Sermon – John 10.22-30, Psalm 23, E4, YC, May 12, 2019

Tags

belief, belonging, character, God, Good Shepherd, group, image, Jesus, longing, question, Sermon, sheep, shepherd, uncomfortable

One of my good friends is enamored with the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  She can describe the chapel of the Good Shepherd at the National Cathedral in minute, passionate detail.  In her office are images of Christ the Good Shepherd.   I suspect that if you asked her who Jesus is to her, she would say he is the Good Shepherd.  And she would not be alone.  The verses of John immediately before the text we heard today about Jesus being the Good Shepherd is a favorite when planning funerals.  The 23^rd Psalm, which says “The Lord is my Shepherd,” is perhaps the most well-know scripture passage of all time – known even by people who have not attended church in ages.  The passage from John we hear today talks about the intimacy between Jesus and Jesus’ followers being like sheep who know their shepherd’s voice.  The fourth Sunday of Easter is even called “Good Shepherd Sunday,” in the liturgical year.  We probably should have all worn those awesome sheep hats the Praise Band wears during the Epiphany pageant to show our sheep solidarity.

Despite all that – despite the familiarity, the wide-spread popularity, and the commitment of an entire day in the church calendar to shepherd imagery – I must confess something I have told very few people in life:  I do not really like the imagery of Christ as the Good Shepherd.  Now I know some of you may be shocked – how can a priest not like one of the most popular biblical metaphors?  Some of you may be perplexed – what’s not to like about the image of a good shepherd?  Some of you may be downright offended – how can I not relate to the metaphor that has sustained you countless times?

Let me break my dislike down for us.  I do not like the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd primarily because I do not like the idea of being sheep.  Now I know we have the Fiber Festival coming up this weekend, and I like wool as much as anybody, but sheep are not the brightest animals.  They are easily spooked, they tend to be a little clueless, they seem to lack individual intelligence, and they make a horrible bleating noise that sounds nothing like the “baa” of nursery rhymes.  Sheep are easily corralled – dogs are used to herd them in simply by nudging them all back together.  That rod and staff the 23^rd Psalm talks about is used to physically push and prod sheep into uniformity.  And let’s not forget they are notorious for getting lost.  I mean, of all images to conjure up and celebrate on a given Sunday, we get to be sheep?!?

But as you and I both know, the things that make us the most uncomfortable are usually the things that are the most true.  Take for example the question and request of Jesus by those gathered around him in the temple, in the portico of Solomon.  They say to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense?  If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”  Jesus responds, “I have told you, and you do not believe.”  I cannot count the number of times we have asked Jesus this same question.  Sometimes the question is the exact same question as the one the people of faith ask today – are you the Messiah?  Can we believe in you?  Should we believe in you?  For anyone who has struggled with their faith – worried like those gathered at the tomb whether any of this Jesus stuff is true – the question and request today are not unfamiliar.  But we often ask this question in other ways.  As one writer confesses, there are countless times that we petition God with, “‘If you are.’  If you are good.  If you are powerful.  If you are loving.  If you are real.  If you are the Messiah, then stop talking in riddles.  Stop hiding when I long for your presence.  Stop awakening in me holy hungers you won’t satisfy.  Show up, speak plainly, act decisively.  Take this world of swirling, dubious gray, and turn it black and white, once and for all.”[i]  To all those questions, to all those longings, the response from Jesus to us is the same response of Jesus to the people of faith in our scripture lesson:  I have, but you do not believe.

Now here is where the text gets even more uncomfortable.  Jesus’ full words are, “I have told you, and you do not believe…because you do not belong to my sheep.”  Now there are all kinds of awful things that have been said historically about this text – the supersessionism of Christians over Jews, predestination, you name it![ii]  But I do not think Jesus was trying to exclude one group, or say, only one group will ever belong and everyone else is out.  I think what Jesus is trying to do is challenge people like me who do not like the idea of being sheep.  Jesus is saying today – I know you do not like being sheep, I know you do not like submitting control to me, I know that you do not like admitting that you do not have things all figured out.  When Jesus says, you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep, I think Jesus is saying, we do not belong because we are unwilling to belong.  In other words, we do not belong not because Jesus excludes – we do not belong because we actively fight belonging.  And because we fight belonging, we also struggle with believing.

