April 21, 2024, Shepherds in Training, John 10:11-18 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ April 21, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon click the link above. The text is below.

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. Somehow, just those very words give me a feeling of warmth and safety. The image of Jesus as our Good Shepherd is one of the most comforting images in all of the gospels. It doesn’t matter if you’ve ever even met a shepherd – or a sheep – in person, or if you’ve only seen pictures of woolly lambs, the Good Shepherd is a powerful icon for us. That’s one reason that our beautiful window is so important and so precious to us. I know for myself, every time I stand before the altar, I look up at the Good Shepherd, and I remind myself that I am that tiny lamb held so tenderly in his arms. It fills what is empty in me at the end of a hard day; it soothes my fears; it gives me peace; it reminds me that I am loved.

And all those feelings, all those reassurances, are good and important for us. But it is possible, I think, for the Good Shepherd to become such a warm, cuddly, familiar image to us, that we miss the very heart of what Jesus is saying when he calls himself our Good Shepherd. “I am the Good Shepherd,” he told the crowds. “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul prayed this prayer for all the saints – and that’s us – he prayed that we, “being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong enough to understand with all the people of God how wide and how long and how high and how deep – to really know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” As finite human beings, when we think about the love of God that brought Jesus from a stable in Bethlehem to a grave in Jerusalem, it is beyond our comprehension. How can we really grasp the immensity of the love that the Good Shepherd has for us? How can we bear the knowledge that we have received such great love – and at such a price? How can we know what Paul admits is humanly unknowable?

And there’s more: The Great Commandment that Jesus left for us was this – to love one another as he loves us. But if we are being totally honest, we have a long, long, long way to go before we are fulfilling the Great Commandment of our Good Shepherd. We are very often so feeble and fickle in our loving. We are inclined to keep am account of our giving and receiving love like a greedy moneylender. We are so reluctant to lay down even a few minutes of our time, let alone our lives for our brothers and sisters. But the truth is that we have within us, every single one of us; we bear the seed of that perfect kind of love, because every human being was created in the image of the Great Lover of All. And when we came to recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd, that divine seed was quickened in us by the waters of our baptism and the indwelling light and life of the Spirit.

The ferocious love we feel for our children or our family or friends; that is a seedling within us of the all-powerful, unconditional love that the Good Shepherd has – not just for all of mankind as a generic, faceless, lump – but for each and every one of us as individuals. When you look at the lamb in the arms of Christ on our window, know that he laid down his life for you, ___, and for you, ____; for you, ____, and for you, _____. Every one of you – know that he is your Good Shepherd; he laid down his life for you.

That is love that surpasses all human knowledge, but one way we can know the perfect love of God is by its reflections in us, like the little rainbows that dance on the walls when the sun shines in through a glass of water on the windowsill. We see a reflection of God’s love in the love we have for those who are dear to us – our love for our very closest friends, for our family, our husbands or wives, our children and grandchildren, even our dogs and cats. We are, all of us, sinful, selfish, comfort-loving people, but we all have some one or ones for whom we would lay down our lives without a second thought. As imperfect as we are, we have all felt the kind of love that would make us willing to face a gunman, or jump in front of a moving car, or run into a burning building, or give up our last mouthful of bread, to save the life of the one we love.

And as incredibly powerful as that natural human love is, it is only a pale reflection of the love of our Good Shepherd. Jesus pointed out that even sinners love the people who love them. But that doesn’t change the fact that love is God’s gift to us – the love of fathers and mothers for their children, the love of husbands and wives for one another, the love between dear friends, the love of a teacher for her students: because these knowable human loves show us a little glimmer of the perfect love of the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for us. And more than that, it is also a sneak preview of the fruit that God is producing in us.

The love of the Good Shepherd is big, and this is how we know it, John tells us: We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us. And then John continues…. well, it just follows, doesn’t it, that we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How can we claim that God’s love abides in us, John asks, if see our brother or sister in need and close our hearts and our homes and our wallets, and refuse to help? How can we claim that we know the love of the Good Shepherd if we refuse to love every person for whom he laid down his life, not just the ones we choose? Love, John says, is not a matter of saying nice things, or feeling mushy feelings; love is doing; love is truth, just as Christ loves us every moment, from his birth in a stable to his death on the Cross; from the moment of our conception to the moment of our homecoming; and just as he lives even now to guide and protect and intercede for us. If we really believe what we proclaim, that the Good Shepherd laid down his life for us, can we keep our own lives for ourselves?

***

But the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for us, is growing us, his own sheep, into people who are so full of his love that we are willing to lay down our time, and our possessions, and our rights, and our comfort, and our safety – and for some of us, maybe even our lives – not just for our children or our good friends – but for everyone the Shepherd loves and cares for – and that includes those other sheep, the ones we don’t really like, the ones we are afraid of, the ones we disapprove of, the ones who count themselves our enemies.

When we look up at our window, it is a very comforting thing to see ourselves cradled in the loving arms of the Good Shepherd. But when we look at that precious, safe little lamb, we should know that that lamb in the Shepherd’s arms is also your our noisy neighbor, and that is the person that hurt your feelings years ago, and that is the person whose political views make you cringe, and that is the parent, or the friend, who betrayed you. And we are also those sheep who are walking along by the Shepherd’s side, following him, keeping our eyes fixed on him, learning from him.

The love that we know as human beings created in his image – the kind of sacrificial love we give freely and naturally to our children or to our good friends or to our pets – that is only a dim reflection of the love of the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for every single one of his children. But it is also a seed – the seed of the divine love that he is growing in us, day by day, as we become more and more like our Shepherd, more willing to give of ourselves as he gives himself to us, more willing even, to lay down our lives for one another. +