good shepherd – pastorsusan

What’s in a Name, Good Shepherd?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”

This familiar line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is meant to convey that the name of a thing is irrelevant. Obviously, William Shakespeare was not Jewish. In the Hebrew language, the word ‘sheim’ (name) has the same letters as the word ‘sham’ (there). This is not a coincidence. A person’s name tells you what’s really there. It represents our identity not just because it’s a convenient way to distinguish us from one another. It is because the name defines us. According to Rabbi Benjamin Blech, Professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University in NY, names capture our essence. They are the keys to our soul.

That’s not a familiar concept to us outside of the Bible, where names are given or changed all the time to reflect the character of a person or place. In our day, names are often chosen because of their current popularity. I remember a song from the Jennifer era, when it was the No. 1 baby name for girls in America from 1970 to 1984, and in the top 10 until 1991. The song was “27 Jennifers” and the words were “I went to school with 27 Jennifers, 16 Jenns, 10 Jennies.” In my day, it was Joanne, Kathy, Linda, and Susan. Nowadays, according to the Social Security Administration, the most popular name for boys for the past five years is Liam, and for girls, Olivia, has been the reigning champ for the past three years.

I don’t know if all Jewish parents adhere to the belief, but some sources say that parents are granted a minor degree of ruach hakodesh (divine inspiration) when they select names for their children. According to Rabbi Blech: “Names are a book. They tell a story. The story of our spiritual potential as well as our life’s mission.”

So this got me to wondering, what about church names? Does anyone know how Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd got its name? I mean, I know where the name comes from – you can see it right on the stained-glass window in the front of the church. But who decided that that image would be the one to define this congregation? I did just learn in a Facebook exchange with daughter of the congregation Janet Griffiths that the window was installed maybe between 1972-78. She says, “I remember the purple panes before this window.” So who named the church in the first place?

I was curious, so I started Googling how churches got their names. Without going into depth, reading just what appeared in the few lines in Google, I found a Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Lethbridge, AB where the first pastor was tasked with naming the new building. He decided that if people wanted to find a Lutheran church, they’d look in the phone book (this was 1957 when we still used phone books) under Lutheran, rather than look for a specific church name. So he settled on Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd. Very pragmatic.

At Church of the Good Shepherd in Holbrooke, NY, a Roman Catholic church established in 1970, Father Ronald Barry expressed his belief that “the people are the church,” so a vote by the members named the new parish. Very democratic. Another Lutheran church organized in 1965 did a similar thing. Each member wrote the name of their choice on paper, and the most repeated entry was “Good Shepherd.”

Sometimes names get changed. The story is told of a seminary professor who met up with an old friend who had recently became the pastor of a certain church. The professor asked his friend the name of the church and his friend told him the name. The seminary professor, who was a Hebrew linguist, said, “Did you know that your church name means ‘House of Iniquity’ in Hebrew?” The pastor did not know that, but he returned to the church, called a congregational meeting, and promptly changed the church name. Thus, “House of Iniquity Church” was replaced with something more innocuous.

Then there’s the church in Williston, ND which changed its name from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church to the Shepherd’s Table: A Center 4 Community in Christ. Members of the congregation spent two and a half years asking themselves the question: “What is God asking of us?” and in January of 2020 began to transition into a new identity for the church. Pastor Nicole Martin said that while the church would still hold Sunday worship as usual, the biggest change would be in the church’s mission to create partnerships between community organizations to meet the needs of Williston.

This story was of interest to me because it sounded like they may have gone through the same kind of process that our church council has been working on since December. We have been taking our time to be in a time of discernment, that is in Bible study, prayer, discussion, and listening for what God is calling us to be in this time and place. I’m not suggesting that we change our name; I just found it interesting that their discernment process led them to a name change. Sort of. They still obviously thought that ‘shepherd’ was still part of their identity and mission.

Which brings us to us. Why are we Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd? How does our name define us?
How does it capture our essence and hold the key to our soul?

I think there are two aspects of our name that define us. The first is pretty obvious: we look to Christ as our Good Shepherd, who loves us, cares for us, and keeps us gathered together. I’m reminded of the words from the end of the funeral liturgy: “Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant. Acknowledge, we beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming.” We can look up to our stained-glass window and feel secure in the sense of belonging to such a flock.