One of my favorite church welcome videos features a series of concerns that often keep people away from church:  feeling like they do not lead lives that are good enough, worrying about unfamiliar or even weird cultural practices that might be uncomfortable, concern they might not fit in because of what they wear, or a sense that they could never belong to a group that has shown a history of hypocrisy.  To each concern, the church-goers have response.  Not sure what to wear?  Wear clothes.  Not sure your past sins will make you worthy?  We all have pasts that make us unworthy.  Worried about secret handshakes or stiff worship?  You’ll just find love and affirmation here.  Know the church is full of hypocrites?  Aren’t we all hypocrites?  What I love about the video is that belonging is more natural that belonging seems – and the more you spend time belonging, the more you realize your belonging helps you believe.  Belief does not come first.  It cannot come first.  Belonging comes first.

Author Debie Thomas says knowing belonging comes first is where our hope is today.  “According to this text, whatever belief I arrive at in this life will not come from the ups and downs of my own emotional life. It will not come from a creed, a doctrine, or a cleverly worded sermon.  Rather it will come from the daily, hourly business of belonging to Jesus’s flock — of walking in the footsteps of the Shepherd, living in the company of fellow sheep, and listening in real time for the voice of the one whose classroom is rocky hills, hidden pastures, and deeply shadowed valleys.  If I won’t follow him into those layered places — places of both tranquility and treachery, trust and doubt — I will never belong to him at all.”[iii]

For the longest time, I have resisted the metaphor of Jesus as our Good Shepherd because I did not like what being a sheep implied about my character and intellect.  But what I forgot in my resistance is that there are a whole lot of sheep around when I simply consent to belong.  Bumping into fellow sheep reminds me that I have companions along the journey who are also sometimes resistant to the guidance of Christ.  Bumping into fellow sheep reminds me that I am not alone in the things of life and faith I do not understand.  Bumping into fellow sheep reminds me going solo often leads to peril.  Bumping into fellow sheep really is not all that bad.  Not only do we have a shepherd who loves us unconditionally and irrationally, we also have a community where all our weakness, foibles, and sins are held in common, and forgiven.

Our invitation is to remember what John is actually saying today in his gospel.  As one scholar reminds us, “God is the one who initiates a relationship to us.  God seeks us out long before we seek God.  Christ makes us his sheep; we do not make him our shepherd.”[iv]  That is why we have long said as a people of faith, “The Lord is my shepherd…He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters.”  I mean, if you want to keep fighting the invitation to belong, by all means.  Lord knows, I have tried that route.  But on this Good Shepherd Sunday, your invitation is to consider another way:  to lean into the sheep all around you today, to trust that the Shepherd actually is good; and to know that wherever you are in your belief journey, belonging is the easiest step to get you there.  Amen.

[i] Debie Thomas, “Tell Us Plainly,” May 5, 2019, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=2201 on May 8, 2019.

[ii] Thomas H. Troeger, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 447.

[iii] Thomas.

[iv] Troeger, 449.

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Sermon – Genesis 32.22-31, P13, YA, August 3, 2014

Tags

God, healing, image, Jacob, name, Sermon, transformation, wrestle

One of the things we often talk about in church is our relationship with God.  We talk about God as a companion on our journey – one who walks with us as we grow and develop and change in our faith life.  Some of us enjoy that image because the image recognizes the ways that our relationship with God evolves over time.  We talk about God as one who is in dialogue with us – one who needs us to listen as much as we talk.  Many of you have talked to me about how often you forget the listening part of your relationship with God, not realizing how your prayer life has become more of a monologue than a dialogue.  We talk about God as one who requires vulnerability – one who wants not just the glossy versions of ourselves that we present to the public, but also the messy, angry, and sometimes ugly versions of ourselves that we rarely let anyone see.  Some of us have felt a sense of comfort and freedom in vulnerability, while others of us have found vulnerability too challenging.  But rarely do we talk about God as sparring partner – a prize fighter, capable of leaving real physical scars, leaving us marked visibly for others to see.

That is the image we get from our Old Testament lesson today.  In order to understand how Jacob comes to wrestle with God at the Jabbok, we need to go back in Jacob’s story.  Jacob is a twin, the brother of Esau and son of Isaac and Rebekah.  Jacob receives his name because the name Jacob means, “the one who takes the heel.”[i]  Because he grabs on to the heel of his brother as he follows Esau out of the womb, he is named Jacob.  The name turns out to be quite appropriate.  Jacob will be grabbing and grasping for much of his life.

