Tuesday 19 April 2016

Good Shepherd

A sermon I preached last Sunday at Coedway Chapel . . .

The Good Shepherd is one of the most familiar images of our Lord; the 23rd is the one Psalm people know even if they're not churchgoers. The title of Good Shepherd is given to God not only in the 23rd psalm but also in the prophet Ezekiel. But in Ezekiel God's pastoral care for his people is contrasted with what the false shepherds have been doing - priests and rulers who’ve betrayed God's trust. They should have been doing what the Good Shepherd does, guiding the people, protecting them, leading them to places of safety, but instead they’ve exploited, harmed and endangered the flock placed in their care.

But Jesus declares himself to be the Good Shepherd - and in doing that he claims divine authority and identity. In one of his parables he speaks of the shepherd's joy when he finds the lost sheep and brings him back to the fold. And he identifies himself as that sort of shepherd, one that searches out the lost, one that knows and cares for his sheep.

In the reading we’ve heard today from St John's Gospel he speaks of his sheep as recognising his voice, and we’ll think more about that in a moment. But one reason why sheep would need to recognise their shepherds voice was so they could be led safely off the hillsides at the end of the say to be penned safely in the fold overnight. In one place Jesus says 'I am the door of the sheepfold'. The image that brings up for me is that of the shepherd lying across the doorway of the fold the sheep are penned in. There is no actual door, but any wild beast that might threaten the sheep would first have to deal with the shepherd. The sheep are protected from danger by the shepherd’s own body.

And my own sheep know me, says Jesus. They will know my voice. The other day, walking up on the Long Mountain I was watching a shepherd out with his dogs. It was impressive, the dogs responding to his whistles and calls, and penning the sheep very efficiently. But those sheep were being driven, organised, scared even into going the right way. In Greece a few years ago I watched a shepherd not driving but leading his flock. It was quite a biblical scene, the old shepherd with his staff, and the flock, a mixed flock of sheep and goats as it happens, all with their little bells clanking. Like in the psalm they will have trusted their shepherd to protect them and to lead them to good and safe pasture.

But here’s another image of Jesus from our readings today.  Peter speaks of Jesus as 'the cornerstone'. This is another image with Old Testament resonance: the stone rejected as useless and cast away is restored to become the chief stone of the corner, in other words the stone fundamental to the whole building. And Peter goes on to make clear what he means: that there is salvation in no-one else.

That was a very challenging statement to make to those who had regarded Jesus as a nuisance and a threat, someone who had to be removed. But Peter uses the same image in his first letter, and we can find the image of being built together in Christ in St Paul’s letters too. Jesus is the cornerstone and we are built on him to be formed into a spiritual temple, built to the glory of God.

I was reading yesterday about plans for this year’s Christian Aid Week, which happens every year in May, and then on the radio this morning I was hearing about the final push against the scourge of polio, which is of great interest to me as a Rotarian as Rotary international has taken a lead in this world. We are that close (a pinch of the fingers) to finishing polio off, with just a handful of cases, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I was glad of the way both those stories helped direct my thoughts and actions towards the responsibility we all share for the poor and the suffering of this one world which is our home together.

And I'm also reminded of our need to pull together, to be working as one in the cause of humanity; the defeat of polio is exciting because there’s been such a good and effective coalition of partners, among them some people I know myself who've just returned from being in India helping to immunise children against this disease. They had wanted to go there, both of them, partly because they had had of the impact of polio within their own families, and now they wanted to help remove it from the lives of others.

And Christian Aid week each year not only reminds us of the needs there are around the world for help, rebuilding, support, but how we can stand together as Christians, united across denominations. Christian Aid is an ecumenical organisation that was founded initially in response to the need of the poor in eastern Europe at the end of the second World War, whose work then spread across the globe, crossing all kinds of boundaries of places, nationalities and cultures. In Christ we all belong together, in him we find our identity and purpose and vocation - and that is the central theme I think of those two great images of Jesus the Good Shepherd, and Jesus the Cornerstone.

Jesus speaks of the other sheep that don’t belong to this fold, but which he must also bring in. There are no boundaries to the work of salvation and to the divine love that overflows in the example and witness offered by our Good Shepherd. And there must be no boundaries to our understanding of what our outreach and mission and service should be as his people, his active body in the world today. For there will be one flock, one shepherd, that’s what Jesus says. Indeed, Jesus also said, on the night of his betrayal, that to do mission the world we must be united. May they be one, he prays to his Father, so that world will know that you have sent me.

I remember once watching a dry-stone waller selecting and placing his stones, talking about his work as he went along. It's a marvellous art, in which, as he told us, each stone in the pile before him already had its place, its own special part to play in the construction of a good and solid wall. His job was to find the right stone for each space, and place it there. As a careless hiker in dry stone country may discover, knock one stone out, and the whole structure an become unstable, and that whole section of wall may well collapse. I’m also reminded that one attractive thing about walls made of stone rather than brick, is the variety of different sizes, different shapes, and maybe different colours and textures too.

And if "Christ is our cornerstone and on him alone we build", it’s marvellous the range of different stones that can then be bonded together in this construction. But each stone has its place, and its part to play. If any stone is missing or not properly supporting the stones that depend upon it, the whole structure will be weakened.

So these images of sheep and stones are pretty basic to how I understand my ministry as a Christian. Jesus shows me, in human form, the God who seeks and finds, and who cares and leads and protects: the Good Shepherd who knows his sheep and is known by them.  His call to me is to be an attentive sheep, to follow well, to hear and respond to his voice.  But also to be a shepherd in the service of the shepherd, having a pastoral ministry to those to whom I can offer, in some sense, direction and encouragement and leadership and love.

And Jesus is the rock who strengthens me, who provided the firm foundation for my life.  I should seek to be firmly built in him, connecting myself to his example of love.  There is one corner stone; but in a wall the stones also support each other, and each shares something of the ministry of that chief stone:  strengthening, supporting and enabling those around us.

May we be, in shared and united ministry, both sheep and shepherds to the glory of the Good Shepherd; and both stones built on the strength of the chief stone and stones supporting and strengthening the stones around us - and this again, to the glory of the one stone who is the corner and the foundation, in whom alone is our salvation.  Amen.

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