I had a café for a few years, which I’ve talked about before. As someone who has hired, managed, and loved many young people over the years, I can tell you there is a certain magic that happens when your hired hands stop working like they are hired hands as we hear in the gospel, but shift into taking on a sense of ownership. I saw it happen many times. Not every time, but many times.

This place, that I technically owned with Nate, belonged to the staff and the customers more than us in some profound ways. It was a beautiful community of folks who loved each other across the boundaries of staff and customer, young and old, punk rock kids and grandmas in their pearls. Exactly why and how that happened, I’m not sure. There’s not a business book I ever read that told you how to make your workplace a place of love. I do know, however, that the Holy Spirit was there. God had his fingerprints all over that place. It was blessed. It was beautiful. It was also barely profitable and about killed me with the workload of it all. Beware of food service, if you are quietly dreaming of opening such a place. All the same, it was a place of love and magic.

It was also a place of a lot of young people because that’s who mostly worked there. Because I was surrounded by these youngster, I was intrigued to learn this past week that shepherding in the ancient world was a job primarily for the teens in the family. They were the ones given this job because they had to help out, of course. They also learned to care for living beings beyond themselves, problem solve, take ownership of situations, and basically grow into being solid members of their families and communities.

In our modern world, we don’t send our teenagers out to be shepherds anymore. They are much more likely to be baristas, like at my café. The young ones I employed learned how to love strangers walking in the door (yes, that was part of the training), work on a team, and at times let go of their own agenda for the sake of creating something meaningful and larger than them within a community. They learned, hopefully, what it is to claim ownership of something larger than themselves and their place of belonging within a community.

In a world where we are encouraged to only worry about ourselves, our consumption, our wealth, our own health, and our own small nuclear families – Jesus is calling us to claim a bigger circle of care. He’s calling us into being not only a sheep, but a member of the flock, and also to be the shepherd ourselves.  

This is awkward because sheep are inherently helpless beings. They have no defense against a predator other than being in a flock and/or being with their shepherd. We may not think of life as dangerous in the same way that it was in the ancient world, but the dangers are real all the same. There is the danger of isolation and loneliness, dangers of greed and our many anxieties about all the ways we see life as insufficient, dangers of illness and pain, dangers of running out of money in the midst of a medical crisis. And of course, death still comes to us all. We may not fear death with dread, particularly as people of faith, but we do live in danger of grief and loss. All of these things, and more, are parts of our lives and they can be deadly.

Just like sheep, the protection of the flock and our Good Shepherd is still our only real safety. When we are suffering, we need people. When we are afraid, we need assurances from those around us who have their feet firmly planted in faith and hope. When we grieve, we need people to hear our stories, bring us food, give us long hugs, and let us cry. And when we feel that we are beyond all hope, we need in particular our Good Shepherd to guide us back.

So when our Good Shepherd finds us in our isolation, where does lead us? Well, we know he’s not guiding us to a life where everything works out and there’s no more pain. That’s not the promise. The dark valleys are still a part of our lives.

Shepherds guide the lost sheep back to the flock. We are guided back to community and to connection with our human family. In fact, the healing stories of Jesus are always punctuated by the healed person being reunited with family or reintegrated into the community. Jesus’ healing is not just about fixing the issue. It is about being brought back in and reuniting with the flock, whatever that flock may be.

Yesterday we celebrated the life of Marilyn Gearhart, who many of you knew. The scripture for her memorial service was also Psalm 23, which we heard today, and the story of the lost sheep. Marilyn loved animals and I have no doubt she was out there at times looking for a lost alpaca or dog or horse or probably a child or two at times. But we also talked about how she was the lost one, the lost sheep who has now been brought home by her Good Shepherd. She was both the shepherd and the lost sheep…as we all are.

We are all called to be good shepherds, to follow in the example of Christ, even as we are still the lost ones. We are both at the same time. Sometimes we are perhaps more one than the other, when difficulties arise, but we are always still both. Recently, Rick lost his beloved wife and partner Jan. I’ve watched this congregation share hugs, condolences, and conversations in the care of Rick. And then the next week, Rick brings Darcie and I fresh mushrooms, poetry, and stories. Rick is the lost sheep and still a shepherd.

Darcie, too, just lost her mother the day before Jan’s death. As you all know, Darcie does so much to care for us all, including me. Maybe especially me! The cards and the gifts and the prayers and phone calls have meant so much to her, as she is back at her desk doing the work of the church. She too is both the shepherd and the lost one.

To me, this is what community looks like and feels like  – living in the flow of mutual care and love. As a congregation, I would say we are figuring this out together, how to develop and grow a community that sparkles in love and support for each other and the world beyond us. It is against our cultural grain to build mutually supportive communities where we are all welcomed and loved whether we are showing up that day as more of a lost sheep than a shepherd. We Americans love the idea that we can do life without help, without being “needy” or vulnerable. We can, of course, but that can shut down the flow of mutual love in our lives.

When we are doing a thing together, in relationship with one another and creating something, it is so much more fun and life-giving when the people involved share their true selves and also have a sense of ownership, like the Good Shepherd. When we claim a community, family, congregation, workplace, or marriage as ours, we will lay our own lives down for it. We will lay down our lives by setting aside our personal comforts for the sake of the larger whole. And when we claim a community as ours, we claim the space to be honest about how things really are for us. When we do that together, magic happens. That’s what I called it at Hi Point, anyway. Magic. But we all know what that magic actually is; it’s God.  

Jesus said, wherever two or more are gathered in my name….wherever we lay down our lives in service to something larger than ourselves, there too will I be.

This is how make it through the dark valleys. With Jesus our Good Shepherd who is always leading us back to our flock, back to our communities, and places where we are both the lost and the one to find at the same time. No one is beyond needing to be found and rescued. No one is incapable of helping to find. And that is such a beautiful thing, when many hands join in to create a community that is larger than the individuals involved.  

There’s a quote that was floating around Facebook this past week from Joseph Campbell. He writes about marriage, “A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. But marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That’s why it’s a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate in a relationship. And when you’re giving, you’re not giving to the other person: you’re giving to the relationship. And if you realize you are in the relationship just as the other person is, then it becomes life building, a life fostering and enriching experience, not an impoverishment because you’re giving to somebody else … This is the challenge of a marriage.”

When we do relationships in the spirit of mutuality, in the spirit of being both the shepherd and the lost one, indeed our relationships become life-giving and enriching. There is mutuality. There is space for the totality of who we are to show up. And the Holy One is right there with us, opening our hearts and minds to what is possible.

There is a theme here in the gospel, in my Hi Point stories, and in the quote from Joseph Campbell that all circle around this notion of ownership. Ownership of our relationships, our lives, our planet, and all the things we do together. So, this begs the question, are you engaged in your own life with a sense of ownership? How about in your family? Your in church family? Your community? It’s almost Earth Day. Do you have a sense that this beautiful place is your home and therefore for you to protect?

Where would you move into co-creation of life and love with others and with God?

Jesus, once again, invites us to enter into a much bigger reality, a bigger story than just our own. We are not hired hands. We are not always just the lost one to be found. We are also a part of a flock and are shepherds in our own ways. May the Good Shepherd, the one with a capital G and S, guide us all the days of our lives. In this way, we will live in the house of the Lord forever.

AMEN