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Sermon

That’s not the way we do things around here Jesus

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Mark 2:23-3:6
Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. (Read the whole passage)

Today begins the second half of the church year, the first of Ordinary Time or Sundays after Pentecost. For the first half of the church year, we told the stories of Jesus’ life, beginning with Advent and Christ’ birth at Christmas. Than we continued on through Epiphany and Jesus’ baptism to Lent, and the story of Jesus going to the cross on Good Friday. And then there was the resurrection on Easter and Pentecost, the beginning of the Church. Today, we begin a six month period, 26 Sundays, of telling the stories of Jesus’ ministry, teachings and parables. 

This year we will hear mostly from the Gospel of Mark. Mark is the oldest and first Gospel to be written. And Mark’s Jesus is perhaps the most interesting. Unlike Matthew where Jesus is like a Jewish religious authority, or Luke where Jesus is a kind healer, or John where Jesus is like a philosopher, Mark’s Jesus is a wild and untamed prophet. A cantankerous mystic who has got a mission follow yet keeps getting sidetracked by people looking for help with their issues.

And today, there is no warm up to the story… Mark throws us straight into the deep end of what Jesus is facing. It is only chapter 2 and the Pharisees are already plotting to destroy Jesus. 

The disciples and Jesus are walking along, and as they walk the disciples are plucking some heads of grain from the nearby wheat fields, presumably to munch on. Yet, this almost mindless act catches the ire of Pharisees. For it is the Sabbath and plucking grain seems a lot like work. And working on the sabbath is against the 3rd commandment – Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. 

And so begins the ongoing conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, who find Jesus’ constant flaunting of the rules to be infuriating. 

So then Jesus enters into the local synagogue where the Pharisees are waiting for him. Waiting for him so that they can catch him breaking the rules, doing something truly offensive and awful… hoping that he might heal a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. How terrible of Jesus!

And Jesus falls for the trap… or does he, as he scolds the Pharisees for their hardness of heart. 

In case it hasn’t become obvious by now, the issue isn’t what Jesus is doing on the Sabbath. Rather, it is a familiar problem to us. 

It is the problem of “That’s not the way we do things around here.”

The summer following my first year of university, I got a job working as a camp counsellor at one of the Lutheran Bible Camps near to my hometown. Now, if you think churches can get stuck in ruts of holding to traditions and rules above all else, Bible Camps have this problem on steroids. Campers, both young and old, come year after year, generation after generation, and they expect everything to stay exactly the same. That they will sing the same songs, eat the same food, play the same games, paddle the same canoes, sleep in the same cabins, make the same crafts and on and on and on. 

My first summer working at camp, most of the staff was new, including the Camp’s Director. Being new meant we didn’t know the old traditions and rules… and there was no way we could even try to keep them and live up to expectations. So every week, when all the campers had arrived and we gathered together for the first time, the Camp Director would begin by having everyone chant three times, “That’s not the way we used to do it.” 

And then he would say, “we have heard you and we know that things are different this year. And things aren’t going to be like they used to be anymore…  but this is still the camp you know and love, even if how we do camp is a little different.”

Whether we are the Pharisees or people going to bible camp or folks who go to church, it can be easy for us to hold on to the traditions and rules of how we think things should go. And sometimes we can get a bit overzealous, holding onto the traditions no matter the cost. 

But usually the rules and the traditions were created in order to help us. The law of Moses and Israel was created so that God’s people could know God and God’s love and mercy. Bible camp brings far flung people together for a week of intentional Christian community, and the traditions help bind them together. Church helps communities of people like us come together and tell the story of Jesus again and again through lifetimes and generations so that it becomes part our bones, part of our families, part of our history and our future. 

But when the traditions and rules and laws and practices become more important than the purpose they were created for… they begin to do the opposite. They deny access to God’s love and mercy, they create tension and divide communities, they tell different stories of community, stories of judgement and conflict, exclusion and isolation. 

“That’s not the way we do things around here.”

The Pharisees think they are protecting God by making sure the rules are followed at all costs.

But then God comes traipsing into their communities in the person of Jesus… and their reaction is to plot to kill God in order to protect the laws and rules.

