The Good Shepherd

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Lessons: Psalm 23 1 John 3:16-24 John 10:11-18

Although today is the 5th Sunday of April, and that means a day for a 5th Sunday dinner at Graves Chapel, it is the 4th Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday. Have you ever considered the ways in which the Graves Mill valley can be called a sheep fold? Leaving Wolftown on 662 and heading toward Graves Mill, up the steep hill past the Pentecostal church, you come to an old stand of trees on both sides of the road, forming a long shady canopy that feels almost like a tunnel. Emerging, on the left you see the fields of Lawrence McDaniel’s farm, then his beautiful old house standing high on the banks of the Rapidan and facing the river. That canopy of trees has always been a demarcation for me; it is the entrance to the world I think of as home, the entrance to the valley we call Graves Mill. The poem I wrote some years ago about it I called “Open, Sesame,” as arriving beneath that canopy of trees has seemed (and still does) like the opening of a gateway to the place I most want to be. Since the valley ends above the chapel and the entrance is also the only exit, the valley, the home of my childhood, is an enclosure. No wonder it has always seemed like a really safe place to me! It is and always will be my refuge of choice.

 When I was a child, many of the farmers in Graves Mill raised sheep, and with the steep hillsides, that makes perfect sense. Marietta and Hume Lillard had a large flock of sheep, and I can remember seeing the sheep dotting the hilly fields and following Marietta into their sheep barn. Once she gave me a little lamb to keep as a pet and bottle-feed with cow’s milk. I don’t know if its mother died or rejected it, but Lambie-Pie, as I named her, came home with me one day when I was about three years old. Lambs are very sweet and soft and non-threatening for toddlers. My little poodle Freddie is soft as a lamb and about the same size as Lambie-Pie, but my three-year old granddaughter is very cautious around Freddie because he barks. No one could be made afraid by the bleating of a lamb.

 You may have seen a widely dispersed photograph of my great uncle Buck Hawkins holding a lamb. (The photo is included in the book about Jones Mountain and inspired a poem by Col. Bacon.) In the photo, Uncle Buck, who was a giant of a man, is holding a tiny lamb in his arms. That embrace is a kind of enclosure, too. So, for me, the ideas of the valley, of the enclosure, and of sheep pens are all closely linked in my memory to the nature and safety of home. The shepherds who looked for and found the infant Jesus were very real to me. The idea of the Christ as a diligent and loving shepherd is also one I can comprehend and be comforted by.

 From now until Pentecost is the season of Easter, and Easter is definitely a time for shepherds and sheep, a time for new lambs to be born. The connection between Easter and the Jewish holiday Passover is an inseparable one. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples, since they were all faithful Jews. In their ancient history, when Moses freed the people from slavery in Egypt, God instructed them to paint the blood of a slain spring lamb on the lintels and doorposts of their homes. By this sign, God’s angel of death would know to pass over and not take their first-born children, as he was destroying all the first-borns of the Egyptians.

 Easter is the new Passover for Christians. The Lamb of God, as we call him, Jesus Christ, the first-born of God, was sacrificed to save us. This is what we most fundamentally believe, and we affirm that belief when we say, “O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.” It is in his other role, as good Shepherd, that Christ gathers us to his bosom and tenderly gives us the mercy we are so in need of.

 I bet that right now you can call from memory an image of Jesus holding a lamb—there are so many versions of this scene, on stained glass windows and in children’s illustrations. In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd,” and there are no more comforting words in all of scripture. We are all as vulnerable as lambs at various times of our lives, and the idea that Jesus, like a good shepherd, is there to care for and protect us brings immense relief. We do not have any reason to fear.

 Have you ever thought about the shepherds who came to see the infant Jesus in connection with Easter? After all, they are the first shepherds we encounter in the gospels, and what nativity scene would be complete without shepherds and a lamb or two? Just after we are told, in the Gospel of Luke, about Mary giving birth to her first-born son and laying him in a manger in Bethlehem, angels appear to some shepherds nearby. “In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.” Why did the angels appear to shepherds? Shepherds, after all, were very low on the social scale in those days, very near the bottom rung. The sheep were likely not even their own. Couldn’t the angels have appeared to some townspeople—maybe the innkeeper who hadn’t found room for Joseph and Mary? Better yet, think of the problems that might have been averted if the angels had appeared to King Herod. But no, Herod is told about the infant Jesus by some visiting wise men, and that’s a completely different story. In Luke, we have some shepherds being blessed by a vision of angels, who tell the shepherds to look for a sign—“You will find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Then we are told the shepherds “went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in a manger.”

This is a story that is most beloved by Christians for its miraculous sweetness, for the vulnerability of the tender infant, but I also think because it is our first introduction to Christ when we ourselves are small children. The baby Jesus is one of us. Many of us as children have participated in church Christmas pageants, wearing bathrobes if we were supposed to be shepherds, or glittery wings if angels. In those pageants, as in the text of Luke, as soon as the angels give the shepherds their instructions, the shepherds obey and immediately head to the stable to worship the infant.

 Let’s think for a moment about what may really have happened. Bethlehem was by no means a small village, and the number of people in Bethlehem at the time had greatly expanded because so many, like Mary and Joseph, had come to be enrolled in the mandatory census. There had to have been at least several stables with mangers, if not many. The shepherds must have spent a great deal of time looking from stable to stable until they found the holy family and the baby Jesus in a manger. But they did persist in their efforts until they found the savior and Messiah the angels had promised them. In their humility and in their faithful persistence, the shepherds served as a good model, a template, for the infant who would grow up to call himself the Good Shepherd.

 Like these Christmas shepherds, Jesus will seek us out until he finds us, will faithfully watch over us, care for us and protect us. In today’s lesson from John, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” Psalm 23, that most favorite of psalms, begins with the comforting words, “The Lord is my shepherd.” How do we acknowledge our debt to the shepherd, who died for us and continues to watch over us? In his letter, today’s epistle, John writes, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” We pay back our debt to the shepherd in the way we love one another, seeking to serve him in each other.

So, the shepherd calls us, and like good sheep, we follow him. The shepherd looks for us when we are lost or in trouble or danger, and we can count on him to find us and save us. The collect for today expresses all of this beautifully: O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads.

 As David and I come home every month to Graves Mill, we enter the valley and check off all the familiar places on our mental list as we pass them. At this time of year, it is a happy thing to see young lambs at play in the fields at Graves Mill farm. All year round, we enjoy catching a glimpse of Ramsey, Dan and Judy Berry’s large pet sheep, as we pass their place. Far from being the “valley of the shadow of death,” Graves Mill is a beautiful valley where the Good Shepherd keeps watch over his beloved sheep. May it ever be so… In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, AMEN.