“Follow the Leader”

Psalm 23 and John 10:22-30
April 29, 2007
Saint Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming

It’s not hard to imagine the scene. Young David is out there with a flock in front of him. He is wearing a flowing robe. There is a crook in his hand and a covering over his head. He is out there tending the sheep that belong to his father. He is out there in the cold, battling things that threaten the sheep. While he is out there, he writes down the thoughts that become the greatest hymn book of all time, the book we have come to call the Psalms.

You could argue that the twenty-third is the most beloved of all the psalms. It is not my favorite. My favorite is the 121^st Psalm. I like it’s words, “I lift mine eyes to the hills, from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord…” Most of us prefer the 23^rd Psalm. It is one where David paints a picture of a God who is a shepherd. This shepherd leads his sheep to green grasses and still waters.

Now, have you heard about this? In New South Wales, Australia, these days, the shepherds sit in front of a lap top computer. The shepherd has traded in the shepherd’s crook for a mouse. He sits there with a cup of Starbucks coffee in his hand and his cell phone near by. I know this sounds a little crazy, but shepherding in New South Wales has taken on a new form. When the sheep are lambs, a small computer chip is placed in their ears. As they grow up they can be watched from just about anywhere. Throughout the day, the sheep move freely from grazing areas to drinking areas to sleeping areas. The passage from one of those places to the other, is only big enough for one sheep at a time to pass through. A spokesperson for the shepherding industry, a man whose name is Bill Murray says this, “We can keep up with them from the time they are lambs to the time they are lamb chops.”

At certain points in their lives, they are weighed as they pass from one field to the next. These scales can send the full grown sheep into a pasture where they’ll soon be off to market. These scales can notice when a ewe is pregnant and send it to a prenatal area. All this is done from a distance, without human contact, electronically.

What do you think about that? It tends to take away the power of the words, “The Lord is my shepherd?” doesn’t it? It tends to take away the power of Jesus when he said, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather hold on to the old images of shepherding, as Jesus being our shepherd, us hearing his voice, and following him. Which leads us to our gospel lesson for this morning, taken from the tenth chapter of John’s gospel.

It’s important for you to know the time and the place of where our lesson takes place. The time is the Festival of the Dedication, the Jewish celebration of the rededication of the temple. The place is the portico of Solomon, a place where Jewish kings would make judgments. It is here that the questions are asked of Jesus, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly?” The thing about it is that Jesus speaks of his sheep in front of an audience who don’t fit nicely into the sheep category. Those who are his sheep are described this way, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life. No one can snatch them from my hand.” I can tell you that one of the joys of growing up with Annie Grace and now Julie is that from a very early age, when they hear my voice, they turn towards me. That is a neat thing!

Now some of us may not like the idea of being sheep. The words sheep and sheepish generally aren’t complimentary or flattering. Sheep, after all, follow. Many of us are much more interested in being leaders than followers. We learn this from a very early age. Annie Grace already knows the honor of being a line leader at school! Besides all of that, sheep depend on shepherds. And most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, pride ourselves on being able to go it alone. We can do anything and everything all by ourselves, thank you very much. We do not like the idea that someone might need to guide us along.

This morning let me briefly mention the biggest benefit of being a sheep and following Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Here it is. I will tell you plainly. The Good Shepherd really loves his sheep. Jesus really loves us and is looking for us to love him back. Even if the flock is a large one, one of hundreds of sheep, each one is loved and precious and special.

Do you remember the great parable at the beginning of Luke’s fifteenth chapter? There Jesus tells three stories about things that are lost and then found. The first thing that is lost is a sheep. So Jesus asks, “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” The answer, of course, is no one, none of you. Leaving the safe and sound for the lost one is bad business. It is crazy, but that is just how it is with Jesus.

I read that a good shepherd can call all of his sheep by name. He knows them by how they look and how they act. This Jesus knows us completely and personally and loves each of us as if we are the only ones.

