Sermon: Our Shepherd: Lion or Lamb

Text: Acts 9:36-43, Psalm 23, Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-30

Date: April 25, 2010

Rev. Andrew Yee, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

A young woman wanted very badly to go to college, but her heart sank when she read the question on the application that asked, "Are you a leader?"  She wanted to be both honest and conscientious, so she wrote, "No," and returned the application, expecting the worst. To her surprise, she received this letter from the college: "Dear Applicant: A study of the application forms reveals that this year our college will have 1,452 new leaders. We are accepting you because we feel it is imperative that they have at least one follower” (Adapted from S. I. McMillen, None of These Diseases).

Grace and peace to you, my sisters and brothers-- from our Lord and Savior Jesus as our Christ!  Amen.

On this 4th Sunday of Easter typically called. “Good Shepherd Sunday,” I’d like to look at both sides of that coin using the texts that were assigned for today: 1) in leadership— exactly what kind of shepherd is described here? and 2) for followers—what implication might this kind of shepherd have for the sheep?

But before we dive into leadership and shepherds as described in our texts for us today—it might be good to ask first what kind of image we might already have of “a good shepherd”: man or woman?—strong or weak?—scrappy or clean?  Spending any time with the Bible—we’d certainly recall that a major function of the shepherd is to lead and protect the sheep—especially against predators like wolves.  Do you have an image of what the shepherd should look like?  Now keep that image in mind as we begin by looking at our text in the book of Revelation.

The book of Revelation, as many of you might know, is full of imagery that we don’t really have enough time today to get right now.  But let’s look at the text anyway beginning a few chapters back at chapter five so that we have a better idea what we see in our text for today.  Chapter 5 talks about “one seated on the throne”—namely God—holding a scroll sealed with seven seals.  We can assume that the scroll is something very important like the mysteries of all of Creation or the meaning of life (ref “Life of Brian”).  The text continues: “I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?"  3 And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it.  4 And I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.  5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals."  6 Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth” (Rev 5:2-6).

John the Seer, the one who was crying, was expecting to look up from his tears and see a lion—the leader—the only one who was able to open the seventh seal.  Instead, he saw a lamb—more specifically, a slaughtered lamb.  Again, I think we’re working with imagery here—but I also think that there is still something very significant that what John saw was so completely different than what he expected.

Let’s look now at our gospel lesson for today.  Let me preface it by pointing out two things:

One, sheep prefer to be led.  In her book The Preaching Life, Barbara Brown Taylor tells of a conversation she had with a friend who grew up on a sheep farm in the Midwest. According to him, sheep are not dumb at all. "It is the cattle ranchers who are responsible for spreading that ugly rumor, and all because sheep do not behave like cows…cows are herded from the rear by hooting cowboys with cracking whips, but that will not work with sheep at all. Stand behind them making loud noises and all they will do is run around behind you, because they prefer to be led. You push cows, her friend said, but you lead sheep, and they will not go anywhere that someone else does not go first—namely, their shepherd—who goes ahead of them to show them that everything is all right."  So, we read in our gospel lesson for today: My sheep hear my voice.  I know them and they follow me.

The second thing that I would like to point out is: the most important reference to sheep in the New Testament is sacrificial. Sheep are the sacrificial animals par excellence. (As a matter of fact, sacrifice gave rise to animal husbandry, in the first place. Animals were originally kept for sacrifice. So keeping livestock, in its origins, has never simply been a purely agricultural phenomenon.)  The references that you will hear about the sheep gate are actually a gate in the wall of Jerusalem where the sheep would go through on their way to be sacrificed.

Keeping those two things in mind, that sheep are led and that the main reason for sheep is sacrifice let us now read the beginning verses of the same chapter of our gospel lesson for today, paying particular attention to who goes through the sheep gate first: "Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.  The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.  The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.  They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers." 

Who is the first one through the sheep gate?  That’s right—it is the shepherd.  This then helps us understand the verses that follow in a different way, doesn’t it?  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.

Usually when I hear the phrase, “And I lay down my life for the sheep…,” I’m thinking about a shepherd who is willing to fight off the wolves—fighting that’s nasty enough that it might even cost the life of the shepherd.  But notice that the text says nothing about the good shepherd fighting in that sense.  Here too, as in the Revelation text, we find not a lion who sheds blood, as we may have expected, but we find that the wolves are addressed by a slaughtered lamb or sacrifice.  Essentially we find—the cross.  I have to admit that I don’t always know what to say after this point. 

It seems clear to me that the leadership that is modeled here shows a response to violence that is totally non-violent.  It seems to support, very well, the movement and spirit of some of our heroes like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  But then I’ve also heard those who have criticized me when I’ve preached this way saying, “What are we supposed to do—just sit there and do nothing and be killed?”  Although I share their grief, I also don’t see Gandhi and MLK as those who “did nothing.”

I think that Christ through the cross exposes evil and brokenness in our world in a way that just fighting back in bloodshed could never do—and a way of including everyone, even the wolves, at the foot of the cross that just showing off who has a bigger gun could never do.  The cross invites us, through the shepherd-sheep motif, to look at people in an incredibly deep way:

Jn 10:13-15       “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.”

This is why I think the Tabitha text was included for us today.  She was not only a woman who is named publically in writing as a disciple—but you can really see how much she meant to her community.  We find in the text that she cared for widows and at least made tunics for them to wear—but it’s not hard to imagine that the tremendous grief of the widows was probably in direct relationship to a unique way that she cared for them.

How might our leaders today, us included if we were one of the 1,452 people who answered “yes” in the college app, learn to have this deep care as shown in Tabitha and the sense of oneness as shown in the shepherd-lamb of the cross?  How might we reclaim—even in our acts of “charity”—the literal sense of charity as “suffering with”—rather than giving out of pity?   These are the characteristics of leadership and shepherding that we have for today.  Let me give you one example:

John Kretzmann, a researcher and teacher of urban studies, told the story of sitting and talking with an elderly African-American woman on her front steps in the South Bronx. This woman used her own picture-language, ala St. John, to describe her experience. She is in prison, she told Mr. Kretzmann. What kind of prison? We might guess, as people who stand outside her community, that she is imprisoned by the crime and violence, the drugs and sex, which fill her streets. But no. That was not the kind of prison she was talking about. She told John Kretzmann that she was imprisoned by the perceptions of we who live outside her neighborhood, we who only see the crime and the violence and the drugs. We look at her home and see nothing but emptiness, powerlessness, and hopelessness. We no longer look at her or her neighbors and see children of God who were given gifts by their Creator. We look and only see victims; we do not see God and the Lamb who gives life.  So John Kretzmann has changed the way in which he goes into such communities as a consultant. He does not begin with a needs survey, as prelude to efforts to fill the emptiness. Rather, he begins with a gifts survey, as prelude to nurturing the powers and potentials that already exist there. And it works. People in the most down-trodden of communities begin to come together and build positive communities. (Paul J. Nuechterlein, sermon, 05.06.95).

The cross, lifted in front of us this morning, invites us to see the world through our shepherd as the slaughtered lamb.