There are lots of places in the Bible where we find this kind of comfort. The 23^rd Psalm, for one. Although not about Jesus, we can see how Jesus embodied the kind of shepherd-leader praised in ancient Israel – from Moses who saw the burning bush as he was tending his father-in-law’s flocks to the Shepherd-King David, and even to King Cyrus of Persia, who conquered the Babylonians and set the captives free. As Isaiah spoke God’s word: ‘He is my shepherd, and he shall carry out all my purpose.’

There are also plenty of examples of what a shepherd should not do. Jeremiah ranted in his day about kings and religious leaders who were supposed to leads their people according to God’s ways: “For the shepherds are stupid, and do not seek God’s counsel; therefore, they have not prospered, and all their flock is scattered.”

Pastors are supposed to be good shepherds. In the ordination service, the passage from 1 Peter is read as one of the charges to the newly ordained: “Tend the flock of God that is in your charge, not under compulsion but willingly, not for sordid gain but eagerly. Don’t lord it over those in your charge but be examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will win the crown of glory that never fades away.” And if you’ve ever wondered why our bishop carries a staff that looks like a shepherd’s crook, it’s because it’s a symbol of the role of a bishop as “shepherd of the flock of God,” particularly the community under their jurisdiction.

So this is the first aspect of our name. “We,” as Psalm 100 declares “are God’s people, the sheep of God’s pasture.” And as such, we look to Christ, both as our very real presence as guide and comforter, and as a model of servant leadership for all who minister in Christ’s name.

The second aspect is one that asks us to consider how a church called Good Shepherd embodies the characteristics of its namesake. And if the corporate identity of an entire congregation is one of servant leadership, called to guide and to comfort, then who is the flock?

You know, the council hasn’t finished its discernment work yet, although we are planning to present something at the annual meeting on June 12^th. It won’t be the final product, which will include intentions for action in the coming year, but it will give you a snapshot of the work. In this work of discernment, we were called upon to first of all frame the issue we most want to address in the coming year. And what we agreed upon was this:
We will continue providing meaningful worship, while also connecting in a meaningful way to our community.

In light of that statement and this Good Shepherd Sunday, it seems clear that the flock is – us. We are both sheep and shepherd. But it doesn’t stop at these doors; we are shepherd to our community. In order to get congregations thinking about this, it used to be asked: if your church closed its doors tomorrow, would anyone in the community care? We could put a more positive light on it and ask: if your church closed tomorrow, what would the community miss?

In these days of church decline and pandemic, many churches are closing their doors. It might be interesting to ask the communities around them what they would miss about these congregations. (For one story, see Lament at the Closing of a Church.)

We’d probably get a wide variety of answers. The saddest of them all, however, would be: “Nothing at all.”

Here at Good Shepherd, we already have a presence in our neighborhood, so no doubt we would be missed. The AA groups that meet here are part of our flock. How might we interact with them even more? The Good Shepherd Chinese Christian Church that liked our name so much that they took it for themselves, too. How might we explore with them what it means to shepherd in our communities? As we come out of pandemic isolation, Vacation Bible School can return. Many more ideas have been floating about for the 2 ¼ years I’ve been here. The work of the council will be to discern which of these will best contribute to our framing statement, that will be doable by a small congregation or in partnership with others, that will hopefully capture the imagination and generate excitement among us all. At this point, all I can say is Stay Tuned.

I’m still interested in the question of how we came to be named the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd? And I’m still curious about how you all see how our name defines us? How does it capture our essence and hold the key to the soul of this congregation? As always, I’m interested in your thoughts. So I think I’m going to stop and see if anyone would like to share a response, idea, critique, or question.

For now, I’ll just say; Amen.