And likewise, we are guilty of the same, protecting the rules and traditions even as the spirit comes blowing into our midst showing us new ways of being. 

Thankfully, Jesus doesn’t show up expecting something different from us. Jesus knows that we are fallible human beings, prone to clinging to things that ultimately get in our own way. 

And so Jesus reminds the Pharisees that life comes first. “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?”

Or in other words, what are these laws and rules for in the end. They are to help us know God and God’s love and mercy for us. 

And that is what Jesus has come for. 

To show us God’s love and mercy. 

Mercy that sometimes means the rules have to be broken. 

Love that sometimes means the traditions have to be adapted and changed. 

Because here is the thing.

Sometimes we are the rule and law oriented Pharisees. Sometimes we are the protectors of tradition at Bible camp or church. 

But sometimes we are also hungry disciples. We are also the man with the withered hand. We also people coming to camp or to church in need of God’s love and mercy. People who need a sign of God’s promise of life because we do not see it anywhere else in the world.  

And so Jesus comes. 

Jesus comes into our communities that cling to wrong things and try to protect the rules and laws and traditions that get in our own way. 

And Jesus reaches out to us, reaches out to our hungry souls, to our withered bodies, to our tired spirits. To people tired of keeping the rules and to people tired of being crushed by the rules. 

And Jesus reminds us of why we are here in the first place. 

That God has brought us together and given us the tools to share God’s love and mercy to the world – laws and traditions that help us to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. Tools that should remind us that God’s mercy is for everyone, and God’s mercy is especially for us. 

And even when we loose sight that, even when we are busy trying to protect the ways we have always done it, Jesus comes to us again and again. 

Jesus comes to us week after week, right in the very places where we try the hardest to hold onto the rules. 

And Jesus comes to us in the waters of Baptism, in the Word we hear proclaimed and in the meal of mercy we shared. Jesus comes and takes our hands and restoring us to wholeness. Jesus grabs hold of us and welcomes us into God’s mercy and love, into God’s promise of new life. 

Sermon

Better than investigating the mysteries of the Trinity

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John 3:1-17
There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”…
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (Read the whole passage)

We last heard the story of Nicodemus back in January. As part of our trial through the Narrative Lectionary we heard his story in the lead up Lent, and his confusion was one we resonated with. Jesus is being especially confusing in his conversation with Nicodemus. And today is no different, but we hear this story again for a different reason. We hear it for its connection to the feast day that we celebrate today, and the way this conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus speaks about God. 

Holy Trinity Sunday is a celebration a thousand years old… as the church tried to reign in the heresies taught by earlier missionaries to newly conquered peoples in Northern Europe, bishops of these northern kingdoms ordered the celebration of Trinity Sunday in order spread right belief.

And since then, the practice has stuck. So once a year, on the Sunday after Pentecost, just before we begin six months of green Sundays in order to hear the teachings and parables of Jesus, we remind ourselves what good and proper Christians believe. 

And we believe in the Trinity – God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Co-equal, co-eternal, all of one being, yet distinct persons. But not divided by identity or purpose, instead all of the same essence, all of the same God. Three in one, one in three – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  

Simple right? 

Now you can all explain the proper, orthodox understanding of the Trinity?

Maybe you aren’t ready to teach a Sunday School class on the Trinity just yet? Well in fact, most of the things we teach about the Trinity are wrong, especially those children’s sermons where the pastor pulls out water in 3 states, or a pie or an apple in order to explain how God is one yet three. Usually what ends up being taught it one of the many heresies of the early church. 

In fact, the only thing that might be completely reliable about Trinitarian doctrine is as soon as you try to teach it, you are likely to become a heretic. 

And so you might wonder, why does the church set aside one Sunday each year to talk about this doctrine describing God rather than tell the stories of God and God’s people and God in Christ like we do all the other Sundays. Why do we have a day that is supposed to be for making us believe the right things, where we so often we end up teaching the wrong things? Why observe this Sunday at all and not stick to the regular program that we know and trust?

