Texts: Psalm 23, Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-30

When I was living in Scotland I would frequently leave St. Andrews and take the train to Glasgow or Inverness or Edinburgh to spend some time exploring. One of my favorite parts of traveling was the train ride. The train would pass through Scottish countryside and through small towns and large cities. I saw some beautiful views through those train windows. But perhaps the view that I saw the most of was sheep. They were everywhere. Practically on every hill and every valley, near and far, I could see sheep dotting the landscape. Sheep are very common in Scotland because they, to this day, play a significant role in the economy. All of the wool for Scottish tartan have to come from somewhere! Just like in Scotland, sheep were a significant part of the economy during Jesus’ day. Their wool and dairy products were very valuable, providing economic security. There was always need for cloth and food. Sheep were important, and the job of shepherding those sheep was also very important!

Today in each of our scripture readings we find a particular image: the image of the good shepherd who cares for his sheep. This is an image that runs throughout Scripture, offering us one way of understanding a little bit more about who God is in Jesus Christ, and also who we are as human beings in relationship to God. Because the gospel passage that was read today is only a snippet of the Good Shepherd text of John, I want to go back and read the earlier segment of it.
‘Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’ Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

‘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. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 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. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’

Today I want to focus on two key elements of this text: 1) the sheep recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd and respond to it, and 2) the sheep will not recognize the voice of a stranger.

So for the first part: the sheep recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd. Right from the get-go, this statement insinuates a familiarity, an intimacy. If the sheep are going to recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd, then obviously they will have to be pretty familiar with him. They have to know him. Do you have someone in your life who you know extremely well? The person who can call you on the phone and simply say, “it’s me!” and you know exactly who it is? My mom is probably the only person I know who can hear just one word out of my mouth and know if something is wrong, even if I think I am disguising my mood. She just knows me so well that she intuitively understands what a slightly different inflection in my voice means. And then Darick growing up, used to play out in his neighborhood. Many of the parents in his neighborhood would often whistle when it was time for their kids to come home. Yet, still, out of all of those whistles, Darick knew what his mom’s sounded like. He knew her special call in the midst of all the others. This is the sort of intimacy that Jesus conveys when he talks about the relationship between the sheep and the Good Shepherd.

Do we recognize the voice of God this easily or this intuitively? Do you spend enough time with God to know when he is speaking or what he is saying? Can you distinguish God’s voice in the midst of other competing noises? Conversely, do you know that God hears your voice, and knows you uniquely even in the midst of every other human being? Do you know that you are special and treasured by God, and that you don’t just get lumped into the crowd before him?

When I was in Scotland, I didn’t have a car (nor would I have felt too confident driving on the other side of the road or from the right side of the car), so my usual transportation consisted of walking or riding my bike. One of the things I liked to do on occasion would be to take a long bike ride in the countryside around St. Andrews. One day I was riding my bike down a path I hadn’t taken before. There were just fields around me. I came across a field full of sheep. They were pretty close to the barbed wire fence next to the road, so I hopped off of my bike to go take a closer look. I think seeing some of the cute little lambs was what caused me to pause and get a closer look. But as I went over to the fence and was looking at the sheep for a while, I started to notice that each of the sheep looked different from the others. Each had some sort of distinguishing mark or habit or personality. I don’t know about you, but when I normally think of sheep, I tend to think of them as rather boring and dumb clones that blindly follow. These days, it is usually an insult to call someone a sheep. It insinuates lack of uniqueness, ignorance and blind allegiance, or an inability to think for one’s self. It insinuates homogeneity. When we call someone a sheep, we are placing them under a stereotype, as if to say, that’s just one of those skater kids, that’s just one of those prim and proper church ladies, or that’s just one of those non-Christians, transforming unique and valued people into one-dimensional objects, indistinguishable from the masses. I reckon people do that with each of us sometimes. But as I looked at those sheep, I could see that they were individuals. They weren’t all just alike. I imagine that when a shepherd looked at his sheep, he knew each of them.

A shepherd actually lives out in the fields with his sheep. He doesn’t go home at night, leaving them to graze on their own. He sleeps in the fields with them. He guides them, protects them from wolves that may come, and leads them to areas of fresh grazing. He goes after a sheep that gets lost, he untangles them from brambles. I also imagine a shepherd talks with his sheep. After all, a shepherd probably doesn’t have human company very often. Not only is he charged with caring for the sheep, but they are also his companions. To him, they aren’t one monolithic reality, simply a herd. They are his sheep, each with distinct characteristics and personalities.

How often do we look at someone and label them before we have even met them? How often do we take a human being with complex thoughts, feelings, and motivations and reduce them into a one-dimensional person? So often we approach people making assumptions about them. We approach them as strangers, and they see us also as strangers.