Jacob’s life unfolds like a soap opera.  When Jacob is older, we are told that Jacob manipulates Esau out of his birthright.  Then, Jacob tricks his blind father Isaac into believing that he is Esau so that he can cheat Esau out of the blessing due to him as the firstborn male.  Jacob flees for his life from his angered brother Esau, returning to his family’s homeland.  There he meets Rachel and falls in love.  Unfortunately Rachel is the younger of two unmarried sisters, and the tradition is the eldest is married first.  In a twist of fate, Jacob is on the receiving end of deception when he is tricked into marrying the older sister Leah.  He has to continue working for Laban to get Rachel too.  But not to be outdone, Jacob manipulates Laban, and manages to trick Laban into giving Jacob most of the family’s livestock before Jacob flees yet again with his large family and wealth.  But Jacob can only run so long before fate finally catches up with him.  Some twenty years since leaving home, Esau is in hot pursuit of Jacob.  Scared, Jacob sends some gifts as an attempted bribe for Esau.  But he hears that Esau is approaching with 400 men, and so Jacob splits up his family and sends them ahead of him, leaving Jacob alone at the Jabbok in the dark of night.

This is where our story picks up today.  The story is a bit confusing, but basically Jacob wrestles with God all night long.[ii]  We are told that the two seem to fight as equals, but at the end of the scuffle, God strikes Jacob in the hip, leaving Jacob with a limp.  Jacob asks for a blessing from God, once again grabbing in life.  God asks Jacob his name, and instead of lying to God like Jacob lied to his father, Jacob comes clean.  “Jacob,” he says.  Now this part may sound simple enough, but God is not simply asking for and getting Jacob’s name.  Jacob is confessing.  “I am Jacob – grasper of a heel.  I have grabbed my whole way through life:  cheating, conning, scheming, plotting, and taking what does not belong to me.  I am thoroughly psychologically broken, and now you have broken me physically.  So please, give me, cheater that I am, a blessing.”  And what happens next is a total transformation.  God gives Jacob a new name, “Israel.”  God names Jacob, “Israel,” because Jacob is one who struggled with God – yisrael.  No longer will Jacob be known as the grasper.  Instead Jacob will be known as one who struggled with God – and though marked by a limp, is one who came out a new person – Israel.  With his new name, “Jacob enters into a new future, and passes his name, faith, and future on to his descendants, who bear that name even unto this day.”[iii]

The reason why I tell you the whole of Jacob’s story today is because we cannot fully understand the metaphor of wrestling with God until we understand Jacob as a person.  Jacob, father of the people of God, is by no means a shiny example of faithful living.  From birth, Jacob seemed destined for a life of manipulation, attempts at control, a willingness to deceive for personal gain, and constant scheming.  And though we would like to wag our fingers at Jacob, the truth is, there is a little bit of Jacob in each of us.  The reason we disapprove of Jacob is because at some point in our lives we have been a grasper of heels.  Perhaps we have not deceived on such a grand scale as Jacob, but we have certainly tried to manipulate situations toward our own personal gain.

I am reminded of the movie Mean Girls.  The movie chronicles the ways that high school girls manipulate, lie, and maneuver to become and stay popular.  At the center of the movie is a character called Regina George, the most popular girl in school, who is simultaneously loved and hated by her peers.  Most of the characters despise her, but oddly also find themselves drawn to her and want to be like her.  By the end of the movie the entire charade collapses, and all the girls come to an unspoken agreement to stop pretending, manipulating, and scheming, and simply be themselves.  Regina manages to redirect her aggressive ways into sports, and the satisfaction mellows her in the rest of her life.

Though Regina’s transformation was not a spiritual one, her change is as dramatic as Jacob’s – a total change in the way she operates, but not without the scars of the past.  I would imagine if we asked either Jacob or Regina if they would give up a limp caused by God or scars from high school, both would say, “no.”  The battles were necessary for the complete transformation of both – and the lingering injuries help remind them to never go back.  The reason they would say no is because the wrestling, the battle, the sparring has transformed them into something new and wonderful.  No amount of limping could detract from the new blessed lives each of them can now live.

The same is true for us.  There are parts of our lives that cannot simply be healed or gently be brought to God in prayer.  There are parts of our lives that we are going to need to enter into battle with God for in order to transform them.  The wrestling is necessary because the wrestling forces us to push through whatever is separating us from God and who God calls us to be.  And for those of us who are particularly stubborn or prone to grasping, the wrestling is required to break down our wills enough to get us to the place of being able to confess – confess who we really are to God.  Then, and only then, will we find our transformation – a renaming of who we are so that we can be fully who God invites us to be.  But be forewarned – no one leaves the ring from a match with God without a few scars.  Amen.

[i] Denise Dombkowski Hopkins, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 6.

[ii] Amy Merrill Willis, “Commentary on Genesis 32.22-31” as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/ preaching.aspx? commentary_id=2132 on July 30, 2014

[iii] David Lose, “Tell Me Your Name,” July 24, 2011 as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post= 1597 on July 30, 2014.