|
I spent the academic year 1985-1986 on the faculty of a Roman Catholic
seminary, teaching homiletics. And when it came my turn to preach in the seminary chapel, I began my
sermon by saying that it was good to be there that year among the separated brothers and sisters.
They laughed, too, of course, because from the Roman point of view, we Anglicans are the separated
ones. So much depends upon perspective, doesn’t it?
So let’s try to imagine life on earth this morning the way God must see it from his perspective:
a world of separated people. All God’s children separated from each other, lost from each other and from
God. Rich separated from poor, the powerful from the weak. Black separated from white, Palestinian from
Israeli, East from West. A world divided by walls of hostility into inner courts and outer courts, into
Jew and Christian and Muslim, pharisee and sadducee, Shiite and Sunni, into Anglican and Lutheran and
Roman and Baptist, into American and Gentile. Each of us in the wonderful garden of the planet with his
own head down, muscling himself from one tuft of grass to the next, nibbling himself lost. All of us
oblivious to where we’re headed, each with his own little corner of the world to defend, each with his own
little corner of truth to proclaim, each fearfully guarding his own turf, each fearfully seeking his own
salvation, like sheep without a shepherd.
But “the Lord himself has made us, and we are his,” says the psalmist; “we are his people, and
the sheep of his pasture.” (Ps 100) And the prophet joins the Scriptural litany: “This is what the
Sovereign Lord says, ‘I myself will search for my sheep, and look after them. As a shepherd looks after
his scattered flock, so will I look after my sheep, and rescue them, and gather them from all the distant
places where they have scattered.’” (Ezekiel 34:11-13)
And Jesus adds, “I am the good shepherd who knows his sheep, and who leads his sheep, and who
saves his sheep from the wolf, because the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. And there
other other sheep of mine who do not belong to this fold. I must lead them as well, and they too will
listen to my voice. There will be one flock, one shepherd.”
But John, the evangelist who tells all this good news, says that they did not understand what
Jesus was talking about.
What didn’t they understand? Perhaps they didn’t understand what Jesus meant by “good.” “Good”
means many things in English. The English word “good” could mean that the shepherd is morally upright, or
correct, or orthodox. It could mean that he is good at his job, efficient, that Jesus really knows how to
round the sheep up, the way a sheep dog rounds them up by herding them. But a careful look at the text
tells us that none of this is what Jesus claims to be. “I am the ‘kalos’ shepherd,” he says when he
speaks in the Greek of John’s Gospel. “I am the winsome shepherd,” he means. “I am the lovely shepherd,
the attractive one, the shepherd who knows his sheep and calls them by name, and who does not drive them
from behind but leads them by attracting them to himself.” “I am the shepherd, the beautiful one” is how
William Temple translates it, the shepherd the sheep follow through the valley of the shadow of death and
into green pastures and still waters, not because they are driven, but because they know their shepherd,
who wins them to himself because he loves them and they love him, and because they trust the way he calls
them to follow.
What don’t we understand? Perhaps we don’t understand what Jesus means by “listen.” “Akouein,”
to listen. Or, if intensified into “hupakouein,” to listen intently, to obey, to follow. Winsome,
attractive, trustworthy. This is the way Jesus is, the evangelist tells us, because this is the way God
is. And this is our vocation -- to follow the way of the one who calls us by name.
And we have failed. We are still lost, because we do not hear and do not understand, says Jeff
Carlson, the pastor of Good Shepherd Church in Glenwood Springs. “The war with Iraq is over, and is is
clear now that we failed. I don’t mean, of course, the United States armed forces,” Pastor Carlson adds.
It is clear that our armed forces “defeated their opponent overwhelmingly.... I mean, rather, we failed,”
we Christians, we lost sheep, who do not hear and follow the call of our shepherd.
Carlson says that we failed because we have followed the call of Peter rather than the call of
Jesus. We abandoned our commitment to the way of Christ, the way of the Cross. “As is so often the
case,” Carlson explains, “the alternative to Christ’s way was not blatant evil, but rather reasonable
desires: to remove a cruel tyrant, to right injustices, to liberate an oppressed people, and to prevent
further deaths. It was precisely these same desires that Simon Peter had in mind: to follow and support
[a Messiah who would] remove the cruel tyrant Tiberius Caesar, to right the horrible injustices suffered
under the Roman Empire, to liberate God’s chosen people from their oppressors, and to prevent further
deaths at the hands of the Romans. All quite reasonable, well-intentioned, even biblically-based
desires.
“Nevertheless, when Simon Peter, motivated by such worldly-wise desires, rebuked Jesus for his
contrary intention to conclude his ministry in death and failure rather than in conquest and success,
Jesus in return rebuked Simon Peter in the strongest terms: ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling
block to me. For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.’”