Judaism and the Power of Names

What Should I Call My Church: Best Practices for Naming Your Church

Teleidoscopic Jesus

You probably know what a kaleidoscope is, right? The most familiar kind is a tube with mirrors inside and bits of colored glass or paper. When you turn the tube, you can create intricate symmetrical patterns. But have you ever heard of a teleidoscope? It’s similar to a kaleidoscope, but it doesn’t have any colored objects inside. It does have mirrors inside, but it has an open view, so you can form kaleidoscopic images of whatever you’re looking at outside of the tube. So I could look at you and see a multitude of psychedelic images that change each time I turn the tube. An interesting side note is that, while the kaleidoscope has been around since the 1800s, the teleidoscope was invented in 1970 by John Burnside, an inventor and gay rights activist who lived in San Francisco.

So why am I telling you this? I’ve been thinking that looking at Jesus is kind of like looking into a teleidoscope. Depending on what picture you look at or what story you read or who you ask, you can get a different image of who Jesus was. Even when you read the gospels. When you turn from Matthew to Mark to Luke and to John, you see the same person, but the picture is a little different.

I realized this while I was reading the story of Jesus from the gospel according to Luke, where Jesus is reading from the Isaiah scroll in the synagogue. This scene, as we’re looking at it through our teleidoscope, is the inaugural speech of Jesus, the opening (at least through Luke’s eyes) of Jesus’ public ministry. This is a different scene from his first public act in John’s gospel, which was turning water into wine. There, the setting was a wedding. Today when we turn the teleidoscope, we see him in the synagogue. And, just as many of you do, he had volunteered to be the reader that day. But after he read from the book of Isaiah, he added a little commentary of his own. He said, “Today, in your hearing, this scripture passage is fulfilled.”

By presenting Jesus in this way, the writer of the gospel of Luke shows us his image of Jesus. Same person as the one John described at the wedding in Cana, but with a twist of the teleidoscope. In a way, John Burnside’s little invention is perfect for Epiphany, the season of revelation, in which we look to see how Christ was revealed then and how Christ is being revealed today.

Here in Luke, he says,
God has anointed me
to bring Good news to those who are poor,
to proclaim liberty to those held captive,
recovery of sight to those who are blind,
and release to those in prison –
to proclaim the year of God’s favor.

Can you hear the echo of the song of Mary in the Magnificat, from back in Advent?You have shown strength with your arm; you have scattered the proud in their conceit; you have deposed the mighty from their thrones and raised the lowly to high places. You have filled the hungry with good things, while you have sent the rich away empty.

The story of turning water into wine revealed Jesus as one who could show us the abundance of the kindom of God. This story in the synagogue shows us Jesus as the one who brings God’s justice. Same Jesus, with just a turn of the teleidoscope. Two ways that two different gospel writers presented Jesus to the world. And that was just the beginning.

I was thinking about all the different ways we do look at Jesus. One way to find these is to look at church names: Christ the King, Church of the Redeemer, Christ the Liberator, Christ the Healer Church, Church of Our Savior, Christ the Servant, Christ the Way Church, Christ the Word Church, Church of Christ the Worker. And of course, Church of the Good Shepherd.

If we were sitting in our sanctuary today, we would be looking right at the stained-glass window depicting Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Imagine if our beautiful window was also magically a teleidoscope and could cycle through all these other images – and more – of who and what Jesus was revealed to be.

But now we turn to the challenge that this multi-faceted Jesus presents to us today. Many people don’t know any of these faces of Jesus. Unfortunately, Jesus’ reputation has been tarnished in the eyes of many – he’s just part of an antiquated, irrelevant religious institution.

Those of us still in the Church would do well to take seriously these questions that are asked by Gregory Jenks, editor of the book, The Once and Future Scriptures:
* How do we represent Jesus to our world?
* Can the Jesus of hymnal and creed still capture the imagination of the 21^st century person?
* Do we need latter day Luke’s to fashion fresh representations of Jesus for the 3^rd millennium?
* Will they be found inside the churches or only beyond their boundaries?

In other words, does Jesus need an Extreme Makeover? And who’s going to do it? Well, guess what. I think each one of us is qualified to be a latter-day Luke. We are part of the revelation of Jesus to our world. But the question still looms: how can we capture the imagination of the 21^st century person – especially in a place like the Bay Area, with our religious diversity, secularism, and spiritual independence?

