sheep – Salvaged Faith

A Place at the Table

Posted on May 6, 2018Leave a comment

Yesterday, my husband and I took advantage of the beautiful day to do some work in the yard. One of our primary tasks for the day was to take care of some problematic trees and shrubs and to work on the perennials.
Needless to say, like the vineyard keeper in John’s gospel we did some trimming, pruning, and we removed a lot of dead growth!

The first summer we moved into our home here in Des Moines, we made some of those drastic cuts and changes as well. The backyard was fairly overgrown and crowded. Some of the bigger trees were unhealthy, but because they were so large, they were limiting growth of some of the smaller, more healthy trees. We had a company come in to help us trim the canopy and remove dead limbs.

We ended up with five cords of firewood, a lot more space and air and sunshine, and mulch for our flower beds. It was then that we could start making plans about what new life we wanted to add to the back yard.

I have to admit that there was a part of me that really worried about trimming back as much as we did. That first summer, things appeared kind of bare and I was afraid that we had made changes we couldn’t come back from or that cutting back that drastically would actually damage the trees.
But as I looked out at the yard yesterday morning, I realized that we had created space for other plants to grow and flourish and that all over the trees where we had removed dead, overgrown branches, there was new growth in all the right places.

You see, all of those trees and plants – the ones that were trimmed back, the ones that had been overcrowded, and the new ones we planted… they all were still connected to their source of life. They got sunshine and rain, were able to put strong roots into the ground, and there was space for them all to grow.

In John’s gospel we are reminded that sometimes in life there needs to be trimming and transplanting in order for there to be growth.

As I thought about our gifts and talents surveys, I’m reminded of that old adage that 20% of the people tend to do 80% of the work.
Sometimes, that is because this world is full of busy people.
But sometimes, it is because those folks who have a passion for the work – whether it is here at church or in some other volunteer organization – just scoop up all of the opportunities to serve. We are so quick to say yes and to jump in and do the task that sometimes we haven’t created space for other people to join in. Sometimes our big healthy trees need to take a breath and cut back just a bit so that there is room for new folks to join in or room for new growth in other places.
That’s one reason these surveys are so important. They help us to know what you are interested in so that we can personally invite you into new spaces and we can see where we need to create room for new voices and perspectives to be heard.
So please, fill them out!

What is important to remember – whether we are new to this community of faith or if we have been planted here for decades – is that we remain connected to God.
Remain in me, Jesus said, and I will remain in you.
Abide in me. Allow me to give you life.
I will lead you beside still waters and help you to rest in grassy meadows and will guide you through what seems like death and will protect you.
I promise, Jesus says, you will experience growth.
If you stay connected with me, you will bear fruit!

Bishop Laurie reminded me of two strange truths about this passage from John in her weekly blog this week.
The first is that “Jesus doesn’t say, ‘I hope you’ll choose to be a branch on my tree.’” We are already connected. Our very life and breath means that God is the source of our being.
We don’t choose to be a part of God’s community. We simply are.
We can run away from that community. We can cut ourselves off.
But God has already chosen us.
You have a seat at this table.

The second, is that just as we didn’t choose to be a branch on this tree… neither did we choose who the other branches are. The Lord is our Shepherd, but we are not solitary sheep in this flock.
Bishop Laurie shared a passage from Ralph Morton who wrote:

God has set us in inescapable community,
In our family,
In our neighborhood,
In all the relationships with others that life brings…
When we are enlivened by the Spirit of Christ
We accept community and begin to live
According to the laws of our being.

(Ralph Morton, This is the Day; Readings and Meditations from the Iona Community, Month 1, Day 15, Wild Goose Publications)

On any given day, we don’t get to choose who shows up for worship in this building.
We don’t get to choose who our family is.
They simply show up – brought to us by God.

Because they have been chosen by God as well.
There is a place at this table set for them, too.
As Bishop Laurie reminded me, “Inescapable community becomes real when we intentionally enter into the relationships that life brings to us…”

It made me think about those oh so familiar words of the Psalm – that God has set a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
What if that table is not simply there for me to feast and gain strength as people I disagree with look on?
What it that table is actually meant to be shared?
What if God has placed a table right there so that I might look out at love upon my enemies.
What if I’m supposed to remember that they are branches of God’s vine.
They are sheep of God’s flock.
There is a place set for them, too.

When we abide in Jesus, when we are enlivened by the Spirit of Christ, when we take our place at this table… we discover the others that God has already placed into our midst and are invited to love them, to serve them, to pray for them…
In doing so, we all find room to grow and bear fruit.
May it be so. Amen.

