Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Pascha / Easter (RCL – Year B)
Offered by Nathan Ferrell at HS, Bellmawr & St. Luke’s, Westville
Texts: Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
My friends: this is Good Shepherd Sunday, the one Sunday in the Great Fifty Days when the Church reflects together upon our life under the care of our Lord who is the Good Shepherd.
All of us who are gathered here today have thought about God’s care for us personally as proclaimed with such beauty in the 23rd Psalm, one of the most widely known passages of Scripture. But this Sunday is much more about what it means to live together as one flock under the loving watch of Christ.
It has been said that “the church is a society of sinners. It is the only society in the world, membership in which is based upon the single qualification that the candidate shall be unworthy of membership” (Charles Clayton Morrison).
The Church is the flock of wayward, stubborn sheep who seem to always be looking at greener grass farther away and yet who the Good Shepherd has brought together and keeps together through his own personal sacrifice.
And yet, how quickly we forget why we are here. How quickly we forget that love is the reason for our gatherings and that unity in love in this one flock is God’s plan.
Do you know why geese fly together in V-shaped delta wing formations? We have seen many in the past 2 months, migrating
back to the north after the winter. Do you know why they fly together as they do? An individual goose, going alone, can fly roughly 100 miles in a day. But when they are in formation, flying together, they can fly up to an amazing 1000 miles a day. 10 times farther every day!
This is a metaphor, a parable that the Creator has given us to display the power of brothers living together in unity, the energy that God designed to be at work among humanity gathered together in the one flock which is the Church.
God designed the Church to be one. Through our human pride and greed and selfishness, we have completely destroyed that unity. Right now there are over 10,000 separate Christian churches and associations in the world, all paying homage to Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd, and each one laying claim to be the “true” and “correct” Church. How ridiculous, and how sad!
And of course, as any of you know, we in The Episcopal Church are right now in the midst of a struggle where the battle lines are being drawn and groups are dividing into their own tidy little corners with all of those who think and act like themselves.
Even right now, for the first 2 weeks of May, the Anglican Consultative Council, with members – lay and ordained – from across the globe, are gathered together to consider the creation of an Anglican Covenant. This Covenant is likely to be approved and passed along to all of the member churches of the Anglican Communion as a framework for our life together. I have seen the draft document. It is quite vague, with very little detail, but the Covenant does speak in beautiful theological language about the life of the Church gathered together under the care of the Good Shepherd.
It’s lovely, but to be frank, I cannot see any good reason why we need to spend our time and money on these things when we have all the guidance we need right now in the Scriptures. Aren’t these texts clear enough? Let’s look again at that reading from the 1st letter of John for today, and let’s read that first sentence together – in unison! “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John 3:16).
Is this not clear enough?
Two tourists are hiking in the Himalayan foothills in India, making their way through the thick jungle, when they spot a tiger in the bush. This tiger is eyeing them and looking hungry. So one on the hikers quickly reaches into his backpack and takes out a brand new pair of Nike sneakers, and begins to put them on. The other asks him, “Do you really think those will make you run faster than that tiger?” “I don’t have to run faster than that tiger,” the first says. “I just have to run faster than you!”
Sadly, unfortunately, this attitude has been all too characteristic of the church when dealing with one another. Even into our own day, with our conflicts and disagreements, our instinct seems always to look out only for our own interests. What do we need to do to protect ourselves?
But this is precisely what the Church of Jesus Christ is not about. We should know better, for we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us. “For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6) – for those who did not care about loving God nor their neighbor. The Good Shepherd laid down his life for us, to bring us into his flock.
And so what is the proper and correct response to receiving this amazing, loving care? “We ought to lay down our lives for one another.”
The questions being asked right now by our church leaders all across this country are: Who owns the property? Who holds the deed to the building? Who gets to stay here and who has to leave? How sad! Wrong questions!
The questions that we need to ask as the community living under the care of the Good Shepherd are these: Are we laying down our life on behalf of others? Are we serving others in the name of Christ? “Freely you have received; freely give.” This is the way of our Master.
Our Lord speaks to his people in parables, and we can be pretty sure that his students at that time had no idea what this meant. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.”
I have other sheep that do not look or think or speak like you, but they belong to the same flock as you, and they will listen to my voice.
And this, my friends, this is the crux of the matter: “They will listen to my voice.”
To whose voice are we listening? Factions, schisms, associations, splinter groups – so many clear evidences that we are in fact listening to a different voice. The wolf scatters the one flock.
In the 1940’s, in a Nazi German prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had this to say about the unity of the Church:
Offered by Nathan Ferrell at HS, Bellmawr & St. Luke’s, Westville
Texts: Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
My friends: this is Good Shepherd Sunday, the one Sunday in the Great Fifty Days when the Church reflects together upon our life under the care of our Lord who is the Good Shepherd.