So, here we are, a small group of people, most of who have been around the church for a long time. Surely, we have each developed a picture of Jesus in our minds. I’m assuming it’s a positive one, otherwise why would we be here? And when we put all these pictures together, we have a repertoire of stories, images, and experiences that comprise a beautiful teleidoscopic panorama. The challenge is how to tell our stories, images, and experiences. We don’t want to be identified as “that kind of Christian,” wearing our religion like battle armor and offending religious and non-religious alike.

How can we be followers of Jesus without lurking at either extreme of the spectrum – neither a street corner evangelist, like a John the Baptist nor a silent disciple, like Nicodemus coming to see Jesus under cover of night? With the decline of the institutional church, Christianity’s engagement with other religions, and now a pandemic – we are forced to do what we never really had to do before: answer the question that Jesus asked Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” And decide how we’re going to convey that answer to our community.

Some years ago, I was part of a Muslim/Christian dialogue group. We read a book together called Islam’s Jesus. I wrote a blog post that December with the title Christmas in the Qur’an. I was surprised to see a quote from that post appear in the Bay Are Interfaith Connect. I had written, “As we listened to our Muslim friends tell of their devotion to both Mary and Jesus, we were challenged to rethink our own understandings of who and what Jesus was and is.”

That question also arises in our encounters with those who identify as spiritual-but-not-religious or spiritually independent, as well as those who have been wounded by the church in some way. So I think having to wrestle with the question “Who do you say that I am” is a good exercise for all of us. Because the more secure we can be in our identity as followers of Jesus, the more articulate we can be in telling our stories, the better we will be at representing Jesus to our world and capturing the imagination of the 21^st century person.

We do not want simply to claim that we’re not like “those other Christians” with whom we disagree. We do want to be able to say what we do believe about this Jesus we profess to love and follow. And just like the naming of our churches and the turning of the teleidoscope, we’ll each have different things to say and different ways of saying it.

The logical place to begin, it would seem, is to flesh out what our congregation’s name means to us. Thankfully, we’re not Third Lutheran Church of Burlingame. We actually have an image of Jesus right there on our sign and in our window. So my first question is: what does it mean to you that Jesus is the Good Shepherd? The second is: how do we convey that to those who walk and drive past our church? And of course, the third is: how do we do that even when we’re gathering only online?

I was thinking about it this week when I happened to see an ad for Ashes to Go for Ash Wednesday. Lent is, after all, less than six weeks away. Ashes to Go has been around for a number of years. The idea is to take the church out of the building and into the places where people go every day. Some have gone out to commuter train stations, some to public parks, some have had drive-through stations in their church parking lot to distribute ashes along with a blessing. I’ve never done Ashes to Go before, but it seems to me it could be a way we might embody Christ the Good Shepherd in our community. These COVID days are challenging us to get creative – and while COVID is not a good thing, the call for creativity is.

Remember, though, that’s just one turn of the teleidoscope. Other images of Jesus can show forth, too. When we hear again the mission statement that Jesus proclaimed in Luke and we affirm that as followers of Jesus his mission is also ours, we ask ourselves: how are we bringing good news to those who are poor, proclaiming liberty to those held captive, recovery of sight to those who are blind, and release to those in prison; how are we proclaiming God’s favor?

Our Epiphany blessing bag project is one way. Yes, we’ve been delayed, but it just gives us more time to collect toiletries and other supplies for our neighbors who are homeless. And there are so many more opportunities. As we turn our teleidoscope and contemplate each image of Jesus we see in our private devotions and in our corporate worship, we should also be mindful of how we are presenting that image in the witness of our lives and of our congregation. If we are going to accept the challenge to be latter day Luke’s, and if we commit ourselves to presenting fresh representations of Jesus for the spiritual-but-not-religious, those wounded by the church, those who never followed us onto Zoom and might never come back, then wrestling with the question “Who do you say that I am” is a good exercise for all of us.

Jesus himself had to go out into the desert after his baptism to wrestle with the question of who he would be. But when he came back – as Luke tells us – in the power of the Spirit, he was as clear as clear could be about who he was and what he would be about. The wrestling we do over our Jesus stories will yield the same results – in beautiful teleidoscopic images that will continually re-capture our imaginations.

