outside, the Duke notices that she is wearing black shoes with a red dress and sends her back upstairs to change. No time to comfort a dying man, but the carriage can wait for the lady to change her shoes! What a picture it is of what Henry Levin calls "our moral deafness." We take polls to tell us what is right and wrong, and we then see the world as an extension of ourselves. "All we like sheep have gone astray….We have followed the devices and desires of our own hearts…."

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, assures us that his relationship with his Father is a strong one, and if our relationship with him is also strong, then we are his and we are the Father's. We don't just love the shepherd. We go where the shepherd would have us go. And we will come and go from the sheepfold in safety. To the person who says that the false shepherds of this world need our understanding, I say (as Jesus said) that they are thieves and robbers of life. What good do we do when we do not oppose them?

What good is there in not telling the truth? Let's have the courage to call it like it is. "The thief cometh not, but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." "The Lord is my shepherd, that's all I need."