Jesus is....the Good Shepherd

 When I was in high school, I had an English teacher who was pretty fierce.  Her nickname, which she bore gladly, was “Evil Woman.”  She wasn’t really evil, we happen to still be close today. But she was a strict teacher and she didn’t cut any corners for her students.  In writing, she would regularly tell us, “Show don’t tell.”  She wanted us to use descriptions to convey our point, not just statements of fact.  People believe stories. They are compelled by illustrations.  Words are just words until they come alive. 

So when someone asks the question, “What is Jesus like?” We could tell them…he is kind, he is loving, he is inclusive, he is generous, he is humble, he is devoted.  Or we could show them…he is the bread of life.  He is the light of the world. He is the good shepherd.  The titles help us remember, but the stories show us who Jesus was. 

This story of the good shepherd shows us quite a lot about the nature of Jesus.  This story tells us Jesus is the shepherd and the gate. He is the one who tends the flock, and the one who lets them into a safe place for rest and protection.  Jesus is the protector, the caregiver, and the provider.  He comes to us to protect us from harm, to shield us from danger, and to care for us in all of our needs.  And where others would cut and run, he’d risk anything fighting for us because our lives matter even more than his.  That’s the nature of Jesus. 

So the bigger question becomes—why does he do it?  Verse 10 tells us, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Jesus watches over us and cares for us not so he can profit and gain but so we can—so that we might have life and have it abundantly. The purpose of his existence, the value of his sacrifice is not for his sake, but for ours. 

He doesn’t want us to simply live, he wants us to flourish. He doesn’t want us just getting by—he wants us to be successful and fruitful.  We’re on board with that, right? So how do we get from here to there? How do we get from the mess that life offers to the abundance Jesus died for? 

We seek after him. He is the good shepherd—that means we have to follow him.  We have to heed his voice and follow his instructions. We have to go with him.  You see the shepherd can’t protect us if we refused to be near him.  We have to choose to follow the shepherd and let him lead in our lives. 

The benefit is when we are near, he cares for us, he comforts us.  A lot of people wonder how they are going to get through a particular trial or struggle. And the cliché answer is to draw close to Jesus.  But, the truth is, if we understand the nature of Jesus as good shepherd, we’d know that it’s not just a cliché, but that drawing near to him would give us peace and assurance. His voice is reassuring. He takes away our fears.  He holds us close to protect us.  I don’t mean to sound overly simplistic or like I’m throwing platitudes at you.  But I’ve experienced the peace and comfort of Christ and it’s worth having.  I’ve had a lot of moments where I was scared to death and the thing that has always helped me is prayer.  Now, I can’t explain why or how prayer works, I only know that it does.  And I know that in the scariest moment of my life, when I was rushed into an OR because Ruth was at risk when I was pregnant and they performed an emergency c-section, I needed prayer. I was petrified.  It was one of the worst experiences of my life. And I was so scared.  Rick was out of the room and the doctors were there doing 100 things to me to get me ready for surgery and I didn’t understand it all and I couldn’t control any of it, and I was scared.  I was given the meds and put on oxygen so I couldn’t talk even when Rick was allowed in.  Fear just took over.  When she came she was purple and the NICU team was already there to work on her.  There was just more fear.  It was awful and I couldn’t name it in the midst of the chaos, but afterward I knew, if that ever happens again, just pray with me.  Just say the Lord’s prayer and pray with me.  Sing the old hymns and pray with me.  There is comfort there. There is something familiar that draws me into the presence and power of God in a way that nothing else can. 

Now, there are other ways to draw close to Jesus.  Different ways will work better for different people.   We can go to him—in worship, in study to get familiar with his voice, in spending time with others who are near to him, in being in nature,  in giving to others, through music—through any of the means of grace.  And in him we can find solace and refuge from the stress and struggle of life. 

Now there are others who aren’t so invested in our welfare. Actually, they’d much rather profit from our struggles than help us through them.  They’re out to steal our joy, our strength, and our peace.  Those are the bandits. Now, they may not have a name, but they’re out there.  Bandits may be people, or they may be situations. They may be stressors, or temptations, or distractions.  They take our attention and draw us away from the shepherd. 

