"I Must Tell Jesus"
A meditation by the Rev. Dr. Hilary J. Barrett
Preached at Pleasantville UCC, May 3, 2009, Good Shepherd Sunday
Psalm 23 & John 10:11-18

On one of the first Sundays after Easter I usually try to honor an ancient tradition of the church known as “Holy Humor Sunday.”  It’s an old Easter custom, rooted in the musings of early church theologians, which celebrates Christ’s resurrection as one great practical joke that God played on the devil himself.  The day is celebrated in churches in order to remember that with Jesus’ triumph over the grave, God got the last laugh on the devil.

Here at Pleasantville that means that from time to time, I will include a post-Easter sermon riddled with jokes – good jokes, bad jokes, religious jokes, you name it.  It also means that throughout the year, many of you send me jokes for my collection so that I might use them the next time around. 

This year, somebody else got the last laugh on me and I was in no laughing mood last week when it was my turn to preach.  But I’m going to tell you a joke anyway-one that I’ve told before but given my condition you’ll have to forgive me.

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of the dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in an expensive suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the shepherd, "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"

The shepherd looked at the man, then looked at his peacefully-grazing flock and calmly answered, "Sure."

The young man parked his car, whipped out his laptop and connected it to a cell phone.  Then he surfed to a NASA page where he called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, and opened up a database and an Excel spreadsheet. He sent an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, received a response. Finally, he prints out a 150 page report on his hi- tech, miniaturized printer then turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1,586 sheep".

"That is correct” said the shepherd.  “You may take one of the sheep.”

The shepherd watches as the young man selects one of the animals and bundles it into his car. Then the shepherd says: "If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?"

"OK, why not," answered the young man.

"Clearly, you are a consultant" said the shepherd.

"That's correct," says the young man, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required," answers the shepherd. "You turned up here, though nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don't know anything about my business. Now give me back my dog".[1]

If there are any consultants in the house, I hope you will forgive me.  But I decided to include this joke because I’m feeling a bit like a consultant right now.  This is Good Shepherd Sunday and what I don’t know about sheep is a lot.  (I do, however, know enough to tell the difference between a sheep and a dog which puts me just slightly ahead of our young consultant in the story.)

In this Eastertide, on this 4^th Sunday of Easter, we arrive at the most famous metaphor for Jesus in the Bible: the Good Shepherd.  The image gives this day its name and on this Sunday every year we hear the words of the 23^rd Psalm and this text from John’s gospel in which Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd.

I know there are some among us who still have a working knowledge of what it means to take care of livestock; a few who may even know what’s involved in being the shepherd of sheep.  But for many of us suburbanites in the twenty-first century, shepherding is something we know very little about.  We know far more about teachers, lawyers, doctors, business people, and accountants than we do about shepherds.  We know that shepherds are people who take care of sheep.  Other than that, we have very little idea of what's involved. 

So what do we do when we get to this image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd – and find ourselves bereft of first hand knowledge about the work of shepherding?

Let’s read the text again.

"I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd puts the sheep before himself, sacrifices himself if necessary. A hired man is not a real shepherd. The sheep mean nothing to him. He sees a wolf come and runs for it, leaving the sheep to be ravaged and scattered by the wolf. He's only in it for the money. The sheep don't matter to him.

"I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep and my own sheep know me. In the same way, the Father knows me and I know the Father. I put the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary. You need to know that I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring them, too. They'll also recognize my voice. Then it will be one flock, one Shepherd. This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down my life. And so I am free to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down; I also have the right to take it up again. I received this authority personally from my Father."                                                       (The Message)

The Good Shepherd puts the sheep before himself, sacrifices himself if necessary

"I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep and my own sheep know me.

