ENTERING SHEEP COUNTRY
A sermon given by The Rev. E.W. Greene, Jr., based on
Psalm 23 and John
10: 11-18
The little stump of the umbilical cord was still attached when I started Sunday School. I was in church the next Sunday. It was the beginning of a glorious, and some-times shaky relationship.
My mother was the church organist. We never missed a Sunday. Now, that doesn't mean I always loved it. I didn't always love it! There was a time when Sunday School was so boring in the third grade while Mr. Memke lectured to us from Ephesians. My mother finally let me skip it - but not the church service itself. I was always there.
In my early childhood years I would sit with my father every Sunday at Mills Terrace Christian Church, and he'd sneak fig newtons to me during the service. That was fine, but I could never figure out why I was too young for the grape juice and cracker refreshments that came near the close of every service.
Church was a second home to me, and I knew every nook and cranny. My mother would practice the organ by the hour, and I'd go exploring - never tiring of the endless hallways and the well-ordered rooms. In my childish imagination, - or, perhaps in truth - I remember meeting and talking with "ghosts" of other times who knew and loved that church, too. I wasn't afraid at all that, but I had a strong sense of the "wonder and mystery" of that "great cloud of witnesses," right there in a seemingly "empty church," and I kept these adventures to myself. No one else would understand.
I knew Jesus was there somewhere, though I never saw him. Instead, there were pictures of him everywhere: Sallman's head of Christ, Hofman's "The Boy Christ (a copy of which hangs in my study today), a picture of the Good Shepherd reaching down over a precipice to rescue a lost sheep, and another one of The Good Shepherd carrying a sheep home on his shoulders. The message was clear. He would carry me too if I ever got lost. I've always known that.
These famous pictures - probably not very good art - were "real" to me, and their imprint on my young life was a powerful one. And, there was the 23rd Psalm: "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He leadeth me beside the still waters. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil..."
Morbid? Not a bit! Even as a little boy I knew that there were many times when, no matter how hard I tried, some things weren't going to turn out right. But the Good Shepherd would be there for me. No doubt about it!
Now, I never saw real sheep until I was in my teens. We visited my Uncle Dwight and Aunt Lucy at their farm near Eugene one summer. There were sheep there - right outside my bedroom window. No need for an alarm clock on this farm! Those stupid sheep could wake the dead! I got aquatinted with sheep during that week - spent "quality time "with them - tried to figure them out. I didn't.
I began to wonder if the image of our being like sheep, and needing a shepherd wasn't really a mean dig! Sheep aren't very bright. They get lost. They- don't have any sense of direction. They can just nibble their way lost - nibbling their way to greener pastures - never lifting their head to see where they actually were. Nor are they able to protect themselves from wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions.
People are like sheep? That's not very complimentary! David, an acquaintance of mine wouldn't be very impressed. Success is written all over him. At 50 he's tan, fit, wears Armani suits, a Rolex, a fancy diamond cluster ring. He drives a little sporty European car each day into downtown LA from the West Hills. David has a power job. He's often blunt, seems self-reliant. He's accustomed to getting his way. David is not a "sheep." He's a nice guy, but actually, but now that I think about it, David's more like a "wolf" than a "sheep."
David is the picture of success. No sign of weakness. No hesitancy, no indecision about anything. Success is often measured by the "Davids" of this world. Be strong! Be independent. Be self-directed. Be convincing. It's hard for some of us to admit that we ever need a shepherd. Instead, if we go to the right seminars, network with the right people, work-out at the gym, drink the best Scotch, have a credit line to boast - that we've got it made .
But sooner or later most of us come face to face with the reality that we're not really as self-sufficient as we would like to believe. At some point we find ourselves on unfamiliar ground, lost, and unable to find our way. The usual sources of strength and security seem empty and dry to us then. Sooner, or later, most of us discover our need to know a shepherd.
For some, it happens in an instant. A young couple in our church in Portland called me from the hospital. Carol is bright, articulate, speaks her mind. Steve is a scientist. He loves nothing better than to encounter a problem, and then solve it.
The call from the hospital was about their young son, Jeff. The tests were conclusive. Leukemia. As competent as they were, there was no clear solution. The pieces didn't fit together. There was no map of what was ahead. In an instant they were in unfamiliar territory. They had entered "sheep country."
For others, the realization that "sheep country" may be just around the corner comes with time, with age, with wisdom, with experience. We become aware that many of life's problems aren't so simple after all. The way thing work in life isn't always very logical. People we depend upon aren't always faithful. We discover that we too can be very vulnerable - embarrassingly so! The landscape seems unfamiliar. We're in "sheep country."
Now, I don't for a moment believe that God wants us to be helpless, or lost, or dependent. Quite the contrary: I believe that God calls us to stand on our own two feet, to utilize every resource available to us, to keep our heads up, to solve our own problems, and to also address the needs of the world. God expects that we will create new and exciting solutions to things. God wants us to live joyously and confidently. No need to grovel; no virtue in self-pity.
But sometimes we need a shepherd. Most of us will experience something that stretches us to the breaking point, and we get stuck in an unfamiliar place. There's no map. No chart. No compass. There are just some things we can't "manage."
Is it a sign of weakness? Laziness? Cowardice? Not usually. Even the real "survivors" among us know their limits. Is it possible that those who are truly blest are not those who are always so strong and self-confident, those who seem to know all the answers, those who can "bluff" their way through.
Is it possible that those who are truly blest are those who can turn to their Higher Power and say, "God, I am in a strange and frightening land. I'm not sure where I am, and I don't know where I'm going. Lead me, Good Shepherd. Lead me to green pastures. Lead me beside the still waters. Restore my soul. Lead me through this time and place. I'm usually able to do this on my own, but I feel lost right now."
There's not a doubt in my mind about it. The Good Shepherd is "here" for us - if necessary, to carry us across the confusing and scary places, and then set us down on the other side where we can walk on our own - tall and safe.
It may be that life's most important task is to get to know this Good Shepherd, so that when these inevitable times come, we're willing to be led, or even carried; to "let go" of what has become impossible for us, and to let God do it for us.
The Good Shepherd is as close as our own breathing. All we need to do at times like that is just to ask. Amen
resource: Biblical Preaching Journal, Spring, 1997.