Remember, the bandits, whoever they may be in each of our lives, only seek to steal, kill, and destroy.  Their goal is not to build us up.  They want what’s ours. And the easiest way to get us to let it go is to convince us we don’t deserve it in the first place.  The bandits in life will denigrate us so we wouldn’t even dare believe, let alone trust, that someone like Jesus really cares about us and would do anything for us.  The bandits tell us we’re useless and worthless. They tell us we’re lazy, stupid, hopeless, and ignorant. They call us failures before we even try. They tell us we are unworthy, undeserving, and unimportant.  And most of us buy it.  Not all the words at once. We don’t have to believe it all. We just have to believe one or two for the bandits to gain power.  And unfortunately, we believe them.  We aren’t good enough, smart enough, thin enough, successful enough—we just plain don’t measure up—or so says the bandit. 

But the shepherd says something very different. He says we’re precious, important, and valuable.  We like those words, but after we’ve bought into all the other stuff, they just wash right over us. But the good shepherd tells us to stop and listen—he has a truth for us and the truth is we are so important, so incredibly valuable that there isn’t anything he wouldn’t try and do to help us and protect us.  He tells us over and over and over again:

You are worthy.

You are important.

You are beloved.

You are enough.

And as we seek after him, we have to let the other words go. We have to let Jesus’ truth speak into our lives.  We have to stop confusing his voice with other voices and their lies with his truth. We have to claim his truth for ourselves:

I am worthy.

I am important. 

I am beloved.

I am smart enough.

I am successful.

I am enough.

Remember the shepherd came and does what he does SO THAT you might have life and have it abundantly.  The question is will you choose to follow him and claim his truth for yourself? 

Jesus is...the Light of the World

This scripture tells us that Jesus is at the Feast of Tabernacles, also known as the Feast of Booths or Sukkot.  It was the 7-day Jewish holiday celebrated in the Fall that commemorated God’s care of Israel for the 40 years they were in the desert.  It was in those years that the people lived in sukka—temporary shelters or booths. And so each year, they would build these shelters again and stay in them for a week during the festival.  Now, in many ways it’s interesting that they would celebrate much of anything from the 40 years in the wilderness.  Those were not exactly the favorite years.  They were hard and tough with a lot of fussing and whining and wishing they could go back to Egypt.  And yet, every year after they arrived in the Promised Land, they gathered to remember where they had been and celebrate what God had done. 

In some ways I might call it the feast of looking back and giving thanks.  The festival elicited that from people.  But the booths—the tabernacles, made them look back in specific ways to see all that God had done since.  Because it wasn’t just getting them out of Egypt or seeing them through the wilderness, it was all that God had done since too—they could look at the land they had, the crops they raised, the homes they had built, the schools they’d constructed and all they’d become, and they could see God at work. 

The closest parallel I know of is project Chacocente.  When you’re there with the people they tell their stories and they talk about moving out of the dumps and how hard it was to transition to a new way of life.  They had to change how they related to others, how they earned money, how they structured their day, what they ate—almost everything was different. And I can imagine there were many days they felt like they were in the spiritual wilderness.  Some days they wanted to go back to the dumps.  That may seem hard for us to imagine, but for them, it was familiar and much easier than this entirely new life.  But they clung to the hope that what God had offered would be better. They persisted and have come so far.  Each family now owns their 2.6 acres outright with their home. They have a community well. They have electricity. They have the school. And each year something new happens and there’s something else to celebrate. 

If project Chacocente celebrated their own feast of Tabernacles they would invite sharing about what they went through and how hard it was AND how they persisted, how others came alongside to make this dream real—and together they would see all that God had done.

 That’s what the Jews did at sukkot—they remembered and marked time together and they celebrated all God had done among them.  Each night, they would light candles and then sing and dance together.  The candles represented the presence of God that had seen them through the trials and the darkness. 

