Good Shepherd

When I was a kid, we lived in Australia for a year, and our next-door neighbor had a sheep station.  Sheep are a big thing down under, and as Canadians, we got invited to all kinds of things.  We got to see the sheep get dipped in some kind of medicine in what looked like a tiny dugout.  We got to see the sheep getting penned up for the shearing by the drovers, hard working and tanned, burly men.  We were shocked to see the dogs running over the backs of the penned-up sheep but even more shocked to see the drovers also walking across the backs of the sheep!  They were quick about it, and the sheep seemed none the worse for wear.  We even watched them wrestling the sheep into the shearing shed, pinning their legs and taking the razor right down to the skin of the animals.  It looked pretty traumatizing at first, but once the sheep were firmly held, they seemed to be okay.  We got to help picking off the loose or dirty bits of the fleeces and our hands got really soft from the lanolin in the fresh wool.  Then we watched the workers expertly flip the fleeces into big bins lined with burlap until they were full.  The bins were always in pairs and attached to a machine that would take one bin and rotate it over the second bin and squish its contents into the lower bin, then they would attach the top of the burlap and move it to the stack.  These burlap cubes must have been about three feet square and we kids thought it would be fun to jump on them and see how much we bounced!  We thought it would be soft but it was more like expecting a soft cushy sofa and getting a brick bench instead.  Wow!

It wasn’t our job to take care of the sheep.  And it wasn’t the job of the shearers to take care of the sheep.  That was the job of the Grazier, who owned the stations and kept the dingos away.  He knew that sheep who don’t get sheared can get into big trouble, even though they might like to escape from the shearing shed.  There was one sheep in New Zealand named Shrek, who escaped and when he was shorn, he lost sixty pounds of wool!  Sheep can get so weighed down by their wool that they can’t move to reach fresh pastures where green grass grows, and they can’t lie down by still waters to quench their thirst.

Good shepherds focus on more than just their sheep.  They also focus on the world that their sheep live in.  Shepherds who forget this part of caring for their sheep will allow them to overgraze their pastures.  Spending too long in any one paddock can lead to sheep having worms, or being impacted by drought conditions, or targeted by wolves and coyotes.

Sometimes we can be like stubborn sheep, wanting to avoid what’s good for us, and not recognizing how good we have it.  We don’t want to take the medicine the Good Shepherd provides for our souls, and we certainly don’t want to lose the things that keep us feeling warm and cozy and safe.  We don’t want to be moved from paddock to paddock to let the earth and grass recuperate from our use of the land. But there are times when the Good Shepherd knows we need to be sheared of all the things that weigh us down, fear, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and yes, maybe even too much stuff.  There are times when the Good Shepherd calls us to recognize when we have harmed the environment.  It’s hard to let go of all that, but we need to trust that the Good Shepherd knows what’s best for us.  And when our shepherd cares so much for us that he’s ready to even sacrifice his life for our well-being, that’s pretty amazing and humbling. 

Yesterday, people spent some time pondering the different images they had of our Good Shepherd.  If you talk to a shepherd who takes care of sheep for a living, as I had the opportunity to do just this week, the Good Shepherd is an amazing metaphor that resonates with them in a very powerful way.  But many of us have never touched a sheep or even seen a sheep up close.  The image of Jesus as our Good Shepherd can be as foreign to our lived experience as the image of a skyscraper would have been to a Roman Emperor.  Using this image today may be as enticing as a 1950’s jello salad, once all the rage at church potlucks, but never seen on restaurant menus.  In today’s society, it’s a metaphor that may not work well for us, especially if we think of sheep as docile and dumb.  They are anything but.  They can be tough, stubborn, creative, and easily spoiled by city slickers treating them like pets, as one of my farmer friends has often told me.  What kind of metaphors could we explore for Jesus that might help us feel more connected to him? Jesus is my homeless shelter?  Jesus is my Construction Safety Officer?  Jesus is my fire chief?  Jesus is my Astronaut?  Some of the metaphors that people came up with yesterday were amazing.  

Whatever metaphor we use that works for us today, hopefully it helps us to remember the characteristics of Jesus that can help us expand our understanding of who Jesus is in our lives today. Easter is a time to remember that Jesus had an abiding, unwavering kind of love and commitment to us all. And thanks be to God, Jesus continues to inspire and guide us and lead us into safe pastures.  May it be so for us all.  Amen.

Healing the broken hearted.

Step right up, come and see, for one day only, the spectacular, the miraculous, the amazing Jesus of Nazareth, Healer extraordinaire, to cure all your troubles right before your eyes!