This leads us to the second idea of the scripture passage I want to focus on: that the sheep will not follow the voice of the stranger. We live in a society where interacting with strangers is not particularly encouraged. We teach our kids from a young age not to talk to strangers, we avert our eyes from people we don’t know when we are passing them on the street, and often inserting ourselves into conversation with complete strangers is seen as odd or invasive. And yet, sometimes, when it comes to evangelism, we go into it, expecting to have an encounter with someone who we don’t know very well or even at all, wanting to talk to them about Jesus Christ. So often, we approach evangelism against this backdrop. We want to jump right in and talk about Jesus to people who are strangers to us. In our zeal to help them know Christ, we can sometimes bypass the natural development of a relationship, seeing someone as little more than a target. While I don’t think we intentionally do this, we do still do it.

While it is good to be passionate about sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, how we go about doing it is just as important. In the same way that Jesus says that the sheep will not follow the voice of the stranger, neither is it very likely that someone we don’t know or have only just met will respond to the words of a Christian sharing the good news, especially in the younger generations. For us, the goal cannot be to just get people to come to worship to hear the message or to get kids to come to programs. Sure, we want more people to share in our life as a faith community, but getting them in the building cannot and should not be the regular starting point. Building relationships and friendships outside of the church should be the foundation. Building trust and familiarity is crucial. And while we may do this in part because we hope that they can come to know Christ in this way, we do it more because they are loved and treasured by God, regardless of where they are in their faith. Brian McLaren, a pastor and author wrote that we need to ask this very important question: how is the good news of Christ good news for the world? How is it good news for both those who adhere to the faith, but also non-adherents of the faith? Could it be good news for the latter group because of how we as Christians may love and respect them as unique people, loved by God, even if they do not currently have faith in Christ? Because we treat them as people, not simply as targets for conversion?

A few weeks ago I read a book called “UnChristian”, which is a book written about a study done on the perceptions people outside the church hold about the church. In it, one young man tells the story of how he had just moved to New York City and didn’t really know anyone. He was on the subway one day, and another guy about his own age started talking to him and was really friendly. This young guy was really excited because he had not met anyone that friendly yet. The other guy suggested that they hang out sometime, so he was stoked to finally be making a new friend. Not too long after that, the guy he had met on the subway invited him to come to a bible study. This young man wasn’t too keen on doing that. When he politely declined, he never heard from the other guy again.

In this encounter the young man who had just moved to New York City was approached more like a target than as a person. When he wasn’t prepared to go to a bible study or talk about Jesus, he was then dismissed. But would Jesus, the Good Shepherd dismiss him so easily, or see him only as a target? Would not Jesus the Good Shepherd see him as one of his own beloved sheep worthy of his time, even if the sheep was one that continually wandered off?

When it comes to sharing the good news of Christ, do we seek to be more like the shepherd himself, or are we more like the hired hand? Do we run away at the first sign of challenge? At the first sign of resistance? Do we walk away from a sheep if it is being belligerent? If it is showing doubts or contentment with where it is? Do we leave them behind if we think it is a lost cause of trying to bring that sheep to come graze over in our greener pasture? Do we actually want to spend time with the sheep, live with them, keep them as our companions?

I firmly believe that the intimacy found between the Good Shepherd and his sheep found in today’s gospel lesson has a lot to offer to our understanding of evangelism. At the heart of this story is relationship: a closeness, a friendship, a recognition. It is a story that reminds us that if we are sheep of the Good Shepherd, then we should be able to hear his voice, to be able to know when God is speaking to us. Our first task is to get to know this Good Shepherd who has laid down his own life for us. But we are also to imitate our Good Shepherd. Our second task after being in relationship with God is to be in relationship with our neighbor. God has called each of us by name, he knows us and wants us to know him. And we ourselves want to be known, loved, respected by God and by those around us. Now how can we be reflections of God’s intimate love for us? How can we begin to show that to others? Hear these words of Jesus a final time: “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. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them in also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock and one shepherd.” Together, let us seek to build relationships amongst ourselves and even more importantly, amongst those outside of the church, so we might reflect the love of this utterly relational God who has called each of us by name.

