A sermon on John 10v11-18
Our Gospel reading places us as a sheep belonging to Jesus, our Good Shepherd. Those who have been coming for a while know that I sometimes like to start my sermons with a joke, just to wake everyone up if the readings were dull or no one knew the last hymn.
I try to find a joke that somehow cleverly fits the theme of the sermon. This week I was trying to find sheep jokes and failed to find anything remotely relevant. But this is Marathon Sunday, and lots of our regulars are cut off or at least have their transport here disrupted… I was tempted to treat it as a teacher treats the last day of term and suggest that you all just “bring in games.” I have no excuse for the following jokes, other than that I am bringing in games!
So:
- What do you get if you cross an angry sheep and a moody cow?
- An animal that’s in a baaaaaaaad moooooood.
- Why was the sheep arrested on the motorway?
- Because she did a ewe-turn!
- What Christian denomination is most popular with sheep?
- Baaaa-ptist.
Finally, my personal favourite:
A man in a cinema notices what looks like a sheep sitting next to him.
“Are you a sheep?” Asked the man, surprised.
“Yes.” Said the sheep.
“What are you doing at the movies?”
The sheep replied, “Well, I liked the book.”
“All we like sheep have gone astray.” We are “the sheep of [God’s] pasture.” We are the “sheep” for whom the “good shepherd” lays down his life.
Feeling a bit sheepish this morning?
I know that some members of this congregation struggle with the metaphor of God’s people as sheep. None of us want to be sheep – we want to be powerful and important, not bleating animals that follow the crowd.
One of my standard Christmas talks is about the shepherds on the hillside outside Bethlehem, and how shepherds were outcasts of the day – poor wild men who slept rough on the hillsides – hired for a pittance, barely above beggars in the social hierarchy.
I’ve heard kids use “MacDonalds Worker” as an insult; in first century Palestine the kids may well have taunted unpromising peers with “Shepherd!”
Shepherds were hired to look after the sheep.
Sheep were not a particularly highly regarded commodity at the time. They did have some religious significance, but only because they were slaughtered in their thousands at Passover, so that the floor of the Temple ran red with their blood.
If you feel uncomfortable with the idea of being called a “sheep” it’s worth considering that sheep had no better image in Jesus’ day than they do now (and shepherds had a considerably worse image!)
The metaphor of Jesus as a Shepherd and his followers as sheep is not a cutesy image. It’s about outcasts caring for the insignificant. But it’s about finding beauty in the everyday. It’s about saying God is interested in things that society ignores or undervalues or despises.
Having set the scene, I want to spend a bit of time reflecting on one verse and what it might mean to us: Jesus said, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”
Jesus calls the disciples, the Christian Church in embryo, “a sheepfold.” The place where God purpose is worked out on Earth…
But Jesus says “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”
The Early Christians were struggling with the Jewish authorities as the two religions began to go separate ways… They were distrusted by the Roman government who were soon to attempt to exterminate them.
They were harassed on every side, it would have been easy to fall into exclusive extremism, but instead they record and pass on the words of Jesus:
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”
Jesus is clear that although his ragtag band of scruffy, mostly illiterate followers are infinitely precious to God, they are not the only people of infinite value to God:
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”
We, in the Church of the Ascension, sometimes feel embattled as a liberal church – the hierarchy seems obsessed with money, it seems like the churches that are succeeding are conservative, interested only in evangelism and not in helping their communities, society is indifferent at best, and at worst tars us with the same homophobic brush as it does our fundamentalist brothers and sisters.
But we are doing well and doing important work in our community, but this is not the only place where God’s work is being done:
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”
But it’s worth considering that there wasn’t another group exactly like the disciples out there that Jesus was referring to when he talked about his “other fold” – Jesus was talking about other religious expressions, outside of Christianity, outside of Judaism:
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”
What was true in the first century is true today:
In Churches of all traditions, Catholic, Protestant, liberal, radical, conservative, Orthodox, Baptist, Methodist and Pentecostal:
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”
In temples and synagogues and mosques and gurdwaras, in humanists, and campaigners and protestors:
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”
The Gospel of Jesus is life-changing and life-giving, but Jesus recognised that there were more truths, more ways of giving life, than just one.
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”
I close with an Interfaith Prayer prepared by Christians, Jews and Muslims:
Eternal God
Save us from weak resignation to violence
Teach us that restraint is the highest expression of power
That thoughtfulness and tenderness are marks of the strong.
Help us to love our enemies
Not by countenancing their sins,
But by remembering our own
And may we never for a moment forget
That they are fed by the same food,
Hurt by the same weapons,
Have children for whom they have the same high hopes as we do.
Grant us the ability
To find joy and strength not in the strident call to arms
To grasp our fellow creatures
In the striving for justice and truth.
Acts 4:5-12
The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners* stand in their midst, they inquired, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?’ Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is
“the stone that was rejected by you, the builders;
it has become the cornerstone.”
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.’
1 John 3:16-24
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? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.
John 10:11-18
“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.”
tadonnelly 