4 Easter 2018

Grace Episcopal Church

Gospel:  John 10:11-18
22 April 2018

My oldest son, James, recently sent me a picture from his desk while he was babysitting his less-than-one-month old niece, Natalia.  In the image, you see his laptop on which he was working on software code and below the table his outstretched leg and foot balanced on his niece’s car seat.  He appeared to be gently rocking her while he was programming. He was multitasking, and the image conjured my own memories of doing two or more things at once when caring for my own children.  

I reminded James of one of our family stories that resulted from my own multitasking.  When our boys were youngsters before their little sister was born, we lived on the campus of an Episcopal boarding school in Mississippi.  Layne had taken James to a music lesson on the other side of campus.  I was the Dean of Students at the boarding school and taking graduate education classes one or two evenings per week at Mississippi College.  As it turns out on this particular day, I was at home in the basement working on a term paper for one of these classes.  I was also supposed to keep an eye on our not quite 3-year-old, Walker, who was playing quietly in his room.  Boy, was he “quiet” that afternoon.  When Layne and James returned home about an hour later, I was still at work downstairs. Layne found me and asked, “Where is Walker?”  He was nowhere to be found in the house!  We were both scared, and I was feeling very guilty too.

We looked in the yard, but he was not there.  Layne started working the phones while I went looking around campus.  As I passed along the sidewalk in front of one of the girls dorms, a group of students told me that they had found Walker ambling toward the academic building and alerted their counselor.  The dorm counselor had just spoken with Layne by phone.  We were so relieved!  It seems that Walker had wanted to go to the music lesson with James, so while I was immersed in educational philosophy, he struck out on his own to find his big brother.  I was grateful for the way the students who found him stayed with him until Layne and I were on the scene. Needless to say, I was “in the dog house,” metaphorically of course.  This would be a powerful lesson to any parent...I never forgot that lesson.

Here is the connection between my story and today’s Gospel.  We are at that point in the Season of Easter when we identify Jesus as the “Good Shepherd.”  I’m guessing that like me, most of you have never herded sheep.  But, I am also guessing that many of you do have experience with caring for children, either your own or those of others.  Good parents love their children and do their best.  Even those parents who are very competent in their care have good days and bad days; no parent is perfect….and sometimes we really goof.  The role is full of great joy and disappoint-ment.  Fortunately, our kiddos tend to be resilient and manage to survive our parenting.  Looking back now that all of our children are out of the nest, on their own, and employed, I do have the sense that we had help from beyond….sometimes from friends, neighbors, teachers, and even boarding school students….but as time goes by, more and more there is the sense that the shepherd’s crook of God is and always was behind the scenes.

The image of God as Shepherd is most clearly set forth in scripture in the 34th Chapter of Ezekiel, and Jesus was clearly aware of this tradition.  In Ezekiel, the leaders of Judah are compared with Shepherds who miserably fail at the job of caring for sheep.  They are so focused on themselves that they neglect feeding their sheep as well as attending to their safety.  Ezekiel proclaims God’s intention of taking over as shepherd.  God will seek the lost and bring back the strayed.  In the time to come, God will be in charge of the flock and will personally see to the safety of them all.  Jesus picks up this strand by identifying himself as “the Good Shepherd.” In so doing, Jesus identifies himself as one with God.

There are so many things to worry about with your children….I look back on it and think there had to have been someone upstairs looking out for my family.  Those who stand in the circle of Christian trust, know that sometimes it is only faith that allows us to function and forge ahead in the midst of our fears.

Faith does not mean that we will never have disappointments.  Faith is not like some kind of divine rabbit’s foot that keeps us lucky.  Reason shows us that tragedy befalls the faithful and unfaithful alike.  But faith allows us to live with the uncertainty.  Faith yields a sense that no matter what, somehow, with Jesus as our shepherd all things will work toward the good.  In the end we will all be with God, and we will see again those whom we love who crossed over before us.  I bet that the family of God will be much larger than we ever could have imagined...even Jesus’ other folds, very different from our own, will be part of the one flock...that great cloud of witnesses, past, present, and future.  AMEN.