11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father —and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life —only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”In the sermon we focused on the distinction Jesus draws between the good shepherd and the hired hand. To the hired hand, tending sheep is simply a job for which he receives compensation. He's in it for his own gain. When something threatens him, he'll abandon his post. He doesn't care for the flock, just what the flock can provide for him (a means of making a living). To the outside eye he does the same work as the good shepherd, but when push comes to shove that work is a self-centered endeavor.
The good shepherd, on the other hand, cares about his sheep. He will not leave them, even to the point of giving his life for them. This is exactly what Jesus did for us on the cross. He gathers his flock, cares for them, makes them one, and won't let anything get in the way of that.
The sermon focused on two real-life applications of this lesson:
1. Whatever you do, do it with care for the people around you. We've all known "hired hands" in various professions and relationships...people just going through the motions to get what they feel is coming to them. You can tell when a nurse or a teacher, a parent or a spouse, is fulfilling their role without caring about the people they're with. Actions become hollow and empty, wrong even when they're right.
We've also known people from whom love flows genuinely in all circumstances. It doesn't matter what curriculum they're teaching, what medicine they're administering, what parental lesson they're trying to impart, what they're doing together with their spouse, it just works. The love and care make the experience, not vice-versa.
I've felt this plenty of time in social situations...parties and weddings and such. Sometimes you attend a party that's impeccably well-planned, but you know the guests are there for the sake of the party, not the reverse. Everybody is invited for a reason. Everything has to be just so. You feel almost like a piece in a grand game, or like you're an actor reading from a script. In these situations I get asked, "Pastor, will you pray?" because this is the part where the pastor says the prayer. In a second we'll be on to the next part. Everybody follow along! Everybody make the perfect evening! Isn't this grand?
Other times you arrive at a party and experience the opposite. The party is thrown for the sake of the guests, not the guests invited for the sake of the party. People feel welcome, comfortable, and free to interact with each other. There's laughter, food, conversation, warmth...all the things that make an evening great without the expectation that they'll be "just so". The guests get to define what's great instead of reading from the script. When I get asked to pray here, it's like praying with family. People gather around, share a moment together, bow heads and embrace the chance to be thankful. They genuinely care about the event and each other.
The first case feels a lot like the hired hand running the show. They've designed an impeccable evening, but the first hint of trouble and it's all ruined. When the wolves come, the place falls apart. The key to such an event is making sure that no wolves are invited, that everybody dresses a certain way, that all manners are in evidence, and that everybody stays on task lest the evening fall short.
In the second case the host becomes the good shepherd. If there's a hiccup, everybody adapts. Different kinds of people can come in different kinds of dress and do different things. Everybody makes it work. This is possible because people are enjoying each other instead of obsessing about an external "to do" list and judging how well everybody conforms to the standard.
Caring turns ordinary things extraordinary, making even flawed things seem perfect. In many ways caring is harder than just demanding everybody follow the curriculum/medical chart/party script. It takes more patience and sacrifice. But it also bears more dividends.
Each one of us should ask ourselves whether we're carrying out our daily tasks with caring first and foremost in our minds or whether we're just checking things off of our list so we can mark them as done and claim our reward. If it's the latter, we're probably missing out on a fair amount of life's joy plus a ton of holy opportunities that God's trying to show us.
2. We also need to examine how we operate as a church. Most non-church-familiar people carry the perception that the church is full of hired hands, not good shepherds. They suspect a church person always approaches wanting something for themselves: join our church, give offering, admit you're wrong, say you think like me. That perception is grounded in truth in many cases! How often do churches judge their work by how full the pews are or how fat the bank account looks? We divide the world into little pieces: believers vs. non-believers, members vs. non-members, good members vs. not-so-good members, people we like vs. people we dislike. Our goal is seemingly to convert as many people as possible into the categories we want: believer becomes member becomes good member becomes good member who's in our little circle. If you don't fall easily into the favored categories we don't value you as much. We push you to the side or we just badger you until you come around.
Who makes those categories and draws those distinctions? Generally, we do...the "good church folks". And why do we favor some of them over others? We favor the ones that make us feel good about ourselves, successful, proud. If we have the right number of people in the "believer/member/good member/inner circle" box we feel like we've done a good job, like our church is healthy. Never mind what those people are actually doing! Who cares what they're there for? Stop asking if this has anything to do with faith! And for heaven's sake stop worrying about the people we're chasing after...just get as many of them as possible into the correct designation! Go! Go! Go!
This is pretty much the opposite of caring. In the name of spreading/preserving/sustaining our "faith" (and I use the term loosely in this case) we treat other people like objects, viewing ministry as a series of tasks and church as the grand, stiff party mentioned above.
The great joke in all of this is that without caring church means nothing. Without caring we're just hired hands doing a poor job of watching over God's family. People outside the church are right to be suspicious of this kind of activity. The problem is, it's so widespread now that I'm not sure many people have seen anything but! People don't feel like some churches are like this, they think all churches are like this! They wouldn't know a good shepherd if he hooked them around the neck with his staff and planted a big, wet kiss on their cheek.
We've traded in "Jesus gave himself for you, so here's your love and joy" for "Give yourself to Jesus so we can be happy". In doing so we've not only ruined God's message, but put an enormous stumbling block in the way, tripping up anybody who tries to spread the good news of the Spirit.
Anybody remember the first cookie distribution day we had a couple years ago? It was Christmas...the season of giving. If there's any time people should be expecting a gift, that would be it. Yet what was the reaction at house after house as we distributed our homemade cookies for free and without expectation? The first response was suspicion and wariness. "What are those folks doing coming up my walk? What do they want to get from me?" When they realized that we really didn't want anything, that we were just giving away cookies so people could be happy, the expression turned to wonder and disbelief.
That same thing happens when we use the emergency fund to help people unexpectedly. The response I get is almost universal: "But I'm not a member of your church!" I wonder where they got the idea they had to be in order for God or anybody to favor them?
Stop and think about that for a minute. We have so conditioned people to believe that everybody approaching them wants to manipulate them into something--even and especially a church person--that they literally can not BELIEVE that anybody is simply sharing love with them without cost or expectation. Even when we're meeting their greatest need, they still have to get over a fair amount of suspicion in order to accept the gift.
All I can think of when I consider this is, "My gosh. How hired-hand-y have we been?"
That's why it's so important for each of us to go out and show the world the care and self-sacrifice that God first showed towards us. How else will they know who he is? How else will they un-learn that suspicion? If we're not good shepherds, following the one Good Shepherd, then who will be?
We're given a million potential avenues through which we are told we can control or gain possession of the world: money, politics, fame, and personal influence among them. Sadly church and faith have been co-opted into that list, seen as avenues of power and personal control. We need to get back to a simpler message and a simpler task. None of those approaches really change the world as much as caring does. That's how Jesus claimed us. He cared about us and thus earned the title of good shepherd. We are meant to affect the world likewise. If that isn't our first priority as individuals or a church, our priorities probably need realignment.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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