I heard a story just this week about a census taker who was walking through a neighborhood. This was back in the days when the census was completed by someone knocking on your door. It was in the day before you mailed or emailed the form in. This census taker knocked on the door of an apartment in Detroit. A young mother opened the door. Her youngest child was in her arms, five other children stayed close to her. The census taker explained who he was and he started asking his questions. Soon he came to, “How many children do you have?”

They were all right there. He could have counted them all by himself, but still he waited for their mother’s answer. She said, “Well, there is Debbie, Jimmy, Tracy, Beth, and…” The census taker stopped her. He was impatient. He had many more stops to make. He said, “Forget their names, Lady. Just give me the number.” She zinged back, “In this house, the children are not numbers, they are names!”

Beloved, we will always be names to Jesus. The Good Shepherd will always love every member of the flock with a fierce and lasting love. The Good Shepherd will love us even in our moments of foolishness and in times when we are weak.

Now we know about the shepherd. What do we know about being sheep? What about us? There are some things I have learned about sheep. You may have heard some of these before. Most sheep owners will be quick to tell you that sheep are not just fluffy, cuddly, and cute. That is the impression some of us have of sheep. We have the wrong impression. There is more to sheep than that. For one thing, sheep are difficult to raise. They are creatures of habit and left alone, they will graze over the same area, on the same spot of grass, until they kill it. Sheep have also been known to nibble themselves lost. They will keep their heads down, nibbling grass, an moving on from one piece of grass to another. And before they know it, it is dark and no one is around. The flock and the shepherd are no where to be found.

Sheep are also skittish and easily spooked. I’m told that even a piece of paper, blowing in the wind, can scatter a flock. You may also know that sheep are mean. The stronger ones will butt the weaker ones out of the way. Sheep are also greedy. They might see a clump of grass and push past a thorn bush to get to it, and in the process find themselves and their long coats tangled in the thorns. Sheep also stray.

I am told that in the highlands of Scotland, sheep will often wander off into the rocks and get into places they cannot get out of. The grass on these mountains is very sweet and sheep like it very much. So they will jump down to get to it. The problem is they cannot jump up again. So they are in trouble. They cry out for help. A good shepherd will not come to their immediate rescue. A good shepherd will let them stay down there until they have eaten all of the grass and are completely exhausted. When they are, a good shepherd will tie a rope around the sheep and pull them up. Why does the shepherd wait? Because, one shepherd said, “If I went down there, the sheep would be scared, dash over the edge, and be killed.”

And now, dear friends, there is no reason for us to be compared to sheep, right? Sheep are not easy, and neither are we. After all, we do not have the tendency to nibble ourselves lost, do we? And we are not easily frightened, right? There is no way that any of us would be mean or cruel or greedy, right? I am sure that not one of us would get so wrapped up in ourselves and our worlds that we would lose sight of where we were going.

And yet The Good Shepherd still loves us. The good shepherd still seeks after us. The Good Shepherd still calls out to us and the Good Shepherd still lays down his life for his sheep. And this Good Shepherd, Jesus, is searching for sheep who long for green pastures and still waters. This shepherd is offering long walks down paths of righteousness. He prepares tables, fills cup to overflowing, and anoints heads. This Good Shepherd is seeking sheep who will hear His voice and follow him, because down deep they know He knows the way.

All of scripture, friends, is really an invitation for a relationship with this shepherd. I want to close with this, a quote from Max Lucado and his book on the twenty-third Psalm, his book whose title is Traveling Light. He asks, “Why is it that the ones who most need a shepherd resist him so? Go home with that question on your heart. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to the writers of Homiletics Magazine for the opening idea for this sermon. I am told that twenty-first century shepherding is taking place in the way I described it. Thanks also to the writers for the story about the shepherd taking care of the sheep on the edge of a cliff. Special thanks also to our God who wants more than anything else to have a relationship with us and who guides us. I hope we will listen to His voice and follow Him).