Feed My Sheep

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley

May 2, 2009

The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor

Good Morning, and thank you for having me. Well, as we can hear from our exquisite readings, today is Good Shepherd Sunday. It seems appropriate on this day to honor the ministry that St. Marks has faithfully carried out for an amazing 25 years to the ever-changing flock of elders at Berkeley Pines Convalescent Hospital, and to listen to see if we might hear the voice of the shepherd calling us to do something similar.

All our beautiful readings today, and perhaps psalm 23 most gorgeously of all, sing the glories of the Good Shepherd- the glories of healing and nurturing, binding up wounds and protecting the weak. And like so many images in Jesus’ stories, the image of the good shepherd vs the bad Shepard (the hired hand in our Gospel of today) is an Old Testament reference, in this case from Ezekiel. Initially in the book of Ezekiel, the Lord God seems to damn all shepherds as selfish, careless, carnivorous. He childes the shepherds for only being interested in feeding themselves. He says,

You eat the fat, clothe yourselves with the wool, slaughter the fatlings, but you do not feed the sheep.

The Lord God then goes on to further scold the shepherds, pointing out the utter lack of the pastoral skills that later defined Jesus ministry:

You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not sought the lost.

In contrast to this image of a hungry, careless and selfish shepherd, The Lord God says:

I myself will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places they have been scattered on a day of thick darkness.

This is the course Jesus is claiming when he says, “I am the Good Shepherd.” If the wild animals come, the course of the good shepherd is staying with his sheep thereby risking his life to protect them. There was a practice of shepherds at the time of Jesus, of lying down to sleep across the threshold of the enclosure to insure that wild animals could not get in, and the sheep could not get out. This was literally laying down the body for the sake of the sheep, which recalls of Jesus laying down his life, with great willingness and authority, out of a great love for his flock.

What is described in all these beautiful words is a kind of true community, a community where the weak are protected and comforted. A community where there is chance for reconciliation and redemption for everyone.

In our reading from the first letter of John, it is our brothers and sisters for whom we are asked to lay down our lives. As Jesus has elsewhere said, it is the least of our brothers and sisters who most need to be found, healed, strengthened, loved. These are least esteemed of society, that Jesus always raised up- the sick, the poor, women, orphans and widows. The hired hand may have the job, he may be in the community, but he is doing little more than taking up space and feeding on lamb chops. We may feel sympathy and some identification with the hired hand because all the sacrifices that are implied in creating true community, putting other’s needs before our own, are hard to make in our present climate of economic crisis, flavored with swine flu. It might seem like it would be better to stay home- hold no one’s hand, avoid contact with the rest of the flock, keep your store of fat and wool close to your chests, hang on to what you’ve got. But it could be argued that too many hired hands and not enough Good Shepherds got us into our present situation where too many wolves are at the door of too many of our flock. I have heard it said that most people will not see the light until they feel the heat. We are feeling the heat of the neglect, worldwide, of the realities of true community. We really are utterly inter-dependent.

The only reading today that does not specifically sing the praises of the Good Shepherd is our reading from Acts, which celebrates a healing at the Beautiful Gate and the power of Jesus’ name.

Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit proclaims to the rulers of the people and the elders:

`The stone that was rejected by you, the builders;

has become the cornerstone.'

And he goes on to say that there is salvation in no one else but Jesus.

Well, what is it to be saved- what is salvation? We often hear that it means proclaiming Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. We might think it means that if we believe in Jesus, we will go to heaven and not to hell.

Or we may think of salvation as freedom from the prison of our membership in the society of the hired hand. Maybe salvation is freedom from the hell of living only to eat fat, wear wool and save our own necks, attractive as that hell might sometimes be to us all. But Jesus clearly points out that doing that is not the way to salvation. Jesus is the Good Shepherd and Jesus is the beautiful gate- and it is through him- through modeling, however imperfectly, his own acts of mercy and justice that we will be saved. And as he continually reminds us, the sacrifices we make toward this end shrink in comparison to all you get back- the life you take up again, the promise of overflowing abundance.

Maybe salvation is hearing and then answering the voice of the shepherd, calling us into true community, calling us to be a true shepherd, or at least a true member of the flock. The hired hand who runs away at the pain or need of a brother or sister, the loneliness of the old or the pain of the wounded, pays for his comfort with his soul. Pays with the loss of a community of the spirit.

Sometimes it is good to hear from a voice that is technically not of our flock- here is a reading from the brilliant Sufi mystic Jellaladin Rumi:

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street,

and being the noise…

Open your hands,

if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel

the shepherd’s love filling you….

Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?

Amen.