April 29, 2012 sermon

Psalm 23

John 10:11-18

11“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church…

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How many of you passed a lot of sheep on your way here today?

Me neither.

I had the opportunity to spend a semester in Europe when I was in college, and our first 3 weeks were spent in Scotland, Ireland, and Northern England. THEN, I saw some sheep. We frequently had to stop in the road to let a herd cross, and their white wool peppered the beautiful British countryside. But here? In Chattanooga? Sheep aren’t a big part of my day. I don’t know a lot about sheep. I saw one sheared as part of a field trip with Julia’s school a few years ago. But I could not begin to tell you what it means to spend much of your time with sheep. To shepherd them.

I know all of the things I can derive from scripture, of course – my go-to for farm animal facts.  I know that shepherds tell the sheep where to go, and that the good shepherds can be trusted to find still water to sip, good grazing areas, and offer the comforts of predator free travel. I can imagine how hard it is to be a shepherd. How tedious and lonely the work is. How easy it could be to bolt when things get hard if you are not truly committed to your flock.

Because we know all about bad shepherds, don’t we? Alyce McKenzie reminds us: Every day in the news we encounter fresh examples of bad shepherding. People in charge of protecting the President are not at their post, but instead, allegedly, at the bar or the strip club. A young man is in the driver’s seat early one morning with three friends in the car. Driving drunk, his actions result in their deaths. Politicians focus on finding chinks in one another’s armor rather than finding solutions to the nation’s injustices. Pastors abuse their positions of spiritual influence and take advantage of vulnerable people” (http://www.patheos.com/Progressive-Christian/Staying-at-Your-Post-Alyce-McKenzie-04-23-2012.html).  We are no strangers to bad shepherds.

But here, in the gospel of John, Jesus offers one of his famous “I am” statements, this time identifying himself as the Good Shepherd. John’s audience would have been familiar with the Hebrew Bible testament to what a good shepherd was. Benevolent kings were described as good shepherds. The rulers who sought their own fortune and ignored the needs of the poor, the widow, and the orphan were condemned by the prophets as bad shepherds. The hoped-for messiah was imagined as the Good Shepherd – the one who would remain faithful to the flock and ensure that the weakest members were protected.

So we welcome the image of Jesus as the good shepherd for some good reasons. But I wonder if we have too easily romanticized this vision, in part because of our general unfamiliarity with sheep-herding. It was dangerous and menial work. One pastor notes that in our modern context, for Jesus to say “I am the Good Shepherd” would be akin to him saying “I am the good migrant worker.” Not exactly glamourous, but very much in keeping with Jesus’ declarations about the first and the last. Our ideas of power and prestige mean little in God’s reign.

But how do we feel about being sheep? When I asked this at the Bible study on Monday, we were all over the place. Some found the image comforting, imagining Jesus leading and guiding us. Others felt a bit insulted – are we just mindless followers? I must admit that I often put myself in the second camp. People always told me sheep were quite dull animals and I never liked the idea that followers of Christ were just stupid farm animals. Don’t we have some agency? Some responsibility? I rather appreciate that God calls my head as well as my heart to lead and worship, and there is something about being a sheep that seems to undermine that idea.

Well, I read something this week that helped me a bit. Barbara Brown Taylor tells about someone she knew who actually grew up on a sheep ranch and could refute the myth that sheep are dumb. She believes “it was actually cattle ranchers who started the rumor, because sheep don’t behave like cows. Cows are herded from the rear with shouts and prods from the cowboys. But that doesn’t work with sheep. If you stand behind sheep making noises, they will just run around behind you. They actually prefer to be led. Cows can be pushed; sheep must be led. Sheep will not go anywhere that someone else – their trusted shepherd – does not go first, to show them that everything is alright” (Feasting, Blakely, 450).

We are not merely mindless followers. We are followers of the way – faithfully traveling, knowing that no matter how dark the valley is, God in Christ, our good shepherd, goes before us and leads us. We are not mindless sheep. We are followers invited to go – following in the paths of love and mercy that our shepherd sets out for us.

