{"id":259,"date":"2012-07-22T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=259"},"modified":"2017-10-26T22:20:32","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T03:20:32","slug":"sermon-shepherds-not-the-flock-july-22-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2012\/07\/22\/sermon-shepherds-not-the-flock-july-22-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon: Shepherds, Not the Flock July 22, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texts: \u00a0Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23;\u00a0Mark 6:30-34, 53-56<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

If\u00a0 you took the time to read the appointed texts for today, you would perhaps have seen what I saw:\u00a0 there were numerous ideas worthy of exploration and meditation. \u00a0\u00a0I want to think with you this morning about two of those ideas gleaned from the reading from the prophet Jeremiah, the Psalm, and the Gospel lesson.<\/p>\n

First, a few thoughts about rest; and second, what rest enables\u2014specifically not so much for us as individuals, but as a church.\u00a0 For although we may know of our need for rest, we are not called to be sheep, but shepherds for a world sorely lacking in moral direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe makes me lie down in green pastures\u2026.he restores my soul\u201d<\/span><\/em>, the Psalmist says.\u00a0 To his disciples after their first missionary efforts, pounding the paving stones of the roads of Galilee, encountering all the needs in the world, and feeling all the pressure to do something\u2014so much that they had not even taken time to stop to eat as they should, Jesus says:\u00a0 \u201cCome away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the reasons that worship space is called a \u201csanctuary\u201d, is because it is meant to be a place of rest, and safety.\u00a0 Historically, sanctuary provided refuge even from the law, as a place of immunity from arrest.\u00a0 And this is one reason, among many, why I have always argued that guns have no place whatsoever inside a church.\u00a0\u00a0 Concealed weapons inside a sanctuary offend the very notion of refuge, respite, protection, and rest.\u00a0 It is said that in Jerusalem, at the church of the Holy Sepulchre where Jesus was said to have been buried, that the doorway was made intentionally tiny so that the crusaders could not enter on their war horses nor even in their armor with their weapons.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I will ever get over the fact that on my watch, so to speak, the state of Kentucky passed an amendment to the concealed-carry gun law to allow guns on church property.\u00a0 \u00a0With whatever strength I have, I will continue, until I am no longer able, to get that travesty overturned, and also ban the sale of assault weapons, and other weapons of war, to the general public.<\/p>\n

The church is meant to be a \u201csanctuary\u201d, the green pastures where we may lie down and be surrounded by beauty, and community, and be safe.\u00a0 The church is meant to be that community, that place where souls are restored.\u00a0 Hence, enormous effort has always been made to make such sacred spaces beautiful\u2026either in their simplicity, as here, or in ornate and stunning works of art. \u00a0I suspect it also is why so many churches are known for their pot luck meals, and why kitchens are now a necessity for any self-respecting religious institution.<\/p>\n

But let us move on with our thinking about rest:\u00a0 The great Jewish scholar of the prophets, Abraham Joshua Heschel stressed always the value and virtue of the idea of the \u201cSabbath\u201d in Jewish law, wrote:\u00a0 \u201cSix days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth;\u00a0 on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.\u00a0 \u2026.\u00a0 Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabbi Heschel also says that the Sabbath teaches us to celebrate time, rather than space and matter.\u00a0 \u201cSix days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space;\u00a0 on the Sabbath,\u201d he says, we try to become attuned to holiness in time.\u00a0 It is a day \u2026to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.\u201d\u00a0 [Heschel, Abraham J.\u00a0 I Asked for Wonder, <\/em>pp. 34, 36]<\/p>\n

The final purpose of rest seems obvious from our Gospel lesson\u2026.it is to return us to work. From the Genesis stories we can tell that it certainly wasn\u2019t long before rescuing the human race became a full time job, God having many problems but unemployment never one of them!\u00a0 And saving the human race is our job too, our most urgent task.\u00a0 If we rest with God, we can also return with God to work.<\/p>\n

Ironically, too many churches ARE deserted places these days, when so many of the under-50 crowd tell us that church is largely irrelevant due to the fact that we have spent too much time, perhaps, resting, or getting comforted without being equipped to take on the needs of the world.\u00a0 We have provided perhaps, too much sanctuary; or understood ourselves as helpless and as stupid as sheep.<\/p>\n

One of the great personal sins, most of us have been taught, is arrogance, of thinking too highly of ourselves.\u00a0 I want to suggest that one of the seven deadly sins of the church in our own time is our propensity to think \u00a0too little of itself, and that in the refusal to take stands, we have sold out.\u00a0 We deserve to die.<\/p>\n