Quotes from Bishop Laurie: http://www.lauriehaller.org/inescapable-community/

The Shepherd King

Posted on November 23, 2014Leave a comment

As each year draws to an end, another begins.

It is a cycle, an ebb and flow, watching and waiting, the birth of the promise, and then we watch as that promise is fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ. We witness each year his life, his death, his resurrection. We watch as the Holy Spirit blows among the people and how the people of God respond.

And at the end of every yearly cycle, we have a glimpse of the Kingdom. We have a glimpse of the one who will rule forever, eternal in the heavens.

In our epistle this morning, Paul gives thanks for the faith and the love of the Ephesians, and continues to pray that they might know Christ, who sits at “God’s right side in the heavens, far above every ruler and authority and power and angelic power, any power that might be named not only now but in the future.”

You know…. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords that is promised in Isaiah.

And so today, the last Sunday in the church year, we celebrate Christ the King. We remind ourselves of his power and glory and majesty.

And next week, the cycle begins anew as we return to waiting and preparation in the season of Advent.

Christ the King.

What does it even mean for Christ to be the king of our lives?

What kind of King will he be?

Some kings in our modern culture are ruthless dictators.

Other kings are figureheads who only represent power.

I might have been watching too much Game of Thrones lately, but when I think of a king, the first image that comes to mind is a ruler on the Iron Throne.

A leader who is a part from the people, indifferent to their plight unless it affects him personally.

I picture a king whose battles and wars are for his glory and power.

Other biblical images of kings find people who are full of both faults and incredible wisdom. At times, we see them sitting in judgment over the people, much like we find Jesus doing in the vision of the end in Matthew 25.

The King is the final arbiter of the law. When there is conflict among the people, the case is brought before him as their ruler for a word of justice.

Often, when we think of traditional ideas of kingship, the ruler is the judge, jury, and executioner who parse out sentences according to the laws of the land.

Laws that he probably wrote.

So, it is to be expected that when we come to the end… the end of the year, the end of our lives, the end of the earthly realm… that the King of Kings and Lord of Lords will sit upon the throne and will give a final account. He will determine who is worthy to enter the kingdom.

In Matthew 25:31-32: “When the Son of Man comes in his majesty and all his angels are with him, he will sit on his majestic throne. All the nations will be gathered in front of him. He will separate them from each other, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

Just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

What are shepherds doing in this story?

Historically speaking, shepherds and kings belong on opposite ends of the social spectrum.

While kings have armies at their disposal, the shepherd personally protects the sheep. His very body is their first line of defense.

While a king leads from on high, issuing orders through his commanders and sending word through the land, the shepherd leads from the midst of the sheep.

I learned that there is a difference between the way we lead sheep here in the West and how they would have done it in Jesus time, and continue to do in the east. We often herd our sheep like a king would – pushing them forward towards their destination, often with the aid of sheep dogs or other animals. When they begin to go the wrong direction, we push them onwards, or the dogs nip at their heels, and eventually they get where they are supposed to.

In the East however, the shepherd personally led his flock. He would have stood near the front of the flock, but was always in the midst of them. As he walked, they would walk with him. Wherever he went, they would go.

Kings are often indifferent to the plight of their people, but a shepherd knows each one in his flock by name. And a shepherd wouldn’t hesitate to leave behind the entire flock in order to search for one that was lost.

Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, judges us, calls us to account, in the way a shepherd would.

He gathers the flock together and calls them by name.

He speaks and at the sound of his voice, those who recognize him come running near.

But what they and we are surprised by is that Jesus doesn’t judge us by the laws of the church and the kingdom. You know…. by how many times we came to church or even by holding us accountable to the 10 commandments. He doesn’t ask if we ate shellfish or if we were circumcised. He doesn’t separate the married from the divorced. He says not a word about the tithe or ask how many times we lied.

He separates the people into those who fed and clothed the poor, who welcomed the stranger, who visited the sick and imprisoned…. And those who didn’t.

Jesus, our King, is a shepherd at heart.

Even at the end, his concern is always for the flock. It is for the lost, and the least and the last. It is for those who have been forgotten.

The rules are only good in so far as they have led us to be shepherds alongside him in the world.

You see, Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and Shepherd of Shepherds and as his people, as his body the church, OUR task is also to care for the flock.

I got to thinking about Jesus our Shepherd King when the story came out a few weeks ago about Arnold Abbott who was arrested for feeding the homeless. Abbott is 90 years old and has now been arrested twice for this act of loving his neighbor.