Trinity Sunday feels like it leaves us with this murky, mysterious, hard to explain doctrine of the church. The one God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

And yet, some of the haziness and fogginess of our understanding of the Trinity just maybe says more about what it means to live out this Trinitarian faith – this Christian Faith, than a solid definition of the Trinity. Because the challenge in understanding Trinity feels a lot like the challenge of trying to make sense of what it means to be a part of this mysterious and confusing family we call the Church. Just like we know that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all of the same God, we might not be very clear on just how it is that these three pieces come together into one God. And in the same way we know that we are are brothers and sisters in faith, and that our little community at Good Shepherd is just one part of a larger Body of Christ, we might not be clear on just how it is that we all come together into one Church.

In fact, most days we probably wonder just what is God doing with us… and why is the business of faith so rife with uncertainty.

Perhaps it is fitting here (at Good Shepherd), one part of the Interlake Regional Shared Ministry, that we observe and celebrate Trinity Sunday today. Perhaps our understating and clarity around Trinity feels pretty similar to our understanding and clarity about our future… in particular about the announcement (your pastor) made last week regarding the call to serve the shared ministry. Already we have been journeying towards something we that we do not fully understand and that we are not sure of. Coming together with 4 other congregations to share pastors and how all of that is going to work between 5 points, one full time pastor, one half time pastor and one supply pastor for the time being. 

As if that wasn’t enough, my announcement that I am not taking the call to serve the shared ministry and rather beginning a search for another call actually means that I am going to technically remain the pastor of Good Shepherd a little longer than we thought. Yet… I am still in the end going to be serving as the regional pastor… but in an interim capacity. And all of that is compounded by a new search for a candidate whom God is calling to this new ministry, while I search for what God is calling me to next. 

If we thought Trinity was confusing… just try understanding the Interlake Regional Shared Ministry for a few minutes.

So maybe struggling to understand Trinity for 2000 years has really just been practice for trying to understand just what God is up to with us at any given moment. 

Or maybe… just maybe, understanding isn’t what this is all about. Nicodemus didn’t leave the conversation with Jesus today seeming to understand any more than when he first showed up. 

Yet, Jesus reminded him of something important… and in the midst of all the confusion of Trinity and the Interlake Regional Shared Ministry, the reminder is the same for us. 

Here in this place, the things that we do understand and know and trust will remain the same.

God still continues to gather us as the Body of Christ – the Church. 
God continues to hear our confessions while offering us mercy and forgiveness. 
God continues to open our hearts and minds to hear the word, the Good News of Jesus Christ. 
God continues to stir our hearts to faith because of that same good news. 
God continues to bind us together in prayer and peace.
God continues to welcome us to the table of the Lord – the communion of the saints where we share in the feast of heaven. 
God continues to offer us Christ’s very Body in order that we might become that which we eat –  bread for the life of the world. 
And God continues to send us out transformed and renewed to be workers in the Kingdom. 

And all of that happens because of the God who has named and claimed us in Baptism, the risen Christ who has shown us the way to new life, Jesus who meets us here week after week. 

Whether or not we understand the Trinity and whether or not we know just what is going to happen to us as a congregation and fledgling new ministry in the Interlake, God’s promise to us remains… ‘how’ it all works is not really for us to worry about. God is assuring us that here, among this community and family of faith, that the things we need are still given – that Jesus continues to meet us here in Word and Sacrament. 

As Martin Luther’s right hand, Philip Melanchthon wrote about the Trinity, 

“We adore the mysteries of the Godhead. That is better than to investigate them.”

Or in other words, better than understanding the Trinity and how it all works, is to gather together in worship and communion as the Body of Christ. 

And the Mysterious Triune God who calls and gathers us together will do there rest. The Trinity will continue to bring us into New Life, found in Christ. 

Sermon

That’s not how faith works

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*As I am currently on vacation, here is a guest sermon from Rev. Courtenay Reedman Parker, whom you can find on Twitter @ReedmanParker and on Instagram: creedmanparker

Gospel: John 17:6-19

[Jesus prayed:] 6“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. (Read the whole text)

Here we are, the end of the Easter season. Seven weeks later, many stories and experiences of new life – unexpected life. These stories begin with grief and loss: death, an empty tomb, and no body. They do not begin in a place of joy or jubilation, or even peace. They begin from a place of fear and anxiety. From a place of not knowing what the future will hold.