A shepherd gathers the scattered sheep, and so the apostles for each and every time, \u00a0called\u00a0 to exercise a moral voice in a time of incredible diaspora, the exile from community and communal compassion and care for the good of all.\u00a0 No wonder the young think we are irrelevant.\u00a0 We have been, for too long, speechless \u00a0and have failed to offer the unique \u201cfood\u201d of moral vision, of compassion and kindness, of justice and the way of peace, to the world.\u00a0 Afraid of controversy and of alienating some, we have stood for nothing except our own desires to be like sheep.<\/p>\n

It is too bad, I think, that the lectionary chose, this year, to skip over the story within this story, the story of the feeding of the 5000.\u00a0\u00a0 The intervening verses left out of this morning\u2019s Gospel lesson also skip over the story of Jesus walking across the sea of Galilee.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 If we had read, from verse 34 where Mark comments that \u201cJesus had compassion\u201d for the great crowd who had chased after Jesus and the disciples, \u201cbecause they were like sheep without a shepherd\u201d, we would have heard:\u00a0 When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, \u2018This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.\u2019\u00a0 But he answered them, \u2018You give them something to eat.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In the previous story, we heard how Herod served a feast to his political cronies, topped with a final bloody serving of the head of John the Baptizer on a platter.\u00a0\u00a0 That gruesome tale had interrupted the report of the disciples\u2019 first mission, two by two, when they had called people to repentance, and healed many people.\u00a0 Our text today picks up that thread, with the apostles\u2014one of two places where Mark calls the twelve by this name, a name that means those sent on a mission as advocates\u2014gathering around Jesus whom the crowds are now pursuing.\u00a0 He calls them to rest in a deserted place.\u00a0 But when the crowd gathers, he sees again the vulnerability, the hunger of the people for some truth, meaning, moral guides, and so Mark uses the historic metaphor of shepherd for Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0 And then, if we had read those next few verses, we would see that Jesus is passing on both the literal role of shepherd\u2014to provide food and water for a literally hungry mass of people\u2014and the spiritual role as well is implied.\u00a0 YOU GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO EAT.<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The segments of this 6th<\/sup> chapter of Mark that we have read these past three Sundays are meant to remind us that the church, the remnant church, must be missional, or it utterly fails.\u00a0 Like the disciples, we too must speak with authority to offer moral hope, and to work to cure what is diseased, broken, and hungry in our world.\u00a0 The people of the way of Jesus, in those early days, understood that it needed to feed the hungry, literally with food, and minister to the sick, the frail, the vulnerable.\u00a0 They were to be the shepherds that God was raising up to bring the scattered back into communities of meaning, hope, justice, and compassion.\u00a0 They turned their world upside down doing just that.<\/p>\n

So we too, in our own time, cannot just hang around the green pastures of our hallowed place of simple beauty like mindless sheep.\u00a0 \u00a0Even the psalm acknowledges that human beings, cared for by this eternal Shepherd, will find themselves, from time to time, in the presence of enemies, will have to walk through dark valleys, and will be led to walk on the right paths.<\/p>\n

All three texts this morning suggest that in the chaotic wilderness of our own time\u2014when sad and sick individuals seek some terrible meaning for their existence through acts of violence, as happened this past week in Colorado, or when democracy and our national commitment to the common good finds the country enduring the corrosive acid of attack politics, vitriol, and half-truths\u2014if we really believe that 23rd<\/sup> Psalm, then we are not meant to be silly sheep, but apostles, shepherds, disciples of the Way:\u00a0 calling the world, the scattered people, to repent their greed and narcissism; healing the sick and helping people find meaning and hope for their lives; making efforts to feed the hungry.<\/p>\n

The proposed letter to other churches and to the body politic, that I circulated a couple of Sundays ago, \u00a0calling for a return to civility and truthfulness is just one act, among many, that we as shepherds for greener pastures might undertake\u2026.along with bringing food for the hungry in our communities, both real food, and that food of compassion, kindness, and communal regard and respect that marks our little church.<\/p>\n

Then, my friends, surely the days will come when, as Jeremiah hoped for his own time, \u00a0political power will be wielded with wisdom, and there will be justice and righteousness in the land.\u00a0 Surely goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives.\u00a0 May we have eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to understand, and the courage to fulfill our calling.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Texts: \u00a0Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23;\u00a0Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 If\u00a0 you took the time to read the appointed texts for today, you would perhaps have seen what I saw:\u00a0 there were numerous ideas worthy of exploration and meditation. \u00a0\u00a0I want to think<\/p>\n

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