All of us who are gathered here today have thought about God’s care for us personally as proclaimed with such beauty in the 23rd Psalm, one of the most widely known passages of Scripture. But this Sunday is much more about what it means to live together as one flock under the loving watch of Christ.
It has been said that “the church is a society of sinners. It is the only society in the world, membership in which is based upon the single qualification that the candidate shall be unworthy of membership” (Charles Clayton Morrison).
The Church is the flock of wayward, stubborn sheep who seem to always be looking at greener grass farther away and yet who the Good Shepherd has brought together and keeps together through his own personal sacrifice.
And yet, how quickly we forget why we are here. How quickly we forget that love is the reason for our gatherings and that unity in love in this one flock is God’s plan.
Do you know why geese fly together in V-shaped delta wing formations? We have seen many in the past 2 months, migrating
back to the north after the winter. Do you know why they fly together as they do? An individual goose, going alone, can fly roughly 100 miles in a day. But when they are in formation, flying together, they can fly up to an amazing 1000 miles a day. 10 times farther every day!This is a metaphor, a parable that the Creator has given us to display the power of brothers living together in unity, the energy that God designed to be at work among humanity gathered together in the one flock which is the Church.
God designed the Church to be one. Through our human pride and greed and selfishness, we have completely destroyed that unity. Right now there are over 10,000 separate Christian churches and associations in the world, all paying homage to Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd, and each one laying claim to be the “true” and “correct” Church. How ridiculous, and how sad!
And of course, as any of you know, we in The Episcopal Church are right now in the midst of a struggle where the battle lines are being drawn and groups are dividing into their own tidy little corners with all of those who think and act like themselves.
Even right now, for the first 2 weeks of May, the Anglican Consultative Council, with members – lay and ordained – from across the globe, are gathered together to consider the creation of an Anglican Covenant. This Covenant is likely to be approved and passed along to all of the member churches of the Anglican Communion as a framework for our life together. I have seen the draft document. It is quite vague, with very little detail, but the Covenant does speak in beautiful theological language about the life of the Church gathered together under the care of the Good Shepherd.
It’s lovely, but to be frank, I cannot see any good reason why we need to spend our time and money on these things when we have all the guidance we need right now in the Scriptures. Aren’t these texts clear enough? Let’s look again at that reading from the 1st letter of John for today, and let’s read that first sentence together – in unison! “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John 3:16).
Is this not clear enough?
Two tourists are hiking in the Himalayan foothills in India, making their way through the thick jungle, when they spot a tiger in the bush. This tiger is eyeing them and looking hungry. So one on the hikers quickly reaches into his backpack and takes out a brand new pair of Nike sneakers, and begins to put them on. The other asks him, “Do you really think those will make you run faster than that tiger?” “I don’t have to run faster than that tiger,” the first says. “I just have to run faster than you!”
Sadly, unfortunately, this attitude has been all too characteristic of the church when dealing with one another. Even into our own day, with our conflicts and disagreements, our instinct seems always to look out only for our own interests. What do we need to do to protect ourselves?
But this is precisely what the Church of Jesus Christ is not about. We should know better, for we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us. “For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6) – for those who did not care about loving God nor their neighbor. The Good Shepherd laid down his life for us, to bring us into his flock.
And so what is the proper and correct response to receiving this amazing, loving care? “We ought to lay down our lives for one another.”
The questions being asked right now by our church leaders all across this country are: Who owns the property? Who holds the deed to the building? Who gets to stay here and who has to leave? How sad! Wrong questions!
The questions that we need to ask as the community living under the care of the Good Shepherd are these: Are we laying down our life on behalf of others? Are we serving others in the name of Christ? “Freely you have received; freely give.” This is the way of our Master.
Our Lord speaks to his people in parables, and we can be pretty sure that his students at that time had no idea what this meant. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.”
I have other sheep that do not look or think or speak like you, but they belong to the same flock as you, and they will listen to my voice.
And this, my friends, this is the crux of the matter: “They will listen to my voice.”
To whose voice are we listening? Factions, schisms, associations, splinter groups – so many clear evidences that we are in fact listening to a different voice. The wolf scatters the one flock.
In the 1940’s, in a Nazi German prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had this to say about the unity of the Church:
“Christian brotherhood is not an ideal that we must realize; it is rather a
reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly
we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our
fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, [then] the more serenely shall we think of
our fellowship and pray and hope for it” (Life Together, p.30-31).
And so, my friends, the way forward for us here in this community and in the larger Church is quite simple: let us love one another, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. Let us love another as the Good Shepherd has loved us. Amen.
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