I got to thinking about Jesus our Shepherd King when I learned of the death of Dr. Salia this past Monday. Dr. Salia went to Africa to serve at the Kissy United Methodist Hospital in Sierra Leone. He went to the sick, to offer his gifts and skills, and contracted Ebola while he cared for those who were ill.

I got to thinking about Jesus our Shepherd King when I think of the hundreds of people who have poured into Ferguson to stand in solidarity with a community that is frustrated and grieving after the death of Michael Brown… especially those who have worked to bring non-violent training to the young people who felt like they had no other options but violence. Today, I hold them all in prayer as they await the grand jury decision.

I got to thinking about Jesus our Shepherd King when I think about one of our United Methodist ministers here in Iowa, Rev. Dr. Larry Sonner, who has had a complaint filed against him for officiating a same-sex marriage.

In all of these complicated and difficult situations, I feel the tension between the law and tradition and scripture and what we are supposed to do… and the call to be with and serve the flock, to tend the sheep, to care for the people.

“Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who will receive good things from my Father. Inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you before the world began. ³⁵I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.’

None of these are easy situations. Our lives are full of complicated choices that can put us in danger or on the wrong side of the law or put us at odds with our neighbors.

But as Paul prays for the Ephesians, so I pray for us… here at Immanuel, in the Iowa Annual Conference, for the people in Ferguson, and for our brothers and sisters across this world who are hungry and homeless and sick and imprisoned:

“I pray that that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, will give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation that makes God known to you. ¹⁸I pray that the eyes of your heart will have enough light to see what is the hope of God’s call, what is the richness of God’s glorious inheritance among believers, ¹⁹and what is the overwhelming greatness of God’s power that is working among us believers.”

Christ is our King. Christ is the head of our church and our lives. Christ is the shepherd who is leading this flock.

May we turn our hearts towards prayer. May we seek God’s wisdom and power and hope. May we hear the voice of our shepherd and may we go where he leads us.

Amen. And Amen.

Following Faithfully, aka, Getting Out of the Way

Posted on April 13, 2008Leave a comment

For about two years now I have had a quote hung on my office wall by Thomas Merton, a Catholic monastic and teacher. I haven’t yet put it up here in Marengo, but it reads:

In order to become myself, I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be.

I take this to mean that if we want to really be true to who we are, to the people and the church that God has created us to be, then we have to get out of the way.

I shared with you on one of my first Sunday’s here that I was convinced at one point in my life that I was going to be a meteorologist. I don’t know exactly where this obsession came from. In fact, as a child, I was terrified of thunderstorms. I would literally get sick to my stomach whenever the lightening started to flash and the thunder started to roll. My parents could tell you that every time we went camping it was inevitable that it would storm, and they knew enough to have me sleep by the tent door, so I could get out easily!

I eventually grew out of that, and now love to watch a storm building on the horizon. Thursday evening, as the storm rolled through, I was so intrigued by the movement of the clouds and the way they formed. The sound of the rain falling through the trees this week has been soothing. For three years, I tried to head down the path I thought I wanted to be on. I got an internship with KWWL in Waterloo and spent some time with Craig Johnson, their head meteorologist. I looked at colleges with programs in physics and atmospheric science. I thought I would be heading to graduate school and so began to major in physics, even when I started out at Simpson College. I was pressing forward with what I believed I wanted to do – and never stopped to think about what I was made to do.

But you know what, I eventually realized that while I am personally interested in weather, that it fascinates me and refreshes me, I was never meant to be a meteorologist. I wasn’t destined to sit in front of a computer and watch a cold front move across the nation or determine el nino patterns. God had something different planned for my life.

In many ways, I was doing everything possible to get in the way of what God had planned for my life. I thought I knew what I wanted, but I had no idea of what I needed or what would make me truly happy. I wasn’t paying attention to how God made me.

Our congregation was also birthed by God. We had a beginning and from the start we have had a purpose for being here. Like a child that is born into the world, our identity as a congregation will continue to change and grow. And as we look towards the future of our congregation, I think we need to keep that quote in mind as well.

In order to become myself, I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be.

As people who are a part of this church, I’m sure that we each have things that we want this church to be. Just listening to all of you for the last three months, I have heard some of those hopes and desires for our congregation. You want more young people in our midst. Some of you want to better support our youth and have more ways for them to be involved. Others of you want this church to be full on Sunday mornings. Some of you want to have stability and financial security in the church – instead of always operating in crisis mode. These are all good things to want!

The big question though, is if there is something out there that is even better. Something out there that we are supposed to become that perhaps none of us can see yet. Are we getting in the way of what God as planned for our church?