In this season of Easter, these 50 days between the Resurrection and Pentecost, we spend a lot of time within the setting of that first day of the week. And the starting place for most of the these stories is so far from what the worship committee plans. The faithful women, the disciples, those who followed Jesus, are in a state of shock and disbelief. They can’t see Jesus when he stands before them, they don’t believe the testimony of others – at least not at first.

Like us, the early followers of Jesus, the faithful women, the disciples, have ideas about who God is, and how God acts in the world, how God acts through us. And what they were seeing and hearing didn’t match those expectations. Those ideas. Their long held beliefs.

Like the disciples, the faithful women, the early followers of Jesus, it’s hard for us to see, to understand, to follow Jesus, God, even when God is staring us right in the face!

But these stories don’t stay in a place of disbelief or lack of sight for long. Because God stays with those people – God stays with us – until they see. Until they believe.

Seeing what was previously un-seen. Believing in what previously was un-thinkable, un-heard of, un-imaginable.

Jesus lives. Alleluia!

New life, it turns out, is full of unexpected, unanticipated realities. Ask any new(ish) parent, and they will likely tell you, “this was not what I expected”. New life is hard work. Navigating these new realities, navigating not only the new life, but the new life and role as parent not easy. Not by a long shot.

And for all the planning, all the reading, all the advice and preparations, the most accurate version of what to expect when you’re expecting is to get ready for the unexpected. It would be a short book.

And maybe that’s part of the problem, part of the challenge for us – the un-expected. the un-planned.

Like it or not, we like to know what to expect. We like to know what’s ahead of us. We like to follow the rules. Or at least know what the rules are, so we know what the consequence is of breaking them!

We see this throughout scripture – how rule-bound the Pharisees become, not being able to separate the rule of law from the spirit of the law. Good and faithful people become so rule-bound that they are unable to see how God is at work in and through the ways and means and people that were above or beyond the rule.

Today is no different. In our first reading from Acts, we encounter the disciples taking up the task of choosing who from their community will fill Judas’ spot as a disciple after Judas’ betrayal of Jesus.

This community, and this group of people in particular, has already been through a lot! They want, and probably need, someone who they can trust. Someone they can depend on. Someone who won’t betray them the way Judas betrayed Jesus. They want to ensure that they “get it right”. As though getting it right will somehow ensure that they will not be disappointed again in the future. Or worse, that they will disappoint God in their decision making. That not getting it right, will somehow reflect upon their faithfulness.

But we know that even when we follow all the rules, when we follow the letter of the law, when we attend to every detail – it’s still possible to be disappointed. It’s still possible to not get it right, not all the way anyhow.

And that’s the rub. When we’ve done all the things we’ve been taught to do, and still find ourselves wanting… waiting… hoping for things to turn out in a way we can predict and anticipate. And then disappointed when they don’t.

But here’s the thing: that’s not how faith works. It’s certainly not how God works.

Note how the disciples put so much time and effort into choosing the correct candidate to take Judas’ place. Note the “rules.” Has to be a man, has to be someone there from the beginning, has to be someone who has witnessed the resurrection. [Only] two qualify. We learn their names. Lots are drawn. A man was chosen. And we never hear from him (or the other guy) again….

Because God was busy calling Paul. And Lydia. And the Ethiopian Eunuch. And so many more who weren’t in the narrow subset of ideas about who could be God’s messengers.

This is who God is. And this is who God reveal’s God’s-self to be over and over and over again. When God’s people become so rule bound that they cannot see God’s unconditional love and mercy, God chooses Mary to mother God’s son. Jesus arrives in a lowly stable and leaves the world by a procession on a donkey and hanging on a cross. And in his life, Jesus chooses the least likely candidates to help him proclaim God’s message to the world. He hangs around with the weirdos and the misfits, the outcasts and the strangers no one wanted – or by virtue of following the law – ought to be hanging around to be ritually clean. Jesus does all the things the law, the rules, tell him not to do. Talk about unexpected. This is who God is. Unexpected.