And this is how we will represent Jesus to our world.

Amen.

Luke 4: 14-21
Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and his reputation spread throughout the region. He was teaching in the Galilean synagogues, and all were loud in their praise. Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. Entering the synagogue on the Sabbath, as was his habit, Jesus stood up to do the reading. When the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed him, he unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:

“The spirit of our God is upon me:
Because the most high has anointed me
to bring Good news to those who are poor.
God has sent me to proclaim liberty
to those held captive,
recovery of sight to those who are blind,
and release to those in prison—
to proclaim the year of our God’s favor.”

Rolling up the scroll, Jesus gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he said to them, “Today, in your hearing,
this scripture passage is fulfilled.”

Whose Good Shepherd?

The Good Shepherd - John 10:1-16 — JESUS MAFA. The good shepherd, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48288

Well you learn something new every day. At least it seems I do. After 30-plus years in ministry and probably hundreds of times reading the Good Shepherd passages in John’s gospel, I learned something new. Maybe you already knew this, especially those of you who’ve been part of the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd for a long time. The thing I learned was that the image of Jesus as a shepherd was one of the most popular images in the early Christian church. Oh sure, I knew about the fish symbol in the catacombs, so it’s not surprising that there would be other symbols as well. But when I read recently that the figure of the shepherd was much more prevalent than the cross in early Christian art, I was skeptical.

As were Rebecca Ann Parker and Rita Kashima Brock, authors of Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire. In response to their exploration of early Christian art, they wrote: “It took Jesus a thousand years to die. Images of his corpse did not appear in churches until the tenth century. Why not? This question set us off on a five-year pilgrimage that led to this book. Initially, we didn’t believe it could be true. Surely the art historians were wrong. The crucified Christ was too important to Western Christianity. How could it be that images of Jesus’s suffering and death were absent from early churches? We had to see for ourselves and consider what this might mean.

“In 2002, we traveled to the Mediterranean in search of the dead body of Jesus. We began in Rome, descending from the blaze of the summer sun into the catacombs where underground tunnels and tombs are carved into soft tufa rock. The earliest surviving Christian art is painted onto the plaster-lined walls of tombs or carved onto marble sarcophagi as memorials to the interred.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Good Shepherd Mosaic, c.425: Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna, Italy

“In the cool, dimly lit caverns, we saw a variety of biblical images. Many of them suggested rescue from danger. Abraham and Isaac stood side by side in prayer with a ram bound next to them. Jonah, the recalcitrant prophet who was swallowed and coughed up by a sea monster, reclined peacefully beneath the shade of a vine. Daniel stood alive and well between two pacified lions. Other images suggested baptism and healing, such as the Samaritan woman drawing water from a well, John the Baptist dousing Jesus, depicted as a child, and Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Jesus also appeared as a shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders like Orpheus. We could not find a dead Jesus, not even one. It was just as the angel had said to the women looking for Jesus at his tomb, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here.’”

So it seems that it’s true. And so, on this fourth Sunday in the Easter season, we’re switching gears. If you recall, the gospel readings for the first three weeks were resurrection appearance stories: Jesus in the locked room, on the road to Emmaus, at the lakeshore eating breakfast with the disciples. But now, in these next four weeks we’ll be leaning more into how Jesus teaches us to live in the Oneness of God, living into resurrection life.

Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Burlingame, CA

And so we have the Good Shepherd. People utterly unfamiliar with Christianity, with church symbolism might wonder ‘why a shepherd?’ They might ask (when they get to visit our church in person): “Why does your church have a stained glass window of a guy surrounded by sheep?” Of course, you’d know to direct them to John’s gospel and to all the places in the Old Testament referred to shepherds. But relating it to today? I mean, who here has ever even seen a shepherd?

I’m pretty sure that for most followers of Jesus the image still works. Even though we’re not sheep herders, we get the idea. We long for and pray for and give thanks for the care that we receive as the sheep of Jesus’ pasture.