My thoughts take me to the parable of the good shepherd from this morning’s scripture. Jesus is speaking out in the countryside to a group of disciples and teaching them about what kind of leader he is.

Now, not many of us today are sheep herders, so it may be hard for us to really understand what is going on. So here is a little lesson – Shepherding 101, if you will.

First of all, there is a big difference between the way we lead sheep here in the West and how they would have done it in Jesus time, and continue to do in the east. We often herd our sheep – pushing them forward towards their destination, often with the aid of sheep dogs or other animals. When they begin to go the wrong direction, we push them onwards, or the dogs nip at their heels, and eventually they get where they are supposed to.

In the East however, the shepherd would have led his flock. He would have stood near the front of the flock, but was always in the midst of them. As he walked, they would walk with him. Wherever he went, they would go. As our scripture this morning reminds us, the sheep would recognize him by the sound of his voice. They knew the difference between the voice of their shepherd and that of a thief or bandit or other stranger. And when that kind, gentle voice called their names – they would follow.

Of course, there were times when the sheep must be brought home, and often at night the shepherd would bring them back in to the sheep fold to protect them.

This sheep fold would have been a fenced in area where the sheep would be safe. There would be food and water nearby, a bit of shelter, either from a nearby cave or something built. And most importantly… there was one way in and one way out.

In our scripture this morning, Jesus tells us about the gate… and the gatekeeper… and in many ways claims to be both. The gate, or entrance to this sheepfold would have been an opening that was wide enough for a few sheep to enter at a time. But the gate also had to be narrow enough for a person to lay across it. You see, instead of having a gate that swings open, like we might think of today, the gate for the sheepfold would have been an actual person! At night, the shepherd would lay across the entrance, so that anyone coming in or going out would have to cross his very body. He was a human shield against other animals getting in and the sheep getting out.

I think as we begin to apply this scripture to our lives today, we can think of the church – this actual building – as being our sheepfold. It is our place of safety and comfort. It is the place that we return to every week to be refreshed and reminded of who we are and whose we are. As a former pastor of mine said: “Sunday morning worship is like a drink of cold, fresh water, that gives you just enough energy to get back out there and do it again.”

We, like the sheep, are meant to spend most of our time out in the pasture. We are supposed to be out in the world, enjoying the good things that God has to offer and also faithfully following our shepherd. But there are times when we return to this place, to renew our spirits, and gain the energy to go back out there and do it all again.

Now, I have often had trouble with this bit of scripture, because I have never been much of a follower. I have always been a leader by nature, and that’s one of the reasons that I’m standing up here in front of you! But I think, deep down in my heart, I also resent being called a sheep. Sheep are smelly animals. And we often think of them as very dumb and easily led. Why on earth would we want to be a sheep? Why would we want to be a part of the herd and follow that “herd mentality.” Surely the American culture teaches us that we should think for ourselves and forge our own paths! Surely what we want matters!

But then I remember that quote by Thomas Merton again:

In order to become myself, I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be.

As I read more about sheep this week – I learned that they actually are smarter than one might think! Did you know that there have actually been studies done recently about the intelligence of these animals? It turns out that sheep have excellent long-term memories. The test group of animals was shown a set of pictures of other sheep’s faces. For some of those faces, they were given treats. Time and time again, when they were presented with a choices between the face that would give a positive response and the one that gave them nothing – the sheep continued to choose the face they recognized.

This week, I realized that “sheep are not dumb, only willing to be led.” They understand that they are a part of a group, a community, and they deeply trust their shepherd. Rather than blindly following anyone, they carefully discern who they can trust, who will seek the best for them, and once they recognize that person – they will follow him anywhere.

Christ claims to be our shepherd. The question before us is… will we choose to follow him faithfully and listen for the sound of his voice… for the new vision for our church, or are we going to try to get in the way and seek our own pastures?

We are all gathered here this morning because we know that this is a place where we are safe and loved. It is the sheep fold that protects us. We know that we are a part of the flock. The question is, are we willing to have anyone join our fold? What new sheep would Christ like to add to our flock? And are we going to help them get through the gate?

You see, I truly believe, that even as we sit here this morning, the Spirit of God is working on the hearts and minds of people all across this town. I believe that Christ, our faithful shepherd, isn’t going to just sit at the entrance of our church, guarding the door, waiting for us to come in and out. I believe that Christ is out there… actively searching for those lost sheep.

Jesus tells his disciples another parable in Luke 15:

Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

I don’t have the answers to those questions yet. Together we will be listening for God’s voice and direction and together we will discern who we are meant to become.

And from my own experience I can promise you, if we take the time to listen, God will lead us. God will provide.