But we don’t do this traveling alone. There are all kinds of other sheep in this flock. And Jesus tells us that there are other sheep who are not yet in our flock, but will be. That’s not always easy for us to accept. We rather look to choose who is in and out of our flocks. After all, we can control who our friends and followers are on Facebook and twitter, we can choose to join this organization and not that one. But it is not so with Christ’s flock. His expansive vision of who makes up the church – the body of Christ – is more than most of us might choose, if we are honest.

How do we really feel about the idea that there will be one flock?

Are we ready to welcome everyone who will be in it?

• The ones who have different ideas about what it means to be church.
• The ones who make us angry with their clearly incorrect political opinions?
• The ones who live their lives differently than we do?
• The ones who read the Bible differently that we do?
• The ones who will never join this church and will never fill out a pledge card?

We are called to be the church of Jesus Christ in the world.

To seek reconciliation and to inspire discipleship.  All that is asked of us is that we follow the shepherd, not make judgments about the composition of the flock.

As I was thinking about us as farm animals, I was reminded of the story Neal shared in his Lenten devotional. It is a story Thomas Daniel told at Loaves and Fishes about cattle ranchers in Australia. Now, cows and sheep may differ in how they prefer to be led, but they are both prone to wander. Thomas Daniel described the shock American cattle ranchers felt when they discovered that the Australian herders did not construct elaborate fences to keep their cows from wandering away they learned that there is something much more effective than building barriers to define the parameters of the herd. Instead, they dig good wells. If there is a good, consistent, nourishing well of water, the animals will not stray. So it is with the church.

Too often, we have built higher and higher fences, seeking to define who is in and who is out of our flock, hiding safe within our walls. But we follow a shepherd who promises to go with us – to lead us through dangerous places and to offer us still waters. So perhaps part of our job is to ensure that we continue to offer good water – deep wells, still water to restore other weary travelers and to offer life and love to parched souls.

May we be led beside such still waters and have the grace to share it abundantly. Amen.

John 20:19-31

As I have shared with many of you, I did not spend all of my life planning to become a minister. My vocational plans from middle school forward ranged from teacher to astronaut to marine biologist to professional clown to journalist. I began college as a biology major, fully intending to go on the medical school to become a doctor.  Then I began to take some of the core religion classes, which were required for all of us at my liberal arts college, I discovered that I loved studying religion almost more than I loved studying science. The funny thing is that I think I approached both with the same kind of analytical perspective initially. I loved (and still do love) digging into the history and context of our biblical texts and the languages and the culture and politics that have influenced our theologies and religious practices over the centuries.

As I began to dig more into my major in religion, I had moments of pondering what it would be like to serve a church – and honestly, the thought kind of terrified me. I remember very distinctly a conversation with a friend during the spring semester of my Junior year. She asked me if I might be interesting in going to seminary and becoming a minister. I laughed and said, “I’m not arrogant enough to be a minister!”

You see, at that point in my life, I thought I had to have all the answers to be a good Christian – especially the kind that preaches and teaches to other Christians on a regular basis. Based on what I now know were limited examples of the faith, I thought Christianity in general and ministry specifically, were grounded in assertions that I was right,

that I possessed infallible truth,
and that I had it all figured out.
I was not ready sign up for such a course in my life.

I am grateful for the gift of time (I finally decided to enter seminary 7 years after I graduated from college). And I am grateful for good friends and wise mentors over the years who helped me understand that ministry had little to do with offering easy answers to hard questions.

Sometimes it involves asking even more questions.

Most of the time, it involves walking alongside others as we try to make sense of our faith in the midst of the messiness of life.

I have come to the point of embracing doubts and questions as vital parts of healthy faith. Because doubt is not the opposite of faith. Rather, it is so often the sign of an active faith – an indicator of the reality that we don’t live our lives in a vacuum. We are constantly faced with uncertainty in our lives…

We can’t control the weather.
We have no say in whether or not we or someone we love will get sick.
We don’t know how political decisions made somewhere across the world today might impact us tomorrow.