Ever wonder if this is what Peter and the other three disciples had in mind when they went searching for Jesus the morning after the miraculous healing?  How they didn’t just look for him, they hunted him.  And when they found him, they wanted to bring him back home, where the whole of Capernaum waited.  The disciples were excited.  They knew they had a hit on their hands, and they could probably have set up shop in town and sell tickets to see the one and only greatest healer on earth.  Obviously, Jesus realized it too, and maybe just maybe he got up early because he needed to turn to God to figure out what to do next.  Should he settle down and get rich and famous, like most doctors did back in those days?  Or was he to be more than a local healer?

He knew that places like Capernaum didn’t have a lot of doctors or good healthcare.  Doctors were for the rich and powerful Roman elite who could afford a Greek physician.  Hospitals didn’t become widespread until Christianity was made legal by Constantine.  They didn’t become separate from the church until
King Henry the 8^th, that infamous fellow with disposable spouses, took over monasteries and churches alike.  In fact, even today, one of the best run hospitals in Alberta, Lamont, still is affiliated with the United Church and its mission statement boldly proclaims access to all people, a faith in God and a trust in the healing ministry of Jesus as well as the United Church Crest on their walls.

So back to our scriptures, healing has always been a core element of prayer and ministry of the ancestors of our faith.  Healing all people is part of the understanding of what we are to be about as Christians.  Our worship time is to be a chance to check our spiritual pulses.  Are we running an emotional fever? Are we needing a check up with God?  How are our love skills, our forgiveness reflexes, our justice impulses?  Do we need a booster shot in our immunity to evil and oppression?  Do we need stronger doses of prayer?

Jesus didn’t just heal people from a poor community.  It was startling in who he had healed.  Simon Peter’s mother-in-law.  Aside from the fact that this means the first followers of Jesus were married, it also points to the fact that he reached out to a senior, and a female at that.  While men were measured by how hard they worked and how many fish they could put on the table, women were often not even mentioned by name unless they were extraordinary.  And a mother-in-law living with her son-in-law would have been very unusual to say the least.  It must have been a full household if Simon and his brother lived there as well as a mother-in-law, and we might assume a wife and maybe even some children.  Mothers lived with their sons more than their daughters and were not seen as a contributor to the household coffers.  Even today, seniors can struggle to find a place to live, some end up bouncing from one household to another, living with different children who take turns, having no stability or ownership over who they live with. 

Peter’s mother-in-law had a fever, something that they had no aspirin to treat.  Some fevers went away, some fevers spread throughout the household and the whole community.  Some lasted days, some hours, and some were dreadfully fatal.  And in that day and age, people were helpless to treat it.

Jesus wasn’t helpless.  And he wasn’t dismissive of this senior in need.  He showed compassion and reached out with words of comfort and inclusion.  Words of healing that touched her soul and reminded her she still had gifts to share.  Healing that transformed her into a giver of hospitality and generosity.  She became the welcoming hostess who greeted and fed the newcomers to her household and helped them feel at ease.

In fact, she became the first convert to Christianity.  We are all called to love and serve others with compassion and justice.  She started in with joy and enthusiasm to just that.  The four disciples didn’t serve, they didn’t do anything we can see that was loving, except grouse at Jesus that he had abandoned them to sneak out and pray.  They chose to be grumpy and controlling instead of generous.  They chose not to think about what Jesus was doing and why he was doing it, they didn’t want to know how to pray or how to care for others, they just wanted to bring him back to the waiting crowds like a pet monkey that would wow the audience and mark them as the heroes of the town.

In the end, Jesus wasn’t called to stay put and stay local.  He heard the call to be a messenger of hope and love to those who didn’t fit in, who were ignored or dismissed or bullied by society.  He heard the call to preach wholeness to everyone who would listen.  Healing was not the core purpose of his ministry, nor was it going to be commercialized or politicized.  It was a free gift he was offering.

Who are the people who need a welcome today?  Who are the people feeling victimized by politics, who are being told that their access to healthcare will be controlled by politicians?  Who are being told that their minds and hearts and souls are not as important as their reproductive organs?  Who are having their hospitals bombed as retribution for terrorism?

Just as Lamont Hospital welcomes all that come through their doors, just as Jesus healed everyone who came to him, just as God heals the broken-hearted, let us be a safe space of welcome for the fearful, the lonely, the ostracized, the alienated and the desperate. God loves them all and wants to heal them, heart, mind, body and soul of their fevers of fear and anxiety.  May we, who have been healed, welcome and serve all who come into our lives!