And it was there, that Jesus taught and there he said, my words are not my own. It was there that Jesus said his words point back to God because God’s message is his message and his words are God’s words.  It was there that Jesus showed grace and pardoned the woman caught in adultery. And it was there, a few days into the festival, that Jesus said he was the light of the world.

In the midst of all the candles, all the lights that reveal how much God was with them over the years, Jesus claimed to be that light--the real light, the light that cannot be extinguished, the light of the world. 

So what does it mean to have that light in our lives?  Well, let’s go back to the story of the Israelites and their years in the desert. After the fact, they celebrated God, but in the midst of it, they struggled.  They struggled to find hope, and purpose and meaning. They knew they were on a journey, they knew that God had promised them something great, but they also knew that where they were was impossibly hard.  They were always on the move, they didn’t have a home.  They had a routine, but not one of living and relaxing and enjoying, but one of searching, wandering and seeking.  The years in the wilderness were unsettled.  They challenged their faith, their hope, and their trust in God’s provision and God’s promise for the future.  Those years are often related to years in darkness. Not because the sun was extinguished or hidden, but because they struggled to find their way, and to see what was in the distant future.

I’d venture that most of us have wandered in the darkness a time or two…literally and figuratively.  Our literal wandering helps us understand our spiritual wandering a bit better.  Imagine the darkness, even of your own home.  What happens in the darkness?  It’s hard to see.  The world becomes black and white and gray.  Often we stumble on an obstacle we didn’t know was there or didn’t remember we had moved.  And in the darkness of a new place, we struggle even more.  We aren’t familiar with where to go or how far it is from point A to point B, and often, we might become fearful, because not only can we not see what is there, we can also readily imagine what isn’t there.  Imagine a young child in a new dark place. They are often fearful, wanting extra lights on, and often calling out for help and protection.  Different sounds, or the reflection off an object catch them off guard and they aren’t fully sure what to make of them. And so we imagine all the awful things it could be.  To minimize a child’s fear, or even our own, we add a little light…maybe a night light, maybe a bathroom light, or a stove light. Or maybe we keep a flashlight with us. Whatever the source, we use light to help us navigate and to help us fear a little more secure. 

In a similar way, most of us have wandered in spiritual darkness.  In the wilderness of life, we struggle to see what’s around us. We don’t know how far it is from point A to point B.  We go slowly and cautiously, not sure of the obstacles and fearful of the dangers.  And to help us navigate and minimize our fears, we add a little light—the light of hope, the light of promise, the light of Christ, that helps us to see a little bit more of what surrounds us, and a little bit further down the path, and it chases away the shadows of fear that might plague us. 

Growing up, I don’t really remember being afraid of the dark—not specifically or in general.  But I do remember fearing at night that there was someone lurking in our dining room.  The layout of our house was that there was a hallway with 3 bedrooms and one bathroom at the back of the house. And at the front end of the hallway was the family room on one side and the dining room on the other.  In essence you could walk from one room to the other or you could go down the hall.  And at night, we turned out the lights, as you might expect.  And any night that I woke up, I would stand at my bedroom door and peer out to see if someone was at the end of the hall in the dining room and then race to the bathroom and close the door.  When I was done, I’d open the door and check again and race back to bed.  Now, there was never anyone lurking, nor had there ever been—it was all in my head.  But for years I ran from my fear.  Now, there are two bits of insanity to that story…the first is I have no idea what running down the hall would have spared me if there actually had been someone in the dining room, but the other thing is there was a light switch right next to my bedroom door…I easily could have flipped the switch and seen more than shadows and reflections and been at peace walking to and from the bathroom.  But instead, I chose to stay in the darkness and be bound by fear. 

As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown out of such fears and become much more pragmatic…if I can’t see in the dark, I turn on a light. It’s amazing how simple it is—at least in concrete terms.  But I haven’t always been so mature with my spiritual life.  I’ve found myself in darkness on more than a few occasions. And much like I did as a child, I look out and imagine all the awful things that might be there.  I run and my heart races and I’m plagued with fears.  I create a false sense of security against my imagined boogeymen.  And what I fail to realize there, just as I did as a child, was how easy it would be to shine the light on my path. I could ask for the light of the world to illuminate my path and take away my fears, but all too often, I’ve stayed bound by my fear and imagination. 