There is so much uncertainty in our lives – why do we expect our faith to be any different?

That is part of why I love this story from the gospel of John so much. I love Thomas.

Good old “Doubting Thomas”.
Good old “Realistic Thomas”.
Good old “I’m gonna have to see that for myself Thomas”.

John tells us that Thomas is called the Twin, and perhaps we are his other half.                                                               Because Thomas is me.                                                                                                                                                                               And I bet he is you too.

But Thomas isn’t the poster child for failed Christians. He is the realist:

the one unwilling to accept easy answers to hard questions
the one so devastated by the horrors of the crucifixion that he needed to see and touch the good news of the      resurrection for himself.

But as much as I identify with him, I don’t think this text is about Thomas. It is about Jesus. It is, as scholar Serene Jones writes, “a tale about God’s coming to us, wherever we might be” (Jones, Feasting on the Word, 402).

Notice the locked doors in this story. Twice Jesus enters the house where the disciples are hiding, and twice John describes him mysteriously appearing despite the locked doors. Jesus’ determination to reach those bound by fear and doubt and anxiety is the embodiment of love and grace. Again, Jones puts if beautifully: “So too it is with us. When doubt crowds out hope, we can be confident that Jesus will come to meet us where we are, even if it is out on the far edge of faith that has forgotten how to believe… God comes seeking us, stepping through the walls that hardship builds around us, offering love at the very moment that grace seems nothing but a farcical ghost story told by not-to-be-believed friends” (402).

I have been struck that Thomas doesn’t seem to recognize Jesus when he first enters the room. Perhaps it is shock. Perhaps it is the way we become blind to hope when we are so bound by despair. But “Jesus offers Thomas two clues to his identity. He speaks the simple words, “Peace be with you,” and then asks his doubtful friend to put his doubtful fingers into the wounds that he, Jesus, bears from the nails and swords that destroyed his body only days before. What does this tell us about faith? When God comes, we will recognize God’s presence in those moments when peace is offered, in those moments when life’s most brutal violence is honestly acknowledged, and when, in the midst of this bracing honesty, we realize that we are not alone but have, in fact, been always, already found” (Jones, 404).

This means that our lives of faith are lived best when they are lived authentically.

When we are willing to wrestle with hard questions.
When we are willing to be vulnerable for the sake of participating in genuine community.
When we bring the whole of ourselves – mind, body, and spirit – into our experience of discipleship. scars and all, trusting that God in Christ persists in meeting us where we are and sends us out to be wounded healers to others.

So here we are, a few thousand years later trying to live as Easter people, offering hopeful testimony of the resurrection and trying to be the body of Christ in the world.  But to do so, we must place our faith in things not seen.  This is no easy task for us, but it is the task we are called to as Christians.  What is faith if it is not in things unseen?

It took me years to realize it, but faith is not about having all the answers. It is sometimes messy and complicated and at times peppered with doubt.  And doubt is really not a bad thing.  Frederick Beuchner once said that, “Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.”  We need a little doubt in our faith to stir us and move us forward.

Because faith is not about standing up and saying some creeds and thinking everything should be simple after that.  It is about taking risks and believing that God is at work even when we would have every reason to doubt it.  We carry with us our questioning faith and are met by a God who meets us “not with a logically argued response… but a surprising proclamation of peace and touching love that is stronger than death itself. In the wonder of these wounds, he finds us” (Jones, 404).

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How could Peter deny Jesus?  Not once, but three times!  Peter was chosen by Jesus; he ate meals with Jesus; he traveled with him; he saw him perform miracles.  He even walked on water with him!

The real question is not why Peter denied Christ, but why we deny him.  “Oh, I would never deny him,” we cry.  But don’t we deny him when we see prejudice and don’t speak?  When we see someone hungry or homeless and don’t act?

We cannot solve the social ills of society; however, when we turn our backs on them, we deny Jesus.  So what can we do?  We can bring food for the food cart; we can volunteer for Interfaith week; we can comfort those who are targets of prejudice; and many other small and necessary deeds.

