The Responsibility of Sheep

Sermon for May 3, 2009 The 4th Sunday of Easter Text:  John 10:11-18 Title:  "The Responsibility of Sheep" A.   One of my favorite comedians once said, "Ya just can't fix stupid!"  Recently in the news it was reported that two teenage Domino's Pizza employees recorded themselves as they carefully concocted a "special treat" for their customers. They ceremoniously dropped pizza toppings on the floor, mashed them around, scraped them up, and daintily arranged them on the pie. They chewed up cheese strands and giddily sprinkled them over the sauce. They spit condiments over the top.  Then, they uploaded their creativity onto the internet for all to see.  As you might expect, the outcry was immediate. Domino's was instantly plunged into the highest damage control alert possible. The two employees, who can only be called "Dumb and Dumber," were fired on the spot.  That particular eatery was closed for a complete sanitation scrubbing.  But for anyone who saw the video the damage was done.  It took a while for people to start ordering pizza again from that store.  The whole incident played on the fear that we really don't know where our food has been before it reaches our table.   And while we can joke about the "five second rule" in the safety of our own homes, when it comes to others preparing our food, we are all properly picky.  Perhaps the food service industry demonstrates best that so much of life is built on trusting others to do the right thing.  We trust chefs, short order cooks, and frozen food manufacturers to prepare good, healthful, quality controlled food.   But every time a salmonella or e. coli outbreak is reported in the news, such trust is eroded, as demonstrated a few weeks ago by the peanut butter salmonella scare.   B.   Trust is a core value in this morning's passage of Scripture, as it is essential for the Christian life.  The sheep have to trust the Good Shepherd with their lives and their security.  Such a trust is given to the "hired hand" at their own peril, because he hasn't earned it and will betray it.  Jesus has earned it, because He knows the sheep intimately and they know Him.  He loves them so much that He even gives His own life for them.   I have mentioned before that the Greek word for "faith" (pistis, the word used when the NT talks about having faith in Christ) can also be translated as "trust." When one believes in Christ, one trusts Him with his or her life.  But essential as it is, trusting the Lord is perhaps the hardest thing for the Christian to learn how to do on a consistent basis.  Oh, it's easy to trust Him when times are good.  But it becomes a lot harder to trust Him when all the evidence of life seems to point to a God who either doesn't exist or doesn't care.  We've all been there!!  We know what it feels like!   But this is where this morning's passage of Scripture is most instructive.  Here in John, Jesus refers to we believers as being like "sheep."  Now for a person like me, a kid from the suburbs, the whole sheep-thing can be a really alien concept.  But those who know sheep tell me that this analogy is in many ways not very complimentary.  I once asked a fellow who worked a sheep farm in the highlands of Scotland to tell me about these animals, and what Jesus meant when He compared us to sheep.  He related an incident to me:  "A sheep would often wander off into the rocks and get into places that they couldn't get out of," he said.  "The grass on these mountains is very sweet and the sheep like it.  They will jump down ten or twelve feet, and then they can't jump back, until the shepherd hears them bleating in distress.  The shepherd will wait until they have eaten all the grass around them and are so faint from hunger that they cannot stand.  Then the shepherd will put a rope around his partner, let him down to the precipice where the sheep is lodged, and together they will pull that sheep up out of the jaws of death"   "Why don't they go down there when the sheep first jumps down there?" I asked.  "Ah!" he said, "the sheep are so very foolish they would dash right over the precipice and be killed if the shepherd did that!"   Obviously the listeners in Jesus' day would get the nuances of Jesus' sheep analogy instantly, because theirs was an agricultural society.  Sheep are really not all that bright, and are very stubborn creatures.   They are determined to go after what they want, in the process getting themselves in a whole lot of trouble that the shepherd has to rescue them from.  They have been known to strip a pasture of grass, and then squeeze through a protective fence or find themselves on a dangerous precipice, and not be able to out.  Shepherding is hard work!!  Sheep are constantly in need of attention.  They get themselves in the darndest of places!   But rather than feeling a bit insecure about such a label, perhaps we should learn from it. Maybe God has to allow us to get into the darndest of places just to help us learn a little bit about trust the Lord.  Sheep don't pay much attention to the shepherd when they are happily munching away in a verdant green clover field.  Likewise, we don't pay God as much attention as we should when things are going well.  It's only when we are trouble that we cry out for help, discovering that the Good Shepherd was there all along, just waiting for us to stop struggling so He can rescue us.    We can even take the sheep analogy a step further.  I learned from my friend that one of the reasons sheep so desperately need a shepherd is that after centuries of domesticated herd life they have lost the instincts they once had to defend themselves. When a wolf gets into the flock, a sheep is incapable of mounting any kind of defense -- either singly or as a group. The shepherd's job is to keep the predators, wolves, thieves and bandits away from the flock.  It is not the job of the flock to organize an attack against these marauding forces.  Rather, and here's my point, sheep can only do what sheep do best -- stay close by their shepherd, remaining under the shadow of his protection.   Obviously in this passage of Scripture, the wolf is the Devil, just waiting to devour the souls of God's people, aka the sheep.  And in Jesus' day, the hirelings are those Jewish religious leaders who taught the letter of the Law, but never the spirit of the Law.  Today, this passage can instruct us on what proper Christian leadership is all about; it's always about servant leadership.  It's always about leading like Jesus, namely, thinking about the welfare of the flock first and the welfare of the leader second.  This is a sermon all by itself, but I'll leave that for another time.  This morning, I want to dwell simply on the responsibility of sheep.   