How many of us do that?  We find ourselves in a dark and scary place and instead of doing the most pragmatic thing—asking for light, we run in fear of what could be, not even what is, but what we imagine might be there lurking.  Jesus is the light. He is the one that helps us to see the path, but also the one who takes our fears and gives us greater confidence to take the next step.  When we look back on our journey and remember what we’ve been through, the places of light and hope come from Christ.  He is the light of the world. 

And when we struggle in the darkness, when we wander through the wilderness, we aren’t banished to fear and struggle, we are invited to call on the light of the world to shine on our path and help us see, to give us hope for what lies ahead, and to take away our fears—both real and imagined. 

Jesus is...the bread of life

When God meets Moses at the burning bush at the beginning of the story of Exodus God calls Moses to free to the Israelites from Egypt.  Moses was anxious and tried every excuse in the book to get out of it. Moses wanted God to go find someone else to do the job. But God wanted Moses and had an answer for every objection.  At one point, Moses said, what if I go to the people and they ask who sent me, who should I say sent me, and God says “hayah” which means “I AM.”  Now that sounds like a simple name that might not mean all that much, but in Hebrew, it wasn’t just “I AM” it’s “I AM who I AM” and “I was who I was” and “I will be who I will be” and it’s closely connected to Yahweh, which means Lord.  So God told Moses tell the people that the one who was and is and is to come has sent you. Tell them Yahweh has sent you.  And so Moses did and that’s how God was known, by the name Yahweh as the great I AM.

Now I know you might be thinking, “that’s great for Moses and the Israelites, but why does that matter to us?”  Well, Yahweh is how God is known.  The people heard hayah, or Yahweh, and they immediately thought of God.  So when Jesus begins to say hayah “the bread of life” or hayah “the living water”, the people are also hearing “God is the bread of life” and “God is the living water.”  In making these statements to these people, they are associating Jesus with God and they are meant to.  It might feel like a stretch, especially because “I am” is a statement we use all the time in every day speech.

But, we have to admit, there are certain names and quotes we’ve learned to associate with certain people.  It may not be that they’re the only ones to use those words or to be called that name, but their voice, or even just the words themselves make us think immediately of that person. So then if someone else uses that quote and mixes it with their own words, they’re tying themselves to the other person at the same time.  We have a couple of samples this morning. We’re going to play the voice or the quote and you’re going to tell us who it is.

·         Marsha, Marsha Marsha—Jan Brady

·         Here’s Johnny—we think of Johnny Carson and the person saying the quote is Ed McMahon

·         Ask not what your country can do for your—John F Kennedy

·         May the force be with you (Hans Solo) Obiwon Kinobi, and Luke Skywalker

·         “that’s all folks”—Porky Pig

·         The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—Franklin D. Roosevelt

Now that shows us that simple words and phrases can easily become recognizable not just for the words themselves but for the person who says them. So we might better understand how easily and powerfully associated Jesus becomes with God when he says “hayah the bread of life”.  It’s not just the words, but instead the history of the words tied to God.  For centuries God had been known as the great I AM.  Now, as we see him in the Gospel of John, God is being understood more intimately in the person of Jesus Christ. This connection to God as I AM will weave throughout the whole series. 

For today, we will be focusing on the scripture that was read from John 6. This particular scene takes place right after the feeding of the 5000.  The people come to find him and he’s frustrated because he can see they didn’t really want him….they wanted food.  He shares that he’s the one who’s been sent by God so that they might believe.  And so they ask for a sign, they ask for a miracle so that they might believe.  They say “Moses used to lead the people and he gave us manna, if you give us manna then we will follow you.”  Now Jesus gets a little more firm….it’s not about the food.  Even the manna wasn’t about the food.  The manna was about faith and trust in God.  The Israelites had to believe God would care for them each day. They weren’t allowed to collect extra—if they did it would rot and be filled with worms by morning.  The manna was given to feed them, but to receive the miracle they had to believe God would be faithful to them. 

