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May 15, 2011,
Third Sunday After Easter, All Souls' Episcopal Church
Shepherd of our Souls
In our Scripture lessons this
Sunday we learn that Jesus is the
shepherd of our souls,
and I just have to say that I’ve always found that image
to be one of the most comforting ones in the Bible. In
Biblical times several shepherds would keep their flocks
together overnight in a large pen with only one way in
and one way out guarded by a man called a porter. If
thieves wanted to steal sheep they had to break in
through some part of the pen the porter couldn’t see.
The shepherd entered through the front door and the
porter would recognize him and let him through. The
shepherd would call the sheep and his sheep would
recognize the sound of his voice and follow him as he
led them out.
When a shepherd was with his sheep
overnight in the wilderness he might find some place
where the terrain created a natural enclosure or even a
large cave in which the sheep could spend the night
while he himself would lie down at the entrance. The way
in or out was through the shepherd. He literally was the
door. This is such a wonderful image of our Lord Jesus
Christ because he is the perfect union of God and man,
and in him, we are called to communion with God. We
focus on our Lord as the Good Shepherd in Easter season
because he is leading his flock to perfect communion
with God through resurrection to eternal life.
Thieves will try to sell you on
something less. A thief tries to rob you of what is
yours in Christ. Accept no counterfeits. We have been
created in such a way that we can only be truly
satisfied and fulfilled in loving union with God. When
we forget the sound of our shepherd’s voice we also
forget our own identity, our own inheritance. There are
many thieves and there are many robbers and they’re
after our inheritance. They know we can follow our
shepherd only in the present moment and so they seek to
rob us precisely of that. Lust is such a thief. It robs
us of appreciating what we have in the present moment by
longing for what’s not immediately available. Anger also
is such a thief because it robs us of our gratitude for
the present moment when all we can think about is how we
want things to be different. Laziness is a thief. It
causes us to avoid the present moment. That’s often what
laziness is – avoidance. We even manage to be lazy in
unexpected ways – even energetically lazy. For example,
we rush. Rushing is a form of laziness. We rush through
something just trying to get it over with. However,
because we rush we make mistakes and the mistakes slow
us down. Remember: If you have to go back and correct
half of what you’ve done you’re not doing your job fast;
you’re only doing it half-fast. (Say it quickly now.)
You cannot follow the shepherd by
remaining in the sheepfold. We actually follow him when
he leads us out of the sheepfold and beyond the confines
of the pen. You may ask what happens if you go in the
wrong direction. Here is some good news about that –
grace can be fierce. For example, when you take anything
which is by its very nature impermanent and insist not
only that it be
permanent but that your happiness depends on that, the
suffering which is bound to follow in this little
project will be for you a big, flashing, painful
indicator that you’ve strayed off the shepherd’s path.
Grace can be fierce.
Following the Good Shepherd means
following the one we call “the Word made flesh.” We
follow him by following his word -
we read, mark, learn,
and inwardly digest
his Word.
God gave us Holy Scripture to encourage us in our
beliefs not to make it more difficult to believe because
we find the Bible hard to understand. The Bible was
given to help us grow; it’s a precious gift not an added
burden. We believe our Good Shepherd is lovingly
speaking to us through his Holy Word and so we seek to
be inspired and inwardly formed in digesting that word.
Our Good Shepherd feeds us.
We follow our shepherd by keeping
our eyes open; it’s hard to stay on the path otherwise.
You may ask, “What do you mean by
keeping our eyes open?
Except for when I’m sleeping when do I close my eyes?”
How about when you’re afraid? When I was a child and
something scared me I’d shut my eyes. I don’t think I
was alone in doing that. It’s what we do when something
frightens us. For example, when we really, really love
something we can become blind to its problems because we
shut our eyes instead of having our image of it
threatened. When we love someone we can be blind to
their problems by shutting our eyes instead of having
our image of them threatened. We are prepared to
question those we love but we’re seldom prepared to have
our image of them questioned. We don’t like being wrong
about that sort of thing because it hurts; it also
threatens the image we have of our selves, and we’re
particularly sensitive when it comes to our self-image
because it is, after all, a work in progress and mostly
contrived. In any event, we don’t like feeling
threatened and so instead of carefully observing
ourselves and honestly, fearlessly, understanding our
own motives, what makes us tick, and the exact nature of
our wrongs, we close our eyes tight and refuse to see.
And yet, if we’re going to follow our shepherd we have
to open our eyes.
Remember that the devil is a
predator and predators blend in. When it comes to
avoiding danger we humans tend to be rather visual. We
not only detect motion when we look we also see patterns
and notice changes in pattern. This works for us. (It
must since we’re still around.) A lion does not have to
move for us to notice it and distinguish it from a rock
or a shrub or some other shape or pattern, and say, “You
know what? That looks like a lion.” Of course, it’s also
true that we tend to relax when patterns appear to stay
the same. After a while we breathe a little easier
because all it takes is a glance and our memory fills in
the blanks. What could go wrong? Eventually we’re so use
to the pattern of things we almost stop looking
altogether – a fact which led one writer to observe that
some couples who have been married thirty years haven’t
really seen each other in five. We see what we want to
see; we see what we expect to see, and that is exactly
when lions pounce.
We follow our shepherd by keeping
our ears open. You may ask, what do you mean by “keeping
our ears open? Aren’t they always open? Don’t we hear
all the time? Yes, but it doesn’t always register.
Keeping your ears open means listening; it means
listening instead of just assuming. We cannot be
attentive to the sound of our shepherd’s voice if we are
listening instead to the ever changing voice of popular
opinion. We cannot listen for his voice if we’re
concentrating on our own voice instead in some kind of
self-guided tour. We must follow our Good Shepherd and
listen for his voice. The Scriptures help us recognize
his voice; it is the voice of our deepest longing and of
our eternal destiny.
So what have we learned and what
have I been blathering about?
1: The image of Christ as our Good
Shepherd is a comforting one, but you cannot follow Him
and refuse to leave your comfort zone.
2: Church shopping to find a
spiritual community that does things your way and agrees
with you on everything doesn’t exactly sound like a
recipe for growth.
3: Thinking that your happiness
depends on people, places, and things
is a recipe
for sadness.
4: You cannot follow the Good
Shepherd in the future because the future is not yet
real but He is. Planning for the future is important
which is why it is something we do in the present with
the Shepherd here and now, but when you go off on your
own worrying about the future you’re actually ignoring
Him. He’s a “very
present
help in time of trouble.” (Psalm 46:1)
5: You cannot follow the Good
Shepherd in the past because the past is no longer real
but He is, and while you spend time reliving and
re-litigating the past all you’re really doing is
avoiding Him.
6: Keep coming back to the Bible.
God’s Word does not change but
you do, and
if you listen, He will speak to you through Holy
Scripture with surprising freshness and new insight.
And finally,
7: Following the Good Shepherd
means more than merely studying what others have written
about Him. That’s like thinking you can learn to cook
just by reading restaurant reviews. Instead, following
Him means doing so in everything, every moment of our
lives, in every decision we come to, every plan we make,
and every step we take here … and now.
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