Today’s Sermon focus
Good shepherds defend their flocks
What does it take to be a good shepherd? Who here has raised livestock? Or had pets, for that matter? What does it involve taking good care of your animals?
- Provide access to health care, day or night
- Calm their fears
- Daily provision of good nutrition and clean water
- Some animals need socialization and games to keep their minds busy – I hear goats are the worst if they are bored
- Helping them deliver their babies, if you have cows and sheep and goats
- Put them to bed at night
You watch out for their flourishing and provide what they need, right? But that’s mostly thinking within our highly domesticated lives. If you’re a “real” shepherd or good ol’ fashioned cowboy on cattle drives, your animals are exposed to the wild.
There’s no barn or kennel or house for safety. And out there in the wild, there are predators. Depending on where you are, there might be cougars, grizzlies, wolves, or coyotes. Nate and I were once on a lonely road in the eastern Sierra where there was a cattle drive right down the middle of the road. So, we just stopped and let the cattle surround us. We were not a danger, but an aggressive driver in a big ol’ truck could have hurt these cattle or the cowboys and gals on their horses, right?
When you’re a shepherd, these animals are in your charge and their safety from harm is your job. Imagine being a shepherd before modern technology, what you have as a shepherd is a rod and a staff with the crook to guide and rescue your sheep, but it’s also what you have to beat off predators. Or, if you’re like David, you have handy sling shot to deal with predators. In other words, as a shepherd, you’re not just the kind and gentle image of Jesus, holding baby lambs in a beautiful field with sunbeams coming down on your head, but you’re also something of a warrior. You have a current of that fierce momma bear energy about you to take loving yet sometimes intense care of the ones in your charge.
This is an image of Jesus we don’t think about very often. I’ve never seen a painting, for example, showing Jesus defending sheep from a wolf or mountain lion, but that is part of being a shepherd, right? And wasn’t that what Jesus was doing when he insisted on healing on the Sabbath day? Wasn’t that what he was doing when he upturned the tables in the temple or eating with “sinners” and including the most vulnerable in his love? He defended the most vulnerable from the religious, cultural, and political gatekeepers who defined who was in and who was out. Jesus broke the rules and gathered in the rejected ones.
There’s some serious disobedience in Jesus’ life. And let us remember that systems of power tend to interpret disobedience as “violence.” Jesus wasn’t going out and bashing heads. He wasn’t that kind of warrior. Not at all, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a warrior who acted with power and strength in defense of the vulnerable. So, I think warrior might be a good word, even as it makes me kind of uncomfortable.
It reminds me a phrase we are more comfortable with, the Kingdom of God. Now, kings are not typically known for their kindness and benevolence, particularly when it comes to the poor and vulnerable. This is certainly not true in the Old Testament, even King David who we read about today. He had his good points, but he was a complicated man. He was no Jesus. Given our history, given our Bible, given our understanding of politics, there’s nothing about the word kingdom that should give us comfort. But the Kingdom of God, is different because of the nature of God, right? Likewise, in the reign of Christ, the vulnerable are treasured and the ones who our cultures vilify are placed at the center, right? That’s what Jesus’ teachings tell us. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek and the mourning.
So, if you are uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus as warrior, I get it. So am I. Afterall, there are all sorts of Christians who paint the image of Jesus as a warrior, but instead of what I’m talking about, they see him as one coming back with armies ready to subjugate the world into submission or eternal damnation. Egads! How on earth that image of Jesus is supposed to embody Jesus’ teachings, I do not know. The idea that Jesus is going to come back like Rambo is just bad theology, a confused reading of the Bible, and a misunderstanding of Jesus entirely. That is so completely not going to happen, so let’s try to set that aside.
When I talk about the warrior aspect of Jesus, what I am pointing to is the fierceness that burns in all of us when someone we love is threatened. In our Bible stories, Jesus gets angry. God gets angry. The prophets get really angry. John the Baptist yells, “You brood of vipers!” Was he being mean or naming an important truth that was fueled, perhaps a bit over the top, by righteous anger about how God’s people were being mistreated?
Abuses of God’s beloved people and beloved creation is everywhere in our world. We are surrounded by injustice. We have many ways to respond to these realities, but among those choices is the path of the prophets, the path of the defender, the path of the momma bear, the path of God’s protective warrior, the Good Shepherd.
In the story of David, the prophet is sent to anoint a new king to replace the one who is abusing God’s people. This is a moment of insurrection, really, driven by God’s holy anger over abuse and he chooses the weakest, smallest, youngest, and least likely one to be God’s chosen king. And he just happens to be good lookin’.
In the gospel, Jesus privileges the needs and cares of a man blind from birth. In the ancient world, this would have been seen as a mark of sin. Someone sinned horribly to be born this way and so was marked as someone outside polite society. Jesus tells him, after everyone disbelieved his testimony again and again, that he indeed came to stand between the haters and the vulnerable so that they were gathered in and empowered to be a part of God’s beautiful, loving kingdom.
And in the Ephesians reading, we hear the words, “Sleeper, awake!” Sleeper awake to living in God’s light, to be a part of God’s kingdom, to be a member of the body of Christ in this world. Sleeper, awake to be perhaps God’s warrior in defense of God’s beloved people and creation.
Just to be clear, I am not calling for violence of any kind. But there is a fierceness that we can feel in the face of injustice, in the face of evil. And for a lot of us, our inclination to feeling this anger is to either stuff it down or feel imprisoned by it. Well, Jesus put that fierceness into good use, as do all the good shepherds who defend the ones who are entrusted to them.
The good people of Celebration Lutheran are not known for their anger, righteous or otherwise, right? But as disciples of Christ, there’s no way that we don’t feel the burn of God’s righteous anger in us to help us to act and defend God’s beloved people and this earth. We need not lose our grounding in God. We need not become warriors without the ethos and mission of pure loving protection. We’re not facing a binary choice between doing nothing and being unhinged, right?
Anger at injustice and the need to protect the vulnerable drive us into action. Just the feelings of being will not keep the wolves at bay. Action does, right? Each of us are called to action just like the blind man was called to be an evangelist and David was called to be king. We are all, to varying degrees, sleepers who are called to awake. We are all called to be ourselves good shepherds alongside Christ, to be both protected and protectors for the sake of God’s kingdom.
AMEN
John 9: 1-41
9 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4 We[a] must work the works of him who sent me[b] while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7 saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am he.” 10 But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” 12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14 Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15 Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” 16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. 17 So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
18 The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19 and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” 20 His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind, 21 but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus[c] to be the Messiah[d] would be put out of the synagogue. 23 Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
24 So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” 25 He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 26 They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 27 He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” 28 Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” 30 The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 34 They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”[e] 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir?[f] Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” 38 He said, “Lord,[g] I believe.” And he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” 40 Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
Service Recording
Gospel and Sermon at 22:25
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