So when these people asked for physical food Jesus recognized that they didn’t get it. The miracle of the loaves and fishes centered around food, but it was really about trusting God to provide.  Jesus admits he can do signs and wonders but says that really what he’s about is giving soul sustaining food. The gift he brings depends on our faith and trust that he will provide, not just once, but over and over again. 

Part of the question for us is are we seeking physical signs and wonders that last only moments or are we seeking spiritual sustenance where we trust daily that God will provide for and sustain us?  Are we interested in Jesus just so he can do what we want? OR are we ready to depend on Christ daily?  Do we believe he’ll be there or are we overly tempted to take a little extra just in case he fails us?

I’ve gotta say, this is a tough question for me.  I’m not just interested in the individual acts—though I won’t deny their appeal, BUT I don’t know that I’m ready to be dependent EVERY day.  I’m a pretty self sufficient person. I’m capable. I’m willing. And I like getting things done. And generally, I don’t like asking for help.  I don’t like being dependent. I can do it by myself thank-you-very-much. 

Now, I’m sure I’m the only one with this particular problem, right?  Of course, I usually am.  But in case there happens to be another one who’s like me I’ll take a minute to describe the struggle.,  I kind of think God could just stock me up for, I don’t know, a few months and then I’ll do my thing until supplies run low and then I could go back to God. I could manage that.   But what this passage tells us is that it’s not about having the stuff--it’s about having God and being reliant on God every day for just what we need.  Now, that might not seem that complex, but really, it’s counter-intuitive to how we think and act.

Everything our culture says tells us to be independent, self-sufficient, a jack-of-all-trades.  And here is our God in flesh and blood in the person of Christ telling us the opposite.  If we want real satisfaction, if we want to find what we’re looking for, if we want to be full—then we have to stop trying to make it all on our own and we have to go to Jesus for more than signs and wonders. 

To really eat of the bread of life, to partake in the gift Jesus offers—we have to become fully dependent on him.  How do we do that? Well, there’s a lot of different ways and each of us will have different things we need to let go of and different areas where we need to relinquish control and become reliant on God.  One of the ways we seek those specific answers is through the disciplines of Lent. By fasting from technology or giving up a vice, or making a personal sacrifice, we eliminate some of the noise in our lives and in the peace God begins to speak truth into our hearts. Through the disciplines of prayer, reading the scriptures, and journaling, God may speak to us about work, about our marriage, about grief, about our kids, about our parents, about a resentment, or about a callous on our heart.  And when we fight to control those situations, we are reminded it’s not about the thing—God may answer our prayer and give us reconciliation, forgiveness, a promotion, healing, or a miracle, but really what Jesus is asking is that we would trust and have faith that God will supply our needs each day. 

To really share in the bread of life, we have to stop seeking the quick fix and start submitting ourselves daily to be wholly dependent on God.   That’s a tall order.  God knows that. But the greatest gift of a relationship with God is not just coming to God when we want something, but coming daily to have our needs met and to engage the relationship.  This kind of faith and trust often requires a complete shift in our way of thinking and many of us aren’t ready to make that commitment. We’re still doing pretty well on our own.  But what if this kind of relationship could change your life?  Would you try it?  Would you be willing to make a short term commitment to see what happens?  Lent, is an invitation to check it out, to try and let go of our need to control things and instead to let God be in control. Lent offers us a chance to minimize the noise in our lives so that God’s voice might be heard.  And Lent asks us to stop asking just for what we want in this moment, but to look at the big picture and ask God what God wants.  Would you dare to try it?  It will mean some sacrifices. It will means some added faith practices so you can learn the rhythm of dependency.  But the promise is that it will be worth it. 

In a few moments, you will be invited to break-fast and share in Holy Communion.  You will be eating physical food, but I would encourage you to begin this journey of dependence, if you haven’t already, by asking God to be your life source each day and to teach you how to trust in this way.