Then the good shepherd called his sheep, and said to them, “If anyone wants to become my follower,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose
it, and whoever loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will
it profit a man to gain the whole world, but forfeit his soul? Those who are ashamed of me and of my
words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes
in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:33-38)
So “those among us followers of Christ who supported this war took Simon Peter’s part in
opposition to the way of Christ, the way of the Cross,” Pastor Carlson concludes. And so also, those of
us who opposed the war failed. We failed when we failed to make it clear that we opposed the war for the
same reason Jesus opposes war, because we are pro-Cross. We who opposed the war failed when we “failed to
distinguish our message from all those who opposed the war for a variety of other reasons,” when we failed
to make it clear that war, even just war, even a war to depose a tyrant, is not part of the coming kingdom
of God, but only a tragic accommodation to the reality of our separation from God and each other, only a
tragic, failed alternative to our heeding the call of our shepherd, who calls us to live the Easter life
now by taking up our own cross and following him, regardless of cost.
“Supporters of the war legitimately and reasonably argued, ‘What, then, are we to do? Are we
merely to say to these murderers and terrorists, “Jesus doesn’t want you to do that,” while they continue
to ignore us and go on causing more and more death and destruction?’”
But Pastor Carlson wonders, and I wonder: “Was there not murder, terror, and injustice aplenty
when Jesus walked the earth? Yet God chose, in God’s own wisdom, not to raise an army to defeat the
powers of evil, but rather to be raised himself on a cross, and to call his followers (including you and
me) to pour out our lives in loving service to others, even to enemies, in order to defeat the powers of
evil. [Called us] to trust in the power and promise of Easter.” So even those of us who opposed this
war, and who oppose other wars as well, fail when we fail to make it clear that we are pro-Cross and
pro-Easter.
So where is the good news in all this? The good news, I think, lies in honesty. The good news
is in seeing ourselves as God sees us, in seeing ourselves as we are.
Is it not more accurate, more honest, to admit that war, even a just war, has nothing to do with
following the way of Christ, to admit that human warfare has nothing at all to do with the defeat of evil,
nothing at all to do with the coming kingdom of God? Is it not more accurate to admit that the Shepherd
who calls us each by name knew that evil cannot be defeated with legions, but only by love, that the wolf
can be defeated only by the Shepherd’s laying down his life for the sheep?
The Good Shepherd comes to us as an Easter Gospel, as an encounter with the risen Christ. And is
it not more accurate and honest to confess, as Father Richardson said last week, that we simply are
terrified by the fold toward which the risen Shepherd would lead us, because we are terrified by the
Shepherd’s path, terrified by the way to Easter, terrified by the way of the Cross? Terrified by the
risen Christ, terrified as the disciples were terrified, that the Shepherd whom God raised on the third
day is the same Shepherd who walked the earth before the Resurrection -- the Good Shepherd, the
beautiful one, the winsome, attractive Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep and who calls us to
follow him in the way of sacrifice and forgiveness.
Is it not more honest, and therefore more healing and more powerful, to confess that we are just
as terrified by the Good Shepherd’s vocation today as we were when Peter had his encounter with him on the
road to Calvary? Is it not more accurate to say, more honest, that “the argument of those [of us]
Christians who supported the war went something like this: ‘I believe in the way of Jesus Christ, the way
of the Cross, as an ideal. But when it comes to living practically in this world, there are times when we
must set aside that ideal path and follow the advice of Simon Peter. To do otherwise is unwise and
dangerous”?
“Lord, Lord, we’re on your side,” we cry, even as Jesus tells us that not everyone who does so
will enter the kingdom of God. And we do not hear, not really hear. And we do not understand that in
marching to Baghdad we have marched no closer to the kingdom of God than the Roman legions marched when
they marched to Judea in the name of Caesar or when the Crusaders marched to Jerusalem in the name of
Christ in the Middle Ages.
So what is the good news in all this? It is this: such a confession has at least one virtue.
Such a confession at least has the virtue of providing us Christians with the freedom to see ourselves as
we are -- as lost sheep, sheep just as separated from God as all the others Jesus came to save, sheep
who are lost save for the mercy and grace of the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for us, that we,
together with all the others, might be one.
Such a confession at least has the virtue of providing us Christians with the freedom to know that
evil is defeated, and the kingdom comes, only on the Cross of love to which the Shepherd leads us, the
virtue of providing us with the freedom to know that we are saved by grace, not by ourselves. Not even by
justice, but by the mercy of God.
Such a confession at least provides us with the freedom to hear Jesus’ final word: “Father,
forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen
|