Jesus the Good Shepherd is indeed a comforting figure. But perhaps we urbanized non-sheepherders need to be reminded that shepherding was (and I suppose still is) a dangerous job. The shadow of death (as the psalm puts it) hovers just beyond the frame of the pastoral scene in our beautiful window.

Or as Pr. Bill Wylie-Kellermann said: “If today’s gospel calls up for you images of a familiar stained-glass window, the good shepherd with a lamb cuddled over the shoulder, then it’s probably best to envision it with a brick being thrown through.” Yikes!

Koenig, Peter. True Shepherd and the Wolves, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58510

“The tension of this reading is between the . . . the tenderness of love for the flock and the predatory violence of the beast. The stillness of waters and the rushing of the wolves.”

You know, the role of pastors is modeled on this shepherd. But the fact is that the job description according to Jesus is not only to love, nourish, comfort, stand by, and lead – but to be willing to die for the flock. That should give pause to many seminary applicants, although it’s not in any ordination or installation service I know of.

And I admit that this passage gave me pause this week. The combined effect of the revelation (at least to me) of the plethora of shepherd imagery in early Christian art, the mental picture of a brick crashing through the stained glass, and the enigmatic statement by Jesus about having other flocks caused me to look again at Jesus the Good Shepherd. And the question that kept popping into my mind during the week was: whose shepherd is this?

Of course, Jesus is my Good Shepherd. And of course yours. I imagine any Christian would make that claim. But then, as I recall the shepherd’s presence with those facing the threat of violence or death, I can’t help connecting it in recent weeks with the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. No matter how many times we see the video of those 9.29 minutes and hear the agonizing testimony of witnesses, there is no way to blunt its dreadfulness. And then, two weeks into the trial, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was fatally shot. And ten 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant. And then 13-year-old Adam Toledo. And on and on it goes. The shadow of death hovers not far from the frames of our communal life.

We know that the Jesus story entered history in a time of oppression, injustice, violence, and death. Jesus’ teachings tell us that those ways of being in the world are not God’s ways. The resurrection story tells us that those death-dealing ways do not have the last word. Today I see Jesus the Good Shepherd standing with George, Daunte, Ma’Khia, and Adam and all the others in their moments of crucifixion and welcoming them into the open arms of Paradise. I also see Derek Chauvin, Kimberly Potter, Nicholas Reardon, and Eric Stillman – all officers caught up in a death-dealing system and suffering the consequences. All of them, all of us sheep of one flock.

The image of the Good Shepherd as the gentle Jesus with a lamb cuddled over his shoulders is shattered as we see the one willing to lay down his life for the sheep, who identifies with the least and the lost, who suffers for their sake – and then who pushes us out of our comfort zones as we seek to be Christ now in the world, to overturn systems of oppression, to reform institutions, to advocate for the least of these. It can be overwhelming to even know where to begin.

I’m in a group that has been working on implementation of the ELCA social statement “Faith, Sexism, and Justice.” We’ve become more and more convinced of the intersecting issues of sexism and racism and all isms that privilege one group over another. Everyone in the group right now is white and there’s a lot of discussion about how to be good allies, how to recognize and get beyond our own prejudices, defensiveness, and just plain ignorance.

One thing we agreed to do, as a very tiny first step was to read a book together. We chose A Womanist Midrash by Wil Gafney. I’ve known about womanist theology for a long time. I knew it began as a corrective to feminist theology that has been criticized as addressing only the experience of white women, while womanist theology is grounded in the experience and perspectives of Black women, particularly African-American women. It’s a small step outside the comfort zone, but a needful one as we navigate these difficult times.

I’ve been doing some thinking about the name of our church. There is some confusion about whether we’re Good Shepherd Lutheran Church or the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd. Does it matter, I wondered. Maybe not, except as a legal matter. But it seems to me that there is something about saying that we are the church of the Good Shepherd that conveys something important. We are the church that belongs to the Good Shepherd. We enjoy the benefits of comfort, compassion, and life-giving care. We are the sheep of his pasture.