God does the unexpected. That’s what new life is – unexpected. The way God uses us is unexpected. How we get to live out God’s love and mercy in the world usually unexpected.

And so too, for us here gathered at Gimli Lutheran Church, maybe wondering how on earth is God working in and through us? Maybe you are feeling like you’ve followed all the rules and are still coming up short. Maybe you wonder where God is in the midst of this time of transition – between pastoral leadership, as the place and prominence of the church – not just here, but towns and cities, in families and communities changes.

Like the faithful women and the disciples on that first morning of the resurrection, we might feel like we are staring into an empty tomb. Like the disciples after Jesus’ ascension, we too might wonder how to find a leader to help us grow in our faith and equip others to know about Jesus and this great love God has for us.

But God does not wonder about us. God knows us inside and out. God knows our deepest desires and longings. God knows our fears and our dreams. God knows both what we want and what we need. And just like the early disciples, God is already out in the world calling forth new life, new leadership for this community. God is already stirring in us new life, new ideas, new ways of being that we can expect will be completely unexpected to us. This is who God is. Unexpected in the grace extended. Unexpected in the mercy given. Unexpected in the ways God continues to bring about new life in us and throughout the world.

Sermon

Go over to this chariot and join it – Electing a Bishop

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*This is the reflection I shared during Saturday Morning Prayer at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada’s Manitoba Northwestern Ontario Synod’s 17th Biennial Convention. The delegates were in the process of electing a new Bishop, and later that morning elected an excellent candidate (and good friend of mine) the Rev. Jason Zinko. *

Acts 8:26-40

26Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) 27So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 28and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” 30So Philip ran up to it… (Read the whole passage)

Go over to this chariot and join it.

How very different are the words given to us today by the reading from Acts and the reading from 1 John. 

Go over to this chariot and join it. 

A command. An oracle of the divine. A word sent from on high to stir our hearts, to get them beating a little more quickly than we like given to us in the story go Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch.

And then First John’s gentle reminder that: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear,” sounds so very different, almost alien to God’s command today. 

Go over to this chariot and join it.

And yet they both speak directly to our worries and anxieties. 

It is almost as if God likes to mess with us. 

The spirit is causing us anxiety today and we know it, we feel it. God’s call is just as often jarring and terrifying, as it is a gentle summons whispered in our ears. 

The spirit is poking at us right in that spot where we would rather that God didn’t. Right in the place where we are vulnerable and soft, right where we know that this is going to cause us to give up comfortable, familiar, stable, low-risk ways of following that we would rather cling to. 

There is no going back anymore, there is no reaching and longing for the past anymore, the glory days are not here again, the chariot that the spirit is pointing us to is not the one with well worn imprints of our behinds formed in its seats. 

Go over to this chariot and join it.

For the past six months in the Interlake, 5 Lutheran congregations and one Anglican parish have been journeying towards formal shared ministry by trying out shared Sunday services. And this has meant that most Sundays, I have been at different churches than the ones I was in the week before. 

A couple of months ago, I brought my daughter Maeve with me to Teulon and Arborg for the first time. Maeve is not quite 2 years old and of course isn’t ready to be left alone while I preach or preside.

When I got to Teulon and began getting ready for worship, both Maeve and I were apprehensive. She knows all about church, but this was still a new place and new people. And I didn’t have our reliable surrogate Good Shepherd grandmas, I needed to ask new people to sit with my daughter during worship. 

Yet, before I could figure out who to ask to sit wit her, Brian came into the office to say hello. Then Brian introduced himself to Maeve and invited her to sit with him. And with my relieved consent, Brian took her by the hand to go find a place to sit. And throughout worship, Brian, and his wife Lois and a few kids from the congregation, sat with Maeve, letting her know that she had a place with them. That she was welcome.

Of course later that morning the same thing happened in Arborg and then again the next week in Lundar.

Go over to this chariot and join it.

Oh, how we wish that the spirit had our familiar, comfortable, known chariots in mind. Oh how we wish that “chariot” was a euphemism for glory days, and “ join it” meant that things are going to be easy. 

