St. Paul's On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

Easter 4; April 13, 2008

Acts 2:42-47

John 10:1-10

WE SHEEP

Souls, Hearing (God's voice), Enlightened, Eating in Pasture

I think Christians should be more selfish. Or at least I think Christians should be more openly selfish – as opposed to secretly selfish – about why we come here, and why we worship God in Christ.

We come here – or I come here – we worship God because we want something. And what we want is fullness, to an empty heart; healing, for a broken heart; direction when we've lost our way. That is why, I think, we are here: for healing, direction, fullness, joy.

Often we settle for less. We look for all these things in people, because we do not believe we can find them in God, perhaps because we have lost our faith, or because God did not provide for our needs when we felt we needed him most. So we learned to look elsewhere.

Others look outside the church, or outside any religion at all. They look to the advantages money can buy; to fill those holes or supply that direction. They look to quick fixes or to the soft soporifics of drugs or alcohol, to fill those needs and to supply that direction; for I suppose the illusion of direction is better than none at all.

Christ, and God's direction down through the ages, has always been less glamorous than all those alternative methods. What Jesus provides is not so quick a fix, although even a small dose does more long term good than a large dose of what the rest of the world offers. What the rest of the world offers always costs more and, in the long run, provides less.

The world says that if you work hard enough and give up enough time with yourself, your family and friends; why then you'll have enough money for an amazing one week vacation. Of course, by then you and your family will have forgotten how to have a conversation.

Jesus says: slow down and open yourself, love others, be loved by others, give, share. You'll have less money but more friends.

Open yourself. Be vulnerable. “Listen,” says St. Benedict in the Rule of Life. “Listen my child with the ear of your heart.” Then you can hear the Voice of God, the Voice of the Shepherd speaking in your heart – if you're open to him. You can listen when he speaks. You can listen when he calls to you. And you can feel it when he feeds, fills, comes to you, and leads you on.

Do not so fill yourself up with other things that you do not feel him moving in your heart when he comes. Do not dismiss the pain that he would address, as “a bit of undigested beef” as Scrooge said of the Christmas angel.

Maybe the pain within you has been awakened by the prospect of a real cure, as opposed to another false painkiller.

And that is why we're here; for the prospect of a real cure. And remembered pain brought us each here. The prospect of real direction after remembered aimlessness brought us each here. The prospect of the real presence of Christ, after remembered darkness or emptiness, brought us each here.

And here he is, here Christ is, ready to come to each of us, now that we've made a space, now that we're ready for him; now that our hearts have felt and heard that loving Voice in the night, that Voice in the darkness, that Voice in the emptiness or directionlessness that calls us each by our own precious name and says: “Come follow me.”

That voice of deep reality when all around us is shallow and unreal.

Glamorous answers didn't work. Maybe this humble one will. And so we come. And so we are fed.

This is the test of the true Shepherd. Are we fed?

This is the test of the true manifestation of God. Does he feed us? Not – does he draw attention to himself? Not – does he demand only service of us? Not – does he demand that we follow him in some incredible calling?

But – does he feed us?

Jesus says that God is primarily a Shepherd who feeds. And the mark of the Good Shepherd is: he feeds the sheep. Not that he delivers them to market, or raises them for his own consumption.

Jesus' primary, self-imposed, qualification is that he is here for us – to fill that emptiness, supply that need. His primary demands are two fold. One: that we eat what is good for us and not what is bad for us; and he works and even punishes to keep us on the right track of eating the good grass, and avoiding the thistles and thorns.

His second demand is that we help our neighbors eat too, that we show them where the good grass is, that we make room for them when they find pasture, whoever they are; that we do all this whether they are friend or enemy.

He loves us. He asks us to take advantage of that love – “Take, eat, do this in remembrance of me,” he pleads. And make that love available to others, share it with others, he asks.

And so when the early church grew beyond all imagination – because “the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” because the Lord seems to be his own chief missionary to broken and empty hearts – when the early church grew beyond all imagination, the early Christians moved over and took in anyone who joined, even their former enemies; and even gave up their own income to help these total strangers. And the Christian community grew in body and in spirit and vitality – a vast and wonderful community of love that became its own witness to where the good grass was.

And so when the Risen Lord was out there in the wilderness of the world, reminding people of their pain and how the world's answers were not supplying their needs, people naturally could see that the church was a place where needs were filled and love was supplied.

And so the Lord does seem to say that we should come here, and stay here, for selfish reasons – our own needs. But he does seem to say that just as a sheep eats and becomes full, so too can we eat of what he has to give and become full, and then we can move over and enjoy the presence of the latest lost sheep to come home to pasture; no matter how different they are and sometimes they are pretty different – just look around, different sheep, but under one Shepherd.

Somebody once said that a Christian is just one beggar who can tell another beggar where they can find a crust of bread.

So I would like to transform us all into talkative beggars; talkative apostles – who are sent out in witness – and not just disciples, who stay home to learn.

We are gradually transformed into apostles, when we have seen enough wonders and signs in our own lives and those of others, when we have been fed and healed and strengthened enough by the Good Shepherd.

We are talkative apostles who can say where the good grass is; who can identify someone else's pain, or sin, or emptiness or directionlessness and say: I know where you can find an answer, or at least begin to look. I know where I've found an answer, what pasture I've fed in. I know a good shepherd, God himself, whose only mission – we believe in this church – is to feed and heal you.

His only self-described qualification to be God, is that he loves and heals people. His only self-described qualification to be God, throughout the whole Bible, is that he does not care about himself or his own majesty. After all he gave up his own majesty, and became a person. He cares about you, and gave up his own life for you. He lived for you and died for you and rose for you and if you only try doing what he said, and living the way he taught, you might find happiness now, fullness now, direction now – now, on earth as it is in heaven; but before you even get to heaven.

The qualification of the Shepherd is that he loves the lambs. The qualification of God is that he loves the sinner and wants the best for them.

He feeds us in these secret ways, not the glamorous ones that are hard to achieve, but the easy ones that we find every day – easy ways like helping the neighbor, loving God and loving ourselves.

These ways don't seem like much. But they will make you happier than all the money or power or reward in the world. God provided them when he came as a human to other humans, not as a king but as a normal person.

Follow him. Try that food. It will make him glad.