Peter denied Jesus in a dark courtyard when he could have been arrested and crucified himself.  We deny him when we say, “If they would only try to help themselves, they could improve their life.  They are probably on drugs or alcohol – why should I care. Or they are just playing the system so I am not going to help.”

Maybe Peter’s denial was not as bad as ours.

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Lord, help us see the injustice in the world and give us the courage to be of service.  Amen.

Neal Martin

We also hope you can join us for the community Stations of the Cross at Coolidge Park on Friday at noon. We will meet at the north end of the park, near the carousel for this Good Friday service. A few area churches are helping plan and host this service

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“Be Prepared.”  It’s such a good statement that the Boy Scouts use it as their motto.  I, however, occasionally find myself not prepared for things . . . that meeting I forgot about or getting things done before leaving town.  This has happened to all of us.  Sometimes you forget things; other times things happen at the last second.  Then there are those things you know are coming, that are inevitable – like Christmas shopping – and yet I still can find myself not prepared.

One thing’s for sure.  The disciples were prepared (at least for this celebration).  Jesus sent a few of them off with ample time to get the Passover meal prepared.  Not only did they have to find an upper room to use, but they had to get all of the food ready as well.  They had to get the lamb, different wines, unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and other things to make the meal complete.  By the time Jesus arrived, everything was ready to begin.

While the disciples had to prepare this meal, there were other things they would need to begin preparations for.  They would have to prepare for their mission of spreading the Gospel.  If they had understood enough, they could have prepared to see their Risen Savior in a few days.  They would then have to prepare to see him again after that, either at death or at his return from Heaven.  The big question of the day is how prepared are we?  Our lives can get so busy that we sometimes forget to feed our souls and to prepare for the inevitable.  The inevitable is that we will meet Jesus one day.  Preparation is not always easy.  We need to study and participate in prayer, but with these comes the opportunity to meet Jesus at the cross tomorrow and at the tomb on Sunday morning.

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Dear Lord, help me to become better prepared in my life’s journey as I study and pray for the day I meet you.

Rhonda Banasiak

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I do not remember the day of my baptism…after all, I was only 2 months old.  I do not remember my parents standing before the congregation and presenting me for the sacrament of baptism.  I have been told that I wore the same gown that my grandmother made for my mother to wear and the same one my son would later wear.  I do not remember what it felt like to have the water sprinkled on my head.  I do not remember the words that the congregation stated as they committed themselves to nurturing me in faith.  George Gracey (a pastor here in Clarksville) would often hold the infant and state at a baptism, “while this infant will not remember the particulars of what is done here today, if we, the congregation, do right by our works, this child will long remember what was done here today!”

I am a cradle Presbyterian!  That is, I have always been a part of the church.  I do not remember when I started attending; I only remember going…every time the doors were open I remember being there!  I remember Sunday school, worship, choir, VBS, work days, and SNAC!  But most of all, I remember a song.  You know…the type of song that gets stuck in your head and you can’t stop singing.

Mrs. Billie sang it when she taught me during Sunday school.  Herb Quinn sang it when he shook my hand and greeted me for worship.  Bill Ensign sang it when he would put his arm around Elaine during worship.  Mr. Rob sang it with his guitar during VBS.   Wayne Schendel sang it from the choir loft.  Mrs. Freddie sang it when she let me help in the nursery.  The entire congregation sang it at potlucks, Camp John Knox, Dinner on the Grounds, and every time we gathered together for worship, acts of service, and fellowship.  They sang, “Praise the Lord!”

The musical group Casting Crowns has many good songs.  One recent hit (Lifesong) seeks to proclaim these verses…..

Lord I give my life
A living sacrifice
To reach a world in need
To be Your hands and feet

So may the words I say
And the things I do
Make my lifesong sing [for you]!

“Praise the Lord!”

Is this song stuck in your head too?  Who taught you the song?  Who are you teaching it to?

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Dear God, I long to sing your praises….yet to often, life gets in the way!  Please help me to sing your praises in all that I do….and when necessary, allow me to use words!  Amen.

Mark Banasiak