Texts: Psalm 32, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Imagine a young man setting out to establish himself in the world. He asks his parents for some money so he can get out on his own and experience life. Eager to move out, he wants to find himself in the world. So he leaves home, heads out to the big city, and with his new-found freedom, and an inability to create a budget or stick to it, he spends all of his money on things he shouldn’t have, with the result of losing everything he has. He becomes jobless, homeless, and hungry. Epic fail! So the son swallows his pride, figuring his best bet is to go back home and hope his parents take pity on him and let him move back in. There is nothing too remarkable about this story in our culture. The young man is on a quest to find himself as an individual. He fails at this project and has to return home. He might have hurt his parents in the process, but really, what child hasn’t hurt his or her parents at some point down the road? The parents welcome him back home, saying, son, we’re so glad you’re back, come in and you’ll get filet mignon and a big homecoming party! For many of us, this sums up the gist of the parable of the prodigal son, and it is a story many of us can relate to on one level or another. It is a story we have heard from a young age, a story told both within the church and without. The beauty of a good parable like the prodigal son is that it can speak to us, meeting us where we are, whether it is the 1^st century Palestine or 21^st century West Virginia. But there is also a danger that comes with a parable we are so familiar with. It can become limp and lifeless from so much handling. Because we have heard it so many times, it is easy to think that we have gleaned everything we possibly can from such a story, so we either just leave it on the shelf most of the time, or if we do actually pick it up, we skim it and think, yup, I’ve got it. It’s a story about how God will always receive us back home, no matter how far we have wandered. And yes, it is a story about that. But there is still more. If God’s word is living and active, then there is always more. We can never come to scripture and say, “Oh yes, I’ve completely gotten it now. I don’t need to search any further.”

Today we are going to search further this parable that has traditionally been called the parable of the prodigal son. Right off the bat, this traditional title directs us towards reading this parable in a particular light. We read it in light of the younger son’s journey that leads him both far and near. This story is about him! Of course, we also focus on the father and his willingness to receive his son back home. But a lot of the time, we forget about the older brother. He doesn’t seem to be as significant of a character as his younger brother. There are three major characters; a father, and two sons. This is a story about a family. It’s a story about a dysfunctional family. In fact, just for today, let’s re-title it “The Parable of the Dysfunctional Family.” I wish I could say I was creative enough to come up with that on my own, but I borrowed that from a preacher named Barbara Brown Taylor.

So this is the story of a 1^st century, Middle-Eastern dysfunctional family. How might Jesus’ audience have heard this story? What would they hear that we can’t hear as readily today? Let’s try to hear this story with fresh ears, with the ears of a 1^st century resident of Palestine. 1^st century Palestine was largely agrarian society, where possession and cultivation of land was crucial to the well-being of a family and the surrounding community. Land was everything, and it took the cooperation of both the family unit as well as the surrounding community to live and prosper on the land. In this world, the community took priority over the individual and success came through cooperation and sharing of resources. This is something of a foreign concept to many of us as we have been instilled with the American value of rugged individualism. More important than the individual in the eyes of the community was the standing of the family name. So this brings us back to our parable today.

The younger son goes to his father and says, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” First of all, this is a big-time slap in the face to his father. The inheritance would have only been divied up upon the father’s death. In making this request, this younger son was basically saying to his father, “Father, I can’t wait for you to die!” If this father had been a typical Middle-eastern patriarch he probably would have slapped his son upside the head and said, “No way. You can just forget about that.” This son’s request is unthinkable in this culture, and the father would have been expected to refuse. Instead, the father in this story acts in an unexpected way. He turns his cheek to his son’s insult and grants his son’s request and gives him his inheritance, which, in this case, would have been his share of the family farm. And we know that this must have been a fairly wealthy family, since they had enough money to have servants and hired hands for the fields and plenty of goats and a fatted calf. So the son has his pretty hefty inheritance. But here is the real kicker. In order to turn his inheritance into liquid assets, he would have had to sell his portion of the family farm right out from under the rest of the family. Normally, under Jewish law, a son did not have the right to sell family property until after the father’s death. Not only did he take away the land from his family, which was crucial to their livelihood, he also took the profit from its sale and used it only for himself. Not to mention that when he sold the property, it would have become public knowledge within the community of what the son had done, and it would have shamed the family. It would have humiliated the father. It would have been shameful enough of an action to merit the younger son’s banishment from the community. But the younger son got out of dodge before any sort of banishment ceremony could have taken place. He took his money and ran!

Where does he run? A far-off city. We don’t really know too much about what he did or how he spent his money, but we know that he squandered away his inheritance quickly and soon became hungry and homeless. A detail is added to the story to tell us just how far this younger son has strayed. He takes a job feeding pigs, an animal that the Jewish people considered to be unclean or unfit for eating. The son has lost everything in a far-off land of pagan pig-lovers. Wow, he really is a long way from home.

Here is the point of the story where the prodigal son begins to realize he might have made a mistake in leaving home. It is a moment of repentance, but repentance that is only half-hearted at best. His reasoning for going home is not so that he can re-united with his father and re-establish that broken relationship. Instead, it is more of a business plan. It’s a plan to get food in his belly and to start getting a minimal paycheck as a hired hand. He doesn’t want to go home to become a son again, he wants to go home to be a worker. Nonetheless, hitting rock bottom has made the prodigal son realize that he needs to swallow his pride and head back home.

