Loving in Truth and Action
4-26-15 (Easter 4B)
1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
You see things from time to time that go a long way to “restore your faith in humanity,” as some people like to say. Occasionally, you see them on the news as the anchors give a rare report of some kind of “good news” or “unbelievable occurrence,” but these kind of stories are more often than not relegated to television features or websites that dedicate themselves to seeking these kinds of things out. We’re likely all familiar with at least one or two stories of incredible heroism that perform this function - the soldier who runs back headlong into enemy gunfire to rescue the civilian child or to ensure that none of his brothers in arms are left behind. As I was working on my sermon this week, I found this particular video of a young boy in Ohio who has Cerebral Palsy, but who decided to run a 400 meter race with his classmates:
Sometimes you have to look hard to find them, but there are stories like this that “restore our faith in humanity” in all kinds of places - these kinds of moments are what we called “Jesus Sightings” among the staff at the camp I worked at in college. We’d take special time at the end of each week and lift up our “Jesus Sightings” to celebrate the moments where we’d seen God at work in our fellow staff members and especially in our campers, and it was in these moments that we found both encouragement and a renewed energy to keep on in our ministry each week. It doesn’t take much explanation to understand why we called these kind of moments “Jesus Sightings,” nor is it hard to understand sometimes why we found so much encouragement and strength for ourselves in sharing them. They were visible reminders of the very attitude that Jesus takes toward his own sheep in today’s reading from John. Jesus speaks of a very special kind of relationship that exists between shepherds and their sheep - a deep and powerful knowledge of their flock that comes from significant periods of time spent together out in the fields, constantly counting, checking on their health, and watching carefully for predators over every hillside. And when those predators show up, the shepherd stands between them and his flock, willing to fight even to the death to defend the sheep that are his very livelihood.
Jesus talks about this kind of relationship in a very particular context - and he does so for a very particular reason. He’s just healed a man who was born blind and instead of the man’s healing being a time of pure joy and celebration, the religious officials nitpick every aspect of it because they can’t determine the source of Jesus’ power or how it was that a man they thought of as a sinner could have performed such a miracle in the first place. Jesus even tells them that they are the ones who are blind, and they still fail to understand him. And so Jesus’ depiction of shepherds, sheep, and hired hands is very intentional - just as hired hands run and scatter when the wolf comes and threatens them, these religious leaders cower and hide behind their own understandings of the law when faced with Jesus, the true Shepherd, whom they see as a threat - they actually cast out the formerly blind man. And so this is the situation into which Jesus speaks as he uses these images of hired hands, shepherds, sheep, and flocks.
As Jesus shows himself as the Shepherd, it’s not only a pretty big claim to make, but it’s also a big threat to these scribes and Pharisees, not to mention something of a slap in the face. Jesus claims that his flock is bigger than they think it is - he talks about laying down his life with the confidence that it will be given back to him - and he even accuses the scribes and Pharisees of not caring for the flock. They’re hard words to swallow, let alone fully understand when you think that you are the chief religious authority in your culture and that you are the ones who can even determine who is in and out of a flock… The scribes and the Pharisees didn’t understand what Jesus was doing in his ministry or why he was doing it. They couldn’t understand it - even though Jesus tried in several different ways to tell them in this larger passage from John. But at the same time, they didn’t want to understand or accept what he was doing, either. Jesus doesn’t just compare them to hired hands who run at threats - he also compares them to thieves and bandits. Where Jesus, the Good Shepherd, knows and loves his sheep - even so much that he lays down his very life for them, the scribes and Pharisees were content to prosper and live off of the sheep without truly caring for them or knowing them. After all, the sheep weren’t truly theirs - they were simply entrusted with their care from time to time.
This was the crux of Jesus’ criticism of the religious authorities of his time, and what lay at the heart of his own ministry - where they acted out of their own fear, out of their own needs for power and certainty, Jesus acts out of love. Where the religious authorities of his time looked for reasons to exclude, to categorize, and to discriminate, Jesus’ ministry is one of inclusion, of taking his love beyond the traditional boundaries and reaching out to those who need it most - to those sheep who are not “of this fold,” but who are just as worthy of inclusion and love. Where the scribes and Pharisees were concerned with enforcing the law and determining its finite details, Jesus set about fulfilling the law.
