Sermon "Baa"

Baa

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 17, 2016

Scripture:
Psalm 23 John 10:11-18

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I think I’ve mentioned to some of you before that I once gave a sermon with the title Baa.” Since the scripture readings for this week deal once again with images of sheep and shepherds I went and found that old sermon. I gave it in May, 2003, so that’s getting to be a while ago. I want to talk again about those images of shepherd and sheep as it applies to us, and that sermon I gave so long ago isn’t bad. This sermon isn’t exactly that sermon, although I confess that a good deal of it comes pretty much word for word from that sermon. So here goes with a sermon about shepherds and sheep. I know I’ve said some of this before, but I haven’t said it to you; so I guess I can get away with reusing some of my old material here. Just between you and me, I’ve done it before here.

Christians talk a lot about sheep, or at least we talk a lot about shepherds, and a shepherd isn’t a shepherd without sheep. We just heard Psalm 23. It’s most everyone’s favorite psalm, and it’s possibly the favorite Bible passage for most Christians. It famously begins: "The Lord is my shepherd." The Lord in that line isn’t Jesus, it’s the Jewish God Yahweh, but that’s OK. It means God is our shepherd, and God is indeed that. The Gospel lesson we just heard has Jesus saying "I am the good shepherd." Jesus is such a good shepherd that he is willing to lay down his life for the sheep, that is, for us.

The Good Shepherd is a much loved image of Jesus in the church, and the church calls people who perform functions like mine here "pastors." Webster’s New World Dictionary defines "pastor" as "originally a shepherd, hence a clergyman...." Now, if my being the pastor means I’m a shepherd, then, it would seem, you all must be sheep. You in fact are often known as sheep. Once not long before I wrote that old sermon with the same title as this one, I was doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. One clue was "flock, so to speak." The answer was "laity". That’s you. You’re the flock. That is, you’re sheep. Moreover, if the Lord is my shepherd too, and he is, then I must be a sheep too. We must all be sheep. Right?

Now, although the church calls me pastor/shepherd, I don’t know much about sheep. I had a college roommate who grew up on a sheep ranch in Central Oregon. He knew a lot about sheep, and mostly what he told me about them is that they are very stupid animals. They are famous, or infamous, for the way they just follow wherever they are led unthinkingly and unquestioningly. I certainly have that image of sheep myself. Whenever I see people unquestioningly following a leader, whether it’s a church leader, a political leader, or any other leader without thinking things through for themselves, my response is often so say: "Baa!" Indeed, the dictionary gives one meaning of the word sheep as "a person who is meek, stupid, timid, defenseless, submissive, etc." Now, meek might be alright, as in "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." The rest of those things, however, are not how I think of myself and not how I think of you. So, if the Lord is our shepherd, are we really sheep? Do we want to be sheep? I mean, if being a Christian means being "stupid, timid, defenseless, submissive, etc.," I’d just as soon not be one, thank you very much.

And yet there is no denying that our tradition has made the image of shepherd and sheep one of its central metaphors for the Christian life. Now, that image may be part of our tradition, but I have always thought that we need to be prepared to reject those parts of our tradition that we find to be unfaithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and there are lots of those things. I do not believe, however, that we should ever reject something that has been important to our tradition lightly, without careful and prayerful consideration. So let’s take a closer look at that ovine imagery that the tradition seems to love so well and see if we can find a way to look at it that has meaning for us.

Our reading this morning from the Gospel of John gives us a good starting place for doing that. The really good part of this passage is contained in the very first verse: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” This passage is why Sunday School rooms around the world are decorated with pictures of Jesus with little lambs. Jesus here goes on to say that unlike a sheep tender who is merely a “hired hand,” the true shepherd cares for his sheep so much that he will even give up his own life to save the sheep. Being a shepherd in the Christian sense, then, means caring so much for the people of God that one will even sacrifice one’s own life if that is necessary to protect God’s people from harm. That, the Christian tradition says, is precisely what Jesus did for us. If we approach the sheep metaphor from the side of the shepherd rather than from the side of the sheep, then, we do indeed find a valuable, valid image. It is an image of Christian love and compassion, an image of self-giving love for the good of the people of God.

Well, OK. But both Psalm 23 and our passage from John make us the sheep not the shepherd. It’s all very well for God to be our shepherd in the sense of our passage from John, but that side of the image doesn’t really deal with us as sheep. It still leaves us as those “stupid, timid, defenseless, submissive, etc.,” creatures that we don’t want to be and don’t think that we are. Or does it? Let’s take another look.

What does it mean for us that our Good Shepherd would even lay down his life for us? It means lots of things. We start with the fact that there is more to being a sheep than being a dumb follower. Sheep are creatures who are cared for by the shepherd. They are fed, watered, given shelter when needed and protected from predators. At least in the Biblical imagery of the shepherd reflected in our Scripture passages this morning the sheep are so dear, so beloved, that a good shepherd will guard the sheep as his dearest treasure. He will even risk his life to protect them if that is what it takes. The sheep are such precious creatures that no sacrifice by the shepherd is too great to protect the precious flock. Just so, this image tells us, our Good Shepherd guards us as His dearest treasure. We are Christ’s sheep because he cares for us. He protects us and makes us to know that ultimately, in the end, no matter what happens, we are safe with Him. We are safe with Him because he will do whatever it takes, up to and including sacrificing his own life, to keep us ultimately safe. To be the sheep of the Good Shepherd means to be the dearly beloved of God. In that sense I am perfectly happy to be one of God’s sheep.

I’m happy to be one of God’s sheep in this sense, but here’s the thing. Such love as our Good Shepherd has for us requires a response. We cannot, or at least we should not, simply accept the love the Good Shepherd offers us without responding as He would have us respond. The response to which we are called is to live as God’s sheep. That doesn’t mean be mindless followers of some church leader, or of some book, or of some tradition, although much in the history of the church might lead you to believe that that is what it means. Rather, it means that we should indeed live like people whom God the Good Shepherd loves beyond measure, people of infinite worth for whom Christ made the ultimate sacrifice. That means we should treat both ourselves and all other people, indeed all of God’s creation, as creatures of infinite worth because we all are the reason our Good Shepherd laid down His life. Living the Christian life means treating others as Christ treats us, that is, as creatures of infinite worth. It means being tender and forgiving, patient and accepting, with and toward everyone, including ourselves and especially people we find hard to love that way, because that is how God treats us. It means seeing ourselves as part of the flock, that is, as part of God’s vast creation apart and separate from which we cannot survive. It means knowing that we do not live by and for ourselves but with and for God’s world. It means knowing that the most fully human life is the life of the Good Shepherd, that is, a life of self-fulfillment in self-giving love for the others of the flock. That is our call as Christians.

So there are a couple of sides of the image of us as God’s sheep. It means God cares for us infinitely, but it also means that we are called to care for people and all of creation the way God does. That’s far from easy of course, but God has never limited God’s call to God’s people to things that are easy. We are cared for and we are called to care. That’s one important way in which God is our shepherd and we are God’s sheep.

And so let us indeed say "Baa!" Let us indeed be God’s sheep. Because God loves us, God does not want us to be "stupid, timid, defenseless, submissive, etc." That isn’t what being God’s sheep means. Because God loves us we are called to be whole, fully developed people in body, heart, spirit, and mind, that is, to be the creatures God intends us to be. We are called to strive as we are able to treat ourselves and everyone else as the Good Shepherd treats us. We aren’t, after all, the sheep of just anyone. We are the sheep of the Good Shepherd. So let’s be sheep. Let’s be really good sheep, OK?. Baa!. Amen.