SERMON FOR MAY 3, 2020, GOOD SHEPHERD SUNDAY        TEXT: JOHN 10:1-10

          In a sermon on today’s Gospel a missionary who lived for some time in Africa talked about his experience there. He said that the people in a village knew each other’s sheep the way we might know one another’s children. They would ask their neighbors, “Have you seen my sheep so-and-so,” identifying the animal by name, and one would hear them calling out names at night. “They are calling their sheep,” one of the locals told him. “They will all find each other.”

          Their world was much like that of Jesus’ contemporaries, who would also have cherished their sheep and lived with them as close companions. Remember the story in the Old Testament when the prophet Nathan confronts King David over his cruel, immoral behavior towards Uriah the Hittite and his wife Bathsheba? Nathan begins by telling the story of the poor man who “had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him” (2 Samuel 12:3). The imagery of devoted shepherd and trusting sheep was familiar to Jesus’ hearers and powerful for them in ways that it no longer is for us. But it is not inaccessible, not if you have ever cared for an animal.

          Copper, my Basset Hound of blessed memory, fell desperately ill with pneumonia one Saturday morning. By the time I realized what was happening and raced to the vet’s office, he was too weak even to walk through the door. When the vet techs took him from my arms, I could tell by their faces that his condition was grave. He gave me that anxious look of a once abandoned animal, “You aren’t leaving me, are you?,” as they carried him into the back. Then I waited for hours, finally taking a break to run an errand mid-afternoon. When I returned, the vet met me with good news, and as we were talking I suddenly heard that unmistakable baritone bark resounding from the back. The vet laughed and said, “He knows you’re here. He knows your voice. ” Just like I knew his.

          On our last trip to the vet’s office Copper was once again too weak to walk through the door.    I carried him in, and then we sat together on a blanket on the floor of the exam room. I pulled him close to me and cradled his head in my lap. He was too ill to bark but not to hear. I called him by name, and I talked to him until he no longer needed to hear my voice, until, as these beautiful words of prayer describe it, “the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in your mercy, O Lord, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.”

          The Fourth Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday, and over the three years of the lectionary we read various sections of the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John. In the first section, which we just heard, Jesus speaks of the shepherd, the gatekeeper and the gate. The images are fluid but congruent as Jesus portrays his relationship to his followers, who fill the consistent role of sheep. It’s tempting to overthink the significance of that. Many a sermon has drawn the analogy between humankind’s fallen state and the general dimwittedness of sheep and their stubborn propensity to stray. But Jesus doesn’t go there. He identifies one ovine attribute, and it is an admirable one: sheep know whom to trust. They recognize the voice of their shepherd. When they hear it, they don’t perversely wander off, they follow him. And they are not fooled by the voice of a stranger. Moreover, the shepherd in Jesus’ figure of speech is not focused on rescuing the sheep from their foolish ways and teaching them discipline. This is not a metaphor of repentance and reformation. The New Testament scholar David Lose points out: “. . . there’s surprisingly little talk of sin in this passage. Jesus doesn’t say, ‘I came because they’re a bunch of sinners in need of forgiveness.’ Rather, ‘I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.’ This is not to say that we aren’t in need of forgiveness. But we are not only saved from something, we are saved for something.

          The promise of life echoes throughout the Gospel of John. The book opens with a hymn, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people” (1:1-4). Two chapters later, after Jesus’ nighttime encounter with Nicodemus, comes the well-loved verse, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (3:16). In the next chapter Jesus offers living water to the Samaritan woman at the well, telling her, “The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (4:14). Jesus speaks of abundant life in today’s Gospel right after healing a man born blind, an act that causes controversy. Following that we have Jesus’ words of consolation to Martha grieving the death of her brother: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (11:25). When the disciple Thomas expresses his confusion over the way Jesus is going, the Lord tells him “I am the way and the truth and the life” (14:6).Then near the end of his gospel, John tells us, “But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20:31). Life that is light, eternal, abundant, resurrected, in Jesus’ name — what is it?

          Jesus is addressing specific people in distinct situations, the quizzical Pharisee, the alien woman, the rejected blind man, the sorrowful sister, the perplexed disciple. They have their own individual histories marked by particular needs, conflicts and hopes. Abundant life is constant while not generic. It dispels darkness and casts out fear; it sows love and empowers mercy; it sustains us in suffering. The life of Jesus flows in many and various ways through each one of us day by day and year by year. The world is full of voices that over-promise and under-deliver, insistent, deceptive, deafening. Through it all the shepherd continues to call us by name. His voice will still be sounding when the others prove to be nothing more than noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. We will know that voice; we will hear our name again and again until “the shadows lengthen and the evening comes . . . the fever of life is over and our work is done.” Then our shepherd will open the gate and lead us safely home. Amen.