And it’s this very dichotomy that makes the passage from John’s letter so powerful, because it forces us to stop and to think, to re-evaluate our own positions, our own sense of ministry, our own actions and decisions today. John makes it sound so simple: “We know God’s love for us by this, that he laid down his life for us — and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?” And yet every one of us gathered here this morning knows how hard those words truly are to hear, let alone to live. We know that we are called to love, not just in word and speech, but in truth and action… but how easy is it for us to do it in the way that Christ truly calls us to do? How easy is it for us to take that principle, that idea of loving one another, of laying down our lives to that very purpose? And how far are we willing to take that commandment in the process, especially when it comes to those we might think of as not being part of “our fold?”
It’s a tough question to ask ourselves - and it’s even tougher when we realize that we’re frequently good at taking care of our own. One of the best things about this community that we see demonstrated time and time again is how quickly we gather together without a second thought of using our “worldly goods” to help a brother or sister in need: when so many people in and around Vandalia and further wore pink on just one day to show love and support to Kim Hodde and her family, it was showing love in truth and action. We showed love in truth and action when we designated our Noisy Can offering to help people like the Bontz family after Draven’s accident. And these are things that we continue to do and will continue to do because it’s a small town and we take care of our own. And make no mistake - those are “Jesus Sightings” just as powerful as the children running with Matt and cheering him on.
But how well do we take that same principle and apply it to those who aren’t “our own,” who come from other folds than ours? How do we retrain ourselves to not make the snap judgments, to look beyond the other and to see another, loved child of God whom we are called to love, as well? It’s hard to do - perhaps one of the hardest things that we are called to do as part of Jesus’ own flock. Our hearts may not always want to go out and live into that love that we are called to embody - we may have every reason not to love someone or to help them. Loving some people may go against everything we’ve ever been taught about the way the world is supposed to work. But it’s in those moments that we need to turn once again to Christ, to remember his own example, and to find our encouragement there - to know that even as we run our own race, struggling at each step of the way, it is Christ our Shepherd who runs behind us, ever shouting “Let’s Go! Let’s Go!” and urging us onward. May we always keep our eyes open for those “Jesus Sightings,” and may we strive to be the “Jesus Sighting” that someone else sees in their own lives. To God be the Glory. Amen.
1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
Loving In Truth And Action
Sometimes you have to look hard to find them, but there are stories like this that “restore our faith in humanity” in all kinds of places - these kinds of moments are what we called “Jesus Sightings” among the staff at the camp I worked at in college. We’d take special time at the end of each week and lift up our “Jesus Sightings” to celebrate the moments where we’d seen God at work in our fellow staff members and especially in our campers, and it was in these moments that we found both encouragement and a renewed energy to keep on in our ministry each week. It doesn’t take much explanation to understand why we called these kind of moments “Jesus Sightings,” nor is it hard to understand sometimes why we found so much encouragement and strength for ourselves in sharing them. They were visible reminders of the very attitude that Jesus takes toward his own sheep in today’s reading from John. Jesus speaks of a very special kind of relationship that exists between shepherds and their sheep - a deep and powerful knowledge of their flock that comes from significant periods of time spent together out in the fields, constantly counting, checking on their health, and watching carefully for predators over every hillside. And when those predators show up, the shepherd stands between them and his flock, willing to fight even to the death to defend the sheep that are his very livelihood.
Jesus talks about this kind of relationship in a very particular context - and he does so for a very particular reason. He’s just healed a man who was born blind and instead of the man’s healing being a time of pure joy and celebration, the religious officials nitpick every aspect of it because they can’t determine the source of Jesus’ power or how it was that a man they thought of as a sinner could have performed such a miracle in the first place. Jesus even tells them that they are the ones who are blind, and they still fail to understand him. And so Jesus’ depiction of shepherds, sheep, and hired hands is very intentional - just as hired hands run and scatter when the wolf comes and threatens them, these religious leaders cower and hide behind their own understandings of the law when faced with Jesus, the true Shepherd, whom they see as a threat - they actually cast out the formerly blind man. And so this is the situation into which Jesus speaks as he uses these images of hired hands, shepherds, sheep, and flocks.
