Acts 2:42 – 47 Psalm 23 1 Peter 2:19 – 25 John 10:1 - 10
They were believers
- devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
- having all things in common
- selling their possessions and goods and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.
- daily spending much time together in the temple…
- eating their food with glad and generous hearts
- praising God and having the good will of all the people…
And daily the Lord added to their number…
This morning’s lesson from the Acts of the Apostles gives us quite a description of the early Christians and their community!
They certainly sound joyful and generous and non-anxious!
Clearly Jesus is foremost in the hearts and minds of these followers, and his life and teachings are the organizing principle of their lives. In him they had found a home.
How might Christians in today’s world – followers of this same Jesus – be described, I wonder?
We are believers,
- coming to church on Sunday mornings when we are free of outside demands, to hear the Word of God, to pray, and to break bread, and perhaps to have some fellowship at Coffee Hour….
- donating our time and our money to charity, debating whether a tithe should be based on our net or our gross income…
- breaking bread, our food fresh from the microwave, the drive-through, or take-out window, and eating hastily, being distracted by many things…
- allowing complacency or preoccupation, or a sense of entitlement, or the stridency of our own opinions or beliefs, to get in the way of praise for God and the good will of all people.
And week by week, the statistics tell us, the church is shrinking in membership…
What has changed?
How did we get from there to here, from that tightly knit group of followers of Jesus to the scattered, fragmented, distracted, group of individuals today who identify as “Christians”?
Today we celebrate Jesus as “The Good Shepherd.” It is an image that had powerful resonance for the early Christians, the metaphor coming out of their experience and needing no explanation. They recognized in that imagery Jesus, fortifying them through difficult times, knowing him as the shepherd and guardian of their souls, the one who walked with them through the valley of the shadow of death and sustained them in the face of evil. There might be evil in the world – wolves or Roman soldiers – yes! – but there was also this Good Shepherd, who assuredly was with them, caring for them, leading them to that ultimate safety…
Good shepherd imagery doesn’t have quite the same resonance in 21st century America.
Val Webb, author of Like Catching Water in a Net, observes: “We continue to teach high-tech city children about ancient shepherds, believing we must preserve the biblical metaphor of Divine Shepherd, yet as author George O’Brien notes, “A God who travels only on camels may end up as a subject only for tourists, not for life’s daily commuters. How is the modern commuter to engage his or her imagination with that Biblical narrative so overstocked with sheep and figs?” (p. 19)
It is a challenge.
Something has happened – as society has become more complex, offering us greater freedom and more choices; as increasingly we have become urban dwellers, living at a remove from the land; our sense of dependency has shifted from God – however we conceptualize God – and become compartmentalized. In a sense it has been “outsourced”: we’re far less likely to speak of dependence on God that we are to recognize our dependence on an auto mechanic, financial planner, therapist, handy man, cleaning lady…
And in some ways we have become like tourists making a weekend trek into a spiritual landscape…
Yet underneath all that busy-ness and self-sufficiency and making-our-way-through-this world, we all have a yearning, a longing, to feel ourselves sheltered and protected at some more basic level – there is an appeal to the IDEA of a Good Shepherd, to what that metaphor represents, regardless how foreign the image – or how loathe we are to think of ourselves as sheep. We long for a God of intimacy, a God who is accessible, not remote, absent, judgmental, frightening…
And perhaps that metaphor can lead us where we need to go.
Within the sheep world there is a concept of “being hefted.” Lest you not visualize some apocalyptic image of Jesus dramatically swooping down from the heavens and scooping some up and leaving some behind, let me hasten to explain that sheep who are hefted have a “sense of place” about them, a sense of “home.” Hefted sheep can be left to roam freely, as they will not stray from the land that they know very well. They instinctively can locate therapeutic plants to eat and, on the basis of wind, where they will most likely find shelter when needed. It is home.
In our deracinated lives, what we sorely need is to be hefted – to have a spiritual landscape in which we are secure as we make our daily commute to work or to school, as we move through the routine pieces of our lives, from dry cleaners to grocery store to theater… We need to have that sense of home (that) an intimate God provides; a place where a loving God is accessible; a landscape we have internalized and carry with us, a landscape that we know well and from which we do not roam.
We need it, and we long for it.
And sometimes we misdirect just what it is that will offer us that nurturing and security we so desire, and we fortify walls, perhaps even become militant, or self-medicate or become hyper-vigilant.
We take it upon ourselves rather than allowing ourselves to lean into God, to listen to the voice of the shepherd who is calling us.
And so this morning, let’s lean into God.
Let’s listen to the voice of the shepherd who is calling us.
If the shepherd imagery doesn’t work for you, ask yourself what does?
How do you visualize God as God envelopes you, holds you, reassures you of God’s care for you?
What resonates with you?
How do you image the sustaining, life-giving relationship we hear about in this morning’s lessons?
What makes the words of that beloved 23rd Psalm a reality in your life?
I heard the other day of someone who said that as a child she thought that Shirley Goodness was her Guardian Angel, and that Mercy was her assistant. She felt totally safe: they would follow her all the days of her life, and she would dwell in the House of the Lord forever.
I myself for many years carried with me the image of God-as-hazelnut. I have no idea where the image came from – I’m not sure I even knew what a hazelnut was at that time, and it was long before I had read Julian of Norwich and what she had to say about God and hazelnuts! All I know that it made God close, and it was a comfort to me. I would regularly “take out” my hazelnut image, and finger it, or tuck under my chin when I went to sleep at night. For whatever reason, in that hazelnut was all I needed to know of God’s love and care for me, and to have it right there, with me.
The image of Jesus-as-Good-Shepherd offers similar reassurance and accessibility: the nurturing and protection right here, with us, all the days of our lives.
Guardian Angels.
Hazelnut.
Good Shepherd.
It’s not the image, but the relationship.
It is a relationship that helps orient our lives around the God who loves us.
It is a relationship that gives us a home – a loving home, and hefts us into a spiritual landscape, allowing us to roam freely without getting lost.
For surely God’s goodness and mercy does follow us all the days of our lives, and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Amen.
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