After declaring himself the "Good Shepherd," Jesus asserts that the distinguishing mark of such a shepherd is that he "lays down his life for the sheep." Defining Jesus as a shepherd echoes a well-established Old Testament tradition.   Ezekiel 34 makes extensive use of the shepherding image -- evil rulers are likened to wicked shepherds, while God promises to save the abused flocks of Israel by personally playing the role of careful, tender, concerned shepherd to all the people.   Indeed, most New Testament shepherd images have their roots in Ezekiel's text.  But the shepherd who "lays down his life for the sheep" is a new dimension that Jesus has added to this shepherd image.  The shepherd's commitment to the sheep is total -- he will lay down his life for them.   In contrast the "thieves and bandits" come only to destroy the flock.   The "hired hand" kills the sheep just as surely as do the thieves or the wolves -- for by abandoning any interest in the sheep's welfare, the hired hand condemns the helpless creatures to death at the jaws of hungry predators.  Now we might think that if a shepherd gives his life for the sheep, it might ultimately be a bad thing, because who, then, would protect the sheep?  But that's stretching the analogy too far.  Jesus is here alluding to the Crucifixion and the Resurrecion.  He has to die for the sheep, because He loves them so much.  And when He does, He buys eternal life for the members of the flock.   The hired hand's callous disregard for the sheep is based on two facts -- he does not "own" the sheep, nor does he "care" for the sheep.  With no financial or emotional investment in these animals, hired hands have little incentive to stand by the helpless sheep when serious danger threatens. The Good Shepherd, on the other hand, is closely bound to his flock. As their "owner" (or Creator, since we are talking about God) He has ultimate responsibility for the sheep and a personal investment in their survival.   The Good Shepherd cares for the sheep, rescuing them from the places to which they have been scattered, feeding them, and tending to the weak, the injured, and the lost.    But more than that, Jesus emphasizes that a face-to-face "knowing" between the shepherd and the sheep has been established.  As the Good Shepherd Jesus declares, "I know my own and my own know me." This knowledge should not be thought of as being intellectual contemplation.  The "knowing" Jesus speaks of here is the Hebrew understanding of knowledge -- an intimate, firsthand experience-based knowledge that establishes a vital link between Father and Son, or between shepherd and sheep. Because Jesus "knows" his sheep, he can declare that He "lays down my life for the sheep."  Jesus died so we might live.  We are molded into God's people by faith in the Risen and present Savior.   A Sunday school teacher asked her class on the Sunday before Easter if they knew what happened on Easter and why it was so important.  One little girl spoke up saying: "Easter is when the whole family gets together, and you eat turkey and sing about the pilgrims and all that."  "No, that's not it," said the teacher.  "I know what Easter is," a second student responded. "Easter is when you get a tree and decorate it and give gifts to everybody and sing lots of songs."  "Nope, that's not it either," replied the teacher.  Finally a third student spoke up, "Easter is when Jesus was killed, and put in a tomb and left for three days."  "Ah, thank goodness somebody knows," the teacher thought to herself.  But then the student went on: "Then everybody gathers at the tomb and waits to see if Jesus comes out, and if he sees his shadow he has to go back inside and we have six more weeks of winter."   C.   Here's the crux of the matter.  Jesus' death proves to we sheep how much He loves us.  He loves us enough to die for us.  He desperately wants relationship with us, because that is what is best for us.  Joy-filled life is only found in a trusting relationship with Jesus Christ, and in a community of like-minded believers who can prop us up when life knocks us down, and by lovingly helping us to heal from the inevitable wounds of life.  Jesus' Resurrection proves that He is large and in charge, even over death, and of course over all that life can throw at us.  He knows us better than we know ourselves.  He knows what is best for us.  When we stubbornly ignore Him and wander out of the passage, He goes in search for us.  We may not even know it.  And He may have to allow us to sit on that precipice for a while, until we get weak enough that we realize our own strength in not in our own resources, but only in the Lord.  If we are a wandering right now know that the Good Shepherd will bring us back the moment you have given up trying to save ourselves and are willing to let go and let God.   So what is the responsibility of sheep?  It is to stay close to the Good Shepherd, to learn of His ways in group study and daily devotion, to talk to Him regularly in prayer, and to share in the excitement and joy of worship.  We as sheep also need to stay together as the herd, to support each other.   And we need to give, of our time, our talent, and our gifts, for surely the more we give the more we receive.  We need to be aware that the Devil is prowling around out there, and never rests.  We need to flee from temptation whenever it comes.  And perhaps most importantly, we need to know that the Good Shepherd is always right there next to us, as close as our very breathing.  What a comforting thought, to know that even when we wander away from the Master, He never wanders away from us.  Let me close with a story: At one point I mentioned that I used to serve a church in Virginia Beach that had a remarkable ministry to mentally challenged adults.   I can't take credit for starting this ministry; it was actually started some years before I arrived by a layperson named Larry Holland.   He used to lead a Sunday school class that was very popular.  But it didn't stop there.  Annually, we held a "Snow Ball" at Christmastime, to give the men and women a chance to dance, socialize, and to feel like someone cared about them.  The class started the first resident house in Virginia for functional adults who were employed.  And at times, the ministry taught marketable skills to their participants. Larry looked at his students' capabilities rather than their limitations.  He got them to play chess, restore furniture and repair electrical appliances. Most important, he taught them to believe in themselves. Young Bobby soon proved how well he had learned that last lesson. One day he brought in a broken toaster to repair. He carried the toaster tucked under one arm, and a half-loaf of bread under the other.   That's faith! Fellow sheep, life is best living next to the Good Shepherd.  May this be our desire today, and in the days and weeks to come.  Amen. Keith Almond P.O. Box 4388 Leesburg, VA  20177 703-344-3569 almond_keith@yahoo.com