The prodigal son turns around and heads back home. He even plans out and rehearses the speech he will give to his father when he gets home: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” The first part of this speech is actually a quotation from Pharaoh when he asks Moses to lift the plagues on Egypt. We know that those words didn’t truly indicate a change of heart, but that they were meant to manipulate Moses to doing Pharaoh’s will. The son is doing the same thing here. He just wants to butter the father up so he will be more likely to accept the son’s proposal.

The son approaches his hometown. I mentioned earlier that the younger son was in danger of being banished from the community. In Jewish society in that day, there was something called the quetsatsah ceremony, which the younger son would have surely been confronted with if he ever showed his face around town again. He would have known this, and the father would have known this.

Let’s switch gears and look at the father now. All this time that his son has been gone, he has probably been looked down upon in his community. After all, he did not act like a strong Middle-eastern patriarch should have in granting his son’s request. Nonetheless, he was still a part of the community, even if everyone looked at him like he was something of a fool. Here we come to my favorite verse in the whole story: “While the son was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” This verse reveals a lot. First and foremost, the father obviously never gave up hope that one day his son would return home. If he didn’t believe that it would one day happen he would never have been looking in the first place. Who knows how long he looked for his son, glancing out the window, taking daily trips out to the gate of his property, hoping one day he would see his son coming. And one day, as he is scanning the distance, he thinks he sees something. Could that be his son? The father knows that he has to reach his son before the rest of the community could spot him and perform the banishment ceremony. So the father makes a plan: he needs to reach his son before anyone else can. So the father does something that no respectable patriarch would have done. He runs. The dignified, respectable patriarch would have waited in his home for his son to come to him, giving explanation for his actions, and then he would rebuke his son. But this father gathers up the hems of his robes and runs. He doesn’t care what the community thinks when they see him acting like a fool, running towards his son. For the father knows that if he can make a public reconciliation with his son then no one in the community would dare to suggest that they perform the banishment ceremony. To act in the way the father did was to act in a way that would have been completely humiliating. For the father, the priority was reconciliation, not his own power or position. He sought out his son at great cost to himself.

As he embraces his son, his son begins his rehearsed speech, but he doesn’t complete it. He does not ask to become a hired hand. Instead, he accepts his father’s love and consequently accepts to be found. This is the moment of genuine and complete repentance, and the restoration of the relationship which was always the father’s priority, even if at first it was not the son’s. The father then orders a banquet. This banquet is not just for the son, it is for the whole community. This banquet is meant to restore not just the son to his family, but also the son’s place within the greater community. It is a feast of reconciliation for anyone who will come to it.

But then of course, we have the elder son. He is not at all thrilled to see his baby brother. After all, he broke apart the family, took part of the livelihood and left the older brother on his own to care for his father and the land. And then he lost everything! It isn’t surprising that the older brother is angry at the father’s response. He has been shamed by his baby brother, why on earth would he want to welcome him back? Why would his father act in such a weak way? He tells his father just as much with angry words. But again, his father who should have rebuked him, offers him words of grace. Once again, the father demonstrates that he is the worst Middle-eastern patriarch that there is, as he continues to humiliate himself in front of everyone at the feast. This is a weak father who can’t even put his own sons in their rightful place! What are these words of grace? They seem like weakness, vulnerability. This father has no backbone or authority!

Yet with all of the events of this story and the actions of the father, it becomes evident that at the center of this story is the message or reconciliation. This reconciliation is costly to the father. It doesn’t come for free. He is willing to shame himself, becoming weak in the eyes of the community, in order to reconcile his family to himself.

We are in the midst of the season of Lent, in which we recall the passion of Christ: his shame, his weakness, and the high cost he paid to reconcile us to himself, to make us a part of God’s family. True reconciliation is costly. It is difficult. It requires vulnerability. For God, the cost of reconciliation was the cross, and as Jesus stretched out his arms on the hard wood of the cross, he did so so that we might come within the reach of his saving embrace. And he did this while we were still far off.

Perhaps this is what Paul had in mind when he wrote the part of the letter to the Corinthians which was one of our Scripture readings today: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us, we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” What does it mean that this message of reconciliation is entrusted to us? Does it simply mean that we are to proclaim that God has reconciled us to himself? Or does it mean more? Where are there areas in your own life, in our congregational life, and in the life of our surrounding community that need reconciliation? The cost of reconciliation can be high. There is risk that comes with opening your arms to embrace another. As the theologian Miroslav Volf says, “I open my arms, make a movement of the self toward the other, the enemy, and do not know whether I will be misunderstood, despised, even violated or whether my action will be appreciated, supported, and reciprocated. I can become a savior or a victim. Possibly both. Embrace is grace, and grace is always a gamble.” Are you prepared for this message of reconciliation that has been entrusted to you?

We are in the position of the elder son from our story today. The father has given the message: “All that is mine is yours.” Now it is up to us to decide whether or not we will accept his words and reconcile both with him and with our brother. Are you ready?