We are also the church that carries on the work of the Good Shepherd. Now what does that mean? Remember that the job description according to Jesus is to love, nourish, comfort, stand by, lead – and be willing to give one’s life for the flock. I have to say that I am both comforted and challenged by Jesus’ statement, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” Wait. Who are these other sheep? We know from the gospels that the Jewish messiah, would also embrace Gentiles. After the resurrection, Jesus says, “I will draw all people to myself.” And here he echoes the same theme: “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” These other sheep are is not specified; that’s the shepherd’s business, not ours. The practical effect of this inclusive statement is that we can trust that there is no one outside of the care, comfort, and compassion of Jesus.

The challenge is that no one is outside of our care, comfort, and compassion. As followers of Jesus and sheep of the Good Shepherd we have our work cut out for us. And as I’ve learned from being part of the social statement group, the labor is not just the external activities we do out in the world. There is a lot of internal work. In order to be truly comforting, compassionate, and caring we must know ourselves. No matter how progressive, liberal, open-minded you may think you are, you carry within you life experiences, family history, cultural identity, and learnings that may or may not be correct about another person or group of people. This isn’t an accusation or indictment against you or me; it’s just a fact about each and every one of us. And step one is acknowledging it.

Step two is listening to the stories of those who are different from you, truly listening even if you feel defensive, asking questions, being genuinely curious about someone’s experience of the world.

Step three is becoming an advocate. Become educated about others. Don’t make assumptions. Don’t expect them to do the work for you. Learn about micro-aggressions, what makes a joke racist, sexist, or homophobic. Be open to learning, even when you feel resistant. Don’t take it personally when you’re corrected.

Step five is being humble and courageous. I was once a facilitator for a church exchange program in which mostly white suburban congregations were paired up with mostly African-American ones. This was in Buffalo, NY, where most of the old mainline churches had long ago fled the inner city. As some of us gathered in front of the Black church where we would meet one another, the pastor of the suburban congregation pointed to the cornerstone of the old brick church: Emmaus Lutheran Church 1919. Already we had something in common. Later, a member of the suburban congregation expressed the fear that he’d had in agreeing to the gathering. He was afraid, he said, of unwittingly saying something offensive. I noted that it had taken courage to show up and humility to confess that we often don’t know what we don’t know, but we are open to learn.

It seems to me that being the Church of the Good Shepherd in this time is a call to break through an image that is only the comforting, personal Savior who cares passionately about each one of us – although that indeed is one very important aspect of that image. But when we break it open, we find that we have not subtracted any care for ourselves but have added all the other sheep of all the other flocks. Nothing can take away the love we have in Christ Jesus; that love can only be multiplied.

I wish we could be in our sanctuary today, with all this attention on the Good Shepherd. More than that, though, I long for the time when we can be together, when we can reach out in more tangible ways to our neighbors, to other communities, other churches, other traditions. I’m looking forward to finally being able to get to know the people of Good Shepherd Chinese Church. And while I’m sure the virtual interfaith iftar next week will be lovely, it can’t replace the relationship-building we can do in person.

But the time will come. We will gather back under the ever-watchful eye of our Good Shepherd. Perhaps we will come back with a new way of gazing at the beautiful colors and light streaming into our sanctuary. It will be glorious to bask in that light. It will also be a challenge – to ask ourselves: Whose shepherd is this? Who are the sheep that Jesus is calling us to tend to?

As we switch gears now, mid-Easter season, to a mode of going out into the world to bring hope and healing, what better icon to send us on our way, to guide us on our way, to comfort us in the hard times, to challenge us when we become complacent, to inspire us to love, to nourish, to comfort, to stand by, to lead – and to give the very life of this congregation for the sake of those Jesus loves.

Christ the Good Shepherd.

Amen

JOHN 10:11-18

Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd would die for the sheep. The hired hand, who is neither shepherd nor owner of the sheep, catches sight of the wolf coming and runs away, leaving the sheep to be scattered or snatched by the wolf. That’s because the hired hand works only for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me. In the same way Abba God knows me and I know God—and for these sheep I will lay down my life. I have other sheep that don’t belong to this fold—I must lead them too, and they will hear my voice. And then there will be one flock, one shepherd. This is why Abba God loves me—because I lay down my life, only to take it up again. No one takes my life from me; I lay it down freely. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again. This command I received from my Abba.”