Wondrous Loving Faithfulness

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday May 3, 2009, the 4th Sunday in Easter.

Acts 4:5-12
Psalm 23
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

We’re used to hearing “the Good Shepherd.” When we hear it we have a feeling that good means more than just “average” or “adequate.” It means far more than good. In this case, the Good Shepherd means more than “the great” or “the wonderful” or even “the stellar” shepherd. This is the exemplary shepherd. This is the shepherd par excellence. We use phrases like King of kings and Lord of lords to describe Jesus. In this same vein it is proper to call Jesus the Shepherd of shepherds.

The Good Shepherd, there is no more beloved image in Christian scripture than this. Of course we love the shepherd. The shepherd is the one who not only cares for the sheep; the sheep belong to the shepherd’s fold. And as we are told here in John’s gospel, the shepherd knows his sheep and the sheep know the shepherd.

But still, given the status shepherds had in ancient society, this isn’t much of a complement. In our culture, to call someone the Good Shepherd—even the Shepherd of all shepherds is like calling someone the best migrant worker ever.[1] Even at that, we’re talking about the young boy migrant worker, not the family patriarch or matriarch.

As connected as we are to the imagery of the shepherd, we must be connected to not only its beloved image, but its scandalous one too. Shepherds were boys, they weren’t men. They were given a very dangerous job. The pens they guarded were without gates as we know them, the boys themselves served as the gate. When a predator comes to get the sheep, they have to go through the boys first.

This is where comparing the shepherds to migrant workers falls apart. The migrant is a hired hand who moves on to the next crop after the harvest. Putting your life on the line is not something you expect the hired hand to do.

Fighting off the wolf at the door is not mercenary territory. If the worker is in it just for the denarius, they won’t be willing to put themselves on the line when crunch time comes. Someone working for coin can never be expected to put their life on the line. When the demon is at the door, you don’t want the butler to answer, you want family. This is the importance of the son as the shepherd. This is the importance of the Son of Man as the Good Shepherd.

One of the things shepherds bring to mind is the Children’s Christmas Pageant. This reflection on the pageant comes from Ralph F. Wilson, Director of Joyful Heart Renewal Ministries.

Angels are clean. Angels are beautiful. They seem almost otherworldly, since girl angels always seem to know their parts better than boy shepherds do. The angelic satin stuff goes pretty well in most Christmas pageants. The problems come with the shepherdly burlap part.

Wilson continues: Do you know what real-life shepherds were like? Townspeople looked down on them. “Herdsmen!” they’d huff derisively. Shepherds would work with sheep all day, sleep outside with the animals at night and then come into town dirty, sweaty and smelly, like the boys they were. Tradesmen in the marketplace would be polite enough. Shopkeepers would wait on them, but everybody was happy when they moved along. Burlap fits the part.

Angels get clouds and the Hallelujah Chorus. Shepherds get a stable. Maybe cattle lowing has a bit of romance; but conjure up the smells and the filth. This is no stainless steel dairy palace; it’s a crude cave for a barn, with good reason for straw on the floor. Not exactly the setting you'd choose for a birth if you had the luxury of planning ahead.

Angels seem appropriate to the birth of God's son. But straw and sweat and burlap do not.[2]

In biblical times, many different shepherds would pen their sheep together overnight. When it came time to separate the flocks to take them to their grazing areas, the shepherd would call out and his sheep would follow. The sheep wouldn’t follow a shepherd they did not know.

But the Good Shepherd tells those who with ears to listen that they are not the only sheep in his fold. He tells the people “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” We hear these words knowing that somewhere in this wide world, the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus Christ are not for us alone, there are other sheep in the fold and for this we praise God.

We just do it from the wrong side of the pen.

For you see, the people whom Jesus is addressing are named in John 9:40. With his discussion of the Good Shepherd and the sheep fold Jesus is responding to the Pharisees. It is Israel that is the sheep who know the voice of the Good Shepherd. The people who are Jesus’ own are the Jews, not us.

So often as Christians we think of ourselves as the first love of the Lord, and we are not. We are the other sheep. We are the sheep who do not belong to the named fold.

We aren’t first, but with thanks and praise be to the wondrous loving faithfulness of our Lord, we are next. It is together, not as separate peoples or different denominations but as the assembled children of God that we hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. When we hear the voice of the Shepherd we come together as one flock.

And it is for the shepherd’s love for his flock that he lays down his life. Every time the shepherd fills the gate, he protects the sheep from predators, predators that would think nothing of a stringy boy before getting to the fat sheep. From the Easter story, we too know how this pertains to us. Jesus lays down his life for us, and picks it up again three days later.

In a few minutes, we will sing our hymn of response to the love of God the Father and the work of the Son Jesus Christ, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” [3] We sing:

Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.

Great is thy faithfulness.
Great is thy faithfulness.
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed thy hand hath provided;
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

Later we’ll sing “What Wondrous Love Is This.”[4] We’ll sing:

What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the heavy cross for my soul, for my soul.

We sing to the wondrous loving faithfulness of the God who comes and walks among us as a simple man; the God who voluntarily empties himself of his glory and takes upon himself the dangerous work of the shepherd; the God who not only lays down his life, put picks it up again for us. God incarnate lays down and picks up his life again of his own accord. He does this as the father has commanded. The Son of God and the Son of Man does as the lowliest shepherd boy, he does as his father commands.

The Hebrew word used for the love of God is hesed. Hesed is bold and unpredictable. It is unorthodox and unbound by convention and culture. It is a love which only God is capable; it is a love we are called to imitate and follow. We are called to be immersed in the hesed of the Lord. Only by first being immersed in this wondrous loving faithfulness can we share it with others.

Biblical scholar Carolyn Custis James writes hesed is “driven, not by duty or legal obligation, but by a bone-deep commitment—a loyal, selfless love that motivates a person to do voluntarily what no one has a right to expect or ask of them.”[5] By the wondrous loving faithfulness of Jesus we are saved; saved by who he is and what he does.

Our reading from 1John reminds us that as Christ laid down his life for us, we ought to lay down our lives for one another. Our response to God’s hesed, God’s wondrous loving faithfulness, is expressed by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin who said “duty calls only when gratitude fails to prompt.”[6] We are to faithfully respond to the love of God through thanksgiving.

Returning to the song “Wondrous Love”:

And when from death I'm free, I'll sing and joyful be,
And through eternity I'll sing on, I'll sing on,
And through eternity I'll sing on!

Let us sing on in thanks. Let us be moved by the bone deep commitment that motivates us to do voluntarily what no one has the right to ask or expect. Let us follow not out of duty, but out of gratitude for the Good Shepherd.

[1] Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor Eds. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, pages 448-453.
[2] Ralph F. Wilson, "Burlap, Boys, and Christmas," The Joyful Heart, December 23, 1997, www.joyfulheart.com found at HomeliticsOnline.com, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=1661, retrieved May 2, 2009.
[3] Text by Thomas Obediah Chisholm, Music by William Marion Runyan, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” Carol Stream, IL: Hope Publishing Company. Copyright 1923, renewal 1951.
[4] American Folk Hymn, 1811
[5] Custin James, Carolyn, “The Gospel of Ruth, Loving God Enough to Break the Rules.” Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008, page 115.
[6] Coffin, William Sloane, The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin, The Riverside Years, Volume 1, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, page 354.