But is not easy to follow that command, to just get up and go to the next thing leaving behind all that is familiar and comfortable. Nor is it easy to be ones that God is sending someone to. 

But here is the thing. Maeve and my son Oscar… and even my wife Courtenay and I and other young people don’t remember the glory days… that familiar chariot is not familiar to us, we are often Ethiopian Eunuchs in a foreign land. And the church as it is now is the only chariot we have ever known. This chariot has always been aging and declining. Budgets have always been tight, and there are usually lots of empty pews to choose from in worship.

And this church as we are now is the church that we love.

This is the church where the spirit has sent Philips to welcome my children and bring them by the hand into community. Philips who are passing on the faith to them. Philips who sit beside them to hear the Word anew, who are welcoming them at the baptismal font and showing them a place at the communion table. 

The chariot that the spirit is pointing us to now, the chariot that the spirit is pointing a new Bishop among us to, the church that we are in this moment is the one that God is calling us to be. 

Go over to this chariot and join it.

This morning God’s word for us might be uncomfortable, and might cause us anxiety. And we might wonder just why the spirit cannot leave us alone and let us be…

Because that is now God’s way with us, because being left alone and let be is not what we need. 

The Spirit is calling our anxious hearts to Go over to this chariot and join it, because it is in this new chariot, in this next step and this new calling to new ministry will be found the good news of Jesus Christ, the spirit’s gift resurrection and new life given for Philip, the Ethiopian Eunuch and given for us.   

Sermon

Good Shepherd Sunday – An Easter Let Down

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John 10:11-18

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The 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…. read the whole passage

Today marks the half-way point of the seven week season of Easter and the fourth Sunday of Easter is called Good Shepherd Sunday. We hear images of the Good Shepherd on the 4th Sunday. 

And in some respects this Sunday represents a departure from the urgency and immediacy of Easter that we have been hearing for the first 3 weeks of Easter. We first heard the story of the women at the tomb fleeing in fear and telling no one. We followed it up the next week by going back to the day of the resurrection and the fearful disciples hiding out as Jesus appeared in their midst, and how Thomas missed the whole thing. And then last week, we again returned to the day of the resurrection as Jesus appeared to the disciples, this time according to Luke, where they thought he was a ghost. 

Three weeks of immediate urgent experiences of the resurrection. 

Honestly…today can be a bit of a let down. 

While these words are familiar and much beloved… I serve a church named Good Shepherd after all… they don’t seem to carry that same earthiness of the resurrection stories that we have been hearing. Jesus giving one of his wordy speeches found in John’s gospel isn’t as exciting as appearing to the disciples who think he is a ghost. 

Yet these familiar words about Good Shepherds are not really about the hard and unheralded job of being a sheep tender, and Jesus isn’t really talking about the job of tending sheep out in a literal field. 

We have a habit of taking this good shepherd passage out of context… we name churches, we make idyllic pastoral art work of Shepherd Jesus, we compose sanguine hymns about “The King of Love my Shepherd is” all clinging to the sweet and cuddly of image of Jesus gently caring for little lambs (the lambs are us by the way). 

The image makes us feel good, Jesus the Shepherd is like a warm blanket we can wrap around ourselves to keep our faith warm and comfortable. 

And to be certain, there are times in our lives when we need that image of the good shepherd loving and caring for us. 

But this passage is a little more complex than we tend to make it. 

This monologue delivered by Jesus doesn’t happen in isolation, nor are these words intended to provide comfort to the disciples or the crowds following Jesus. Rather, we have to go back to a story that we usually hear during Lent – the story of the blind man. Jesus heals a man born blind and moves on. Then the blind man’s community question his healing and declare that he is still a sinner and eventually send him away. Jesus finds him again, reveals that it is Jesus, the Messiah, who has healed him and then says that it is the religious leaders who are blind. 

Nearby pharisees overhear and challenge Jesus. 

And this speech about the Good Shepherd is what results. 