Whenever Jesus uses the pastoral image of a shepherd for himself, the point is nearly always the same: as the Good Shepherd of his sheep, he will risk his life -- and even temporarily abandon the flock if that's what it takes to save the one lost sheep. As the true shepherd who loves his sheep, he will let himself be killed rather than see one single sheep harmed.[2]

You and I may live in a time and a place that affords us very little first hand knowledge of what it means to be a shepherd, or what it means to tend to a flock of sheep.  But does that mean that any of us has ever really outgrown our need for someone to love us fiercely and forever the way only a Good Shepherd truly can?  Just because our familiarity with sheep and shepherds is not as acute as it was for the people who first heard these words of Jesus, has our need for a Good Shepherd to watch over us really faded over time?  I don’t think so.

"I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd puts the sheep before himself, sacrifices himself if necessary. A hired man is not a real shepherd. The sheep mean nothing to him. He sees a wolf come and runs for it, leaving the sheep to be ravaged and scattered by the wolf. He's only in it for the money. The sheep don't matter to him.

The Good Shepherd that we’re talking about here is not a good business model.  The Good Shepherd takes too many risks.  He is willing to lay down his life for his flock – not even the whole flock – he’s willing to lay down his life for just one lost, wayward or ailing sheep.  And this, my friends, is a very comforting thought when you are the sheep. 

In a world full of hired men, the sheep are in real trouble.  In a world full of hired men, there are certain risks to being a shepherd that are not acceptable to someone who does not love His sheep with his whole heart.  In our world, it would hardly seem like a good practice to have the shepherd lay down his life for one sheep.  Just let that one go – they are not statistically relevant.  Not unless you are that one sheep.

You know that part before surgery when they come to remind you of what could go wrong here?  That part where they tell you that there is, statistically, a small chance that you could not wake up from the anesthesia?  Well, statistically, those numbers sound very different when you’re the one going under the knife.  When you are the one going into major surgery for the second time in two years and this time, for reasons that remain a mystery to you, you’re scared to death, there is no such thing as a statistically insignificant number.  And the thing that gave me the most comfort, as I yielded myself to the anesthesiologist, was the knowledge that, with Jesus, there is no such thing as a statistically insignificant number either.  As my husband prayed with me to settle my fears, a very clear image came before my eyes: this (Good Shepherd) window.  I saw this image in my mind’s eye and it comforted me.  I knew that – no matter what the outcome of surgery – I would be that sheep sought out and claimed by the Master Shepherd of us all.

There’s one thing more I need you to know.  The emergency room on a Saturday afternoon is no comforting place when you’re holding your own arm broken in three places.  There are no painkillers and there won’t be any for hours yet.  So there’s a place you have to go inside yourself to deal with it all.  I am happy to report that the place I went included music.

Holy words long preserved
for our walk in this world,
They resound with God's own heart.
Oh let the ancient words impart

Words of Life, words of Hope
Give us strength, help us cope
In this world, where e'er we roam
Ancient words will guide us Home.

CHORUS:
Ancient words ever true
Changing me and changing you,
We have come with open hearts
Oh let the ancient words impart

Holy words of our Faith
Handed down to this age
Came to us through sacrifice
Oh heed the faithful words of Christ.

The point of all this is to say that, we may have never met a real shepherd in our lives.  And maybe we go through most of our days not in the least picturing ourselves as sheep that need to be led.  But no matter how much the world has changed since Jesus' day, this much has remained the same: it is still a world of hunger and want, of confusion and suffering, of wolves and fierce enemies that wait to leap at us in the dark of night.

We still live in a dangerous world. Wolves abound.  We still need to know that there is a sure guide who goes ahead of us so that we can feel more secure proceeding forward ourselves.  We need someone who can see every wolf that runs our way and who will get killed himself rather than abandon any one of us sheep as statistically insignificant.  We still need to know that we are fiercely loved and eternally protected.  We still need to know that there is one who will seek us and find us with a wondrous love.

It may not matter to you today.  And it may not matter to you tomorrow.  But there is a day when it will matter very much indeed, and when that day comes, you will be grateful for the knowledge of it.

So let us memorize our Scripture and let us learn our hymns for that day when it will be very important to have a wellspring of faith-filled promises arising from deep within us.  May it be so, and may the Good Shepherd of us all fill you with peace.  Amen.