As Jesus shows himself as the Shepherd, it’s not only a pretty big claim to make, but it’s also a big threat to these scribes and Pharisees, not to mention something of a slap in the face. Jesus claims that his flock is bigger than they think it is - he talks about laying down his life with the confidence that it will be given back to him - and he even accuses the scribes and Pharisees of not caring for the flock. They’re hard words to swallow, let alone fully understand when you think that you are the chief religious authority in your culture and that you are the ones who can even determine who is in and out of a flock… The scribes and the Pharisees didn’t understand what Jesus was doing in his ministry or why he was doing it. They couldn’t understand it - even though Jesus tried in several different ways to tell them in this larger passage from John. But at the same time, they didn’t want to understand or accept what he was doing, either. Jesus doesn’t just compare them to hired hands who run at threats - he also compares them to thieves and bandits. Where Jesus, the Good Shepherd, knows and loves his sheep - even so much that he lays down his very life for them, the scribes and Pharisees were content to prosper and live off of the sheep without truly caring for them or knowing them. After all, the sheep weren’t truly theirs - they were simply entrusted with their care from time to time.
This was the crux of Jesus’ criticism of the religious authorities of his time, and what lay at the heart of his own ministry - where they acted out of their own fear, out of their own needs for power and certainty, Jesus acts out of love. Where the religious authorities of his time looked for reasons to exclude, to categorize, and to discriminate, Jesus’ ministry is one of inclusion, of taking his love beyond the traditional boundaries and reaching out to those who need it most - to those sheep who are not “of this fold,” but who are just as worthy of inclusion and love. Where the scribes and Pharisees were concerned with enforcing the law and determining its finite details, Jesus set about fulfilling the law.
And it’s this very dichotomy that makes the passage from John’s letter so powerful, because it forces us to stop and to think, to re-evaluate our own positions, our own sense of ministry, our own actions and decisions today. John makes it sound so simple: “We know God’s love for us by this, that he laid down his life for us — and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?” And yet every one of us gathered here this morning knows how hard those words truly are to hear, let alone to live. We know that we are called to love, not just in word and speech, but in truth and action… but how easy is it for us to do it in the way that Christ truly calls us to do? How easy is it for us to take that principle, that idea of loving one another, of laying down our lives to that very purpose? And how far are we willing to take that commandment in the process, especially when it comes to those we might think of as not being part of “our fold?”
It’s a tough question to ask ourselves - and it’s even tougher when we realize that we’re frequently good at taking care of our own. One of the best things about this community that we see demonstrated time and time again is how quickly we gather together without a second thought of using our “worldly goods” to help a brother or sister in need: when so many people in and around Vandalia and further wore pink on just one day to show love and support to Kim Hodde and her family, it was showing love in truth and action. We showed love in truth and action when we designated our Noisy Can offering to help people like the Bontz family after Draven’s accident. And these are things that we continue to do and will continue to do because it’s a small town and we take care of our own. And make no mistake - those are “Jesus Sightings” just as powerful as the children running with Matt and cheering him on.
But how well do we take that same principle and apply it to those who aren’t “our own,” who come from other folds than ours? How do we retrain ourselves to not make the snap judgments, to look beyond the other and to see another, loved child of God whom we are called to love, as well? It’s hard to do - perhaps one of the hardest things that we are called to do as part of Jesus’ own flock. Our hearts may not always want to go out and live into that love that we are called to embody - we may have every reason not to love someone or to help them. Loving some people may go against everything we’ve ever been taught about the way the world is supposed to work. But it’s in those moments that we need to turn once again to Christ, to remember his own example, and to find our encouragement there - to know that even as we run our own race, struggling at each step of the way, it is Christ our Shepherd who runs behind us, ever shouting “Let’s Go! Let’s Go!” and urging us onward. May we always keep our eyes open for those “Jesus Sightings,” and may we strive to be the “Jesus Sighting” that someone else sees in their own lives. To God be the Glory. Amen.
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