So imagine Jesus, with a man whose blindness has been healed yet has been sent away by the religious leaders of his community, standing in the bustling streets just outside the synagogue. And there is Jesus and the pharisees are arguing about sin, arguing about the responsibility of leaders to tend and care for God’s people. And Jesus says this, 

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand sees the wolf coming and runs away…”

These words of Jesus take on a very different meaning and character. 

They are fiery and bold. They are words that condemn rather than comfort. 

They condemn the leadership of the pharisees. The religious leaders of God’s chosen people who have been given the responsibility of making God’s love and mercy and forgiveness accessible to all. The religious authorities of Jesus’ day had turned this responsibility into a commodity, into a withholding. They withheld righteousness for the privileged few, only for those who could afford its great cost, only for those who could afford to keep the law of Moses. They had turned their call to serve, into selfish ambition and benefit.

They had let their self-concern, their desire to seek their own benefit, get in the way of this task given to them by God. 

And Jesus was calling them on it. 

Of course this tension and conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees is what eventually leads to the cross, but by the end of this particular speech about the Good Shepherd those listening in were divided into two camps. Those who thought Jesus was nuts, and those who thought he might have a point. 

And while the church has been guilty of the same kind of letting our own selfishness get in the way of our call to make God’s mercy accessible -remember Martin Luther’s central issue in the reformation and the sale of indulgences – we probably find ourselves somewhere the middle those two groups of listeners. 

Somedays we probably think that Jesus and his habit of turning everything we think makes sense upside down is infuriating. 

And other days we can see that Jesus has a point. 

And we know we have the same habit of letting ourselves get in our own way as the pharisees do. We know that we can make things more about ourselves and what we want or fear or desire or detest or prefer or abhor. We know that we get in our own way when it comes to our relationships with others, with our families and friends, with our work and vocations, and of course, even here at church. 

We cannot help it, we are human. We get in the way of God’s calling to share God’s mercy with God’s people. We make things about ourselves and we know it. 

Yet, as Jesus calls out the the pharisees for their selfishness, for self-centredness, he also proclaims something else. 

Something deeply tied to this resurrection season that we are in. For you see on Good Shepherd Sunday, half way through the season of Easter we pivot from the urgency of the resurrection to trying to figure out with the rest of the church, just what we are to do next. 

And heard in context, this Good Shepherd speech of Jesus’ retains some of that resurrection urgency. 

As Jesus calls out the pharisees for getting in their own way of proclaiming God’s mercy for the world, Jesus also declares that God is doing what we cannot. 

The Good Shepherd is laying down his life for the self. 

Jesus is laying down the self – God’s self – for the sake of the world. 

Human beings just cannot get out of our own way. 

So God does what we cannot do, and gives up self. 

God gives up God-like power and God-like control, in order to give us mercy. In order that we may be shown forgiveness. In order that we can hear good news in our dying world. 

God gives it all up for our sake. 

And Jesus know that this will take him to the cross. That selfish humanity will kill God in order to take God’s place. 

But as we have been hearing for the past three weeks, God’s selfless act incarnation, of coming in flesh to live and be among us combine with God’s triumph over death on the cross…

That leads also to empty tombs. 

To empty tombs that frighten Mary Magdalene and the other women who loved Jesus. 
To resurrection appearances in locked rooms that remind Thomas that the one he loves lives. 
To resurrection callings to make us witnesses of all that we have seen and heard. 

And the empty tomb leads us to the Good Shepherd. 

To the Good Shepherd who lays down his life, his self for our sake. 
To the Good Shepherd who gives up the self for the sake of the world, for our sake. 

So that God’s love and mercy is given to us in the Word of God that hear. 
So that God can clothe us with forgiveness, life and salvation in the waters of baptism. 
So that God can give us God’s Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper, so that we can be shed our selfishness and become God’s Body the Church. 

The Good Shepherd does what we cannot. 
The Good Shepherd lays down his life for us in order that we might have new life. 

Life given by the resurrected Christ, who is shepherding us into this new  resurrection reality. 

And so today, on this Good Shepherd Sunday, we are reminded that this is not about being sheep and God being our heavenly shepherd. 

But rather, that the Good Shepherd Christ is leading us, the Body of Christ, into a new resurrection world in order that we become Easter people.