Pastor Darren: So we are uh again in Easter tide, they call it.
Pastor Darren: This is the season of Easter, not just the day.
Pastor Darren: In our series, Stories That Matter, is really about good stories.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: I imagine each of you could name a few good stories, things that you really like.
Pastor Darren: Now, when I started thinking of it, I thought I was remembering when Kitty and Nancy cornered me at Saturday Night Suppers.
Pastor Darren: What's your favorite movie?
Pastor Darren: That's not an easy question for people who like movies.
Pastor Darren: You're like, give me a category of some kind, right?
Pastor Darren: I mean, uh, but I imagine each of you can think of good stories that have uh left an imprint on your life and that you continue to remember and reflect on and enjoy.
Pastor Darren: Uh so we're going through some stories that are in our New Testament.
Pastor Darren: I went straight lectionary this time, that schedule, three-year schedule of scripture uh uh verses, right in there, and right in the gospel, because we were in the Old Testament for a long time for Lent.
Pastor Darren: I thought, all right, we're giving them some Jesus.
Pastor Darren: We'll see what happens.
Pastor Darren: So I'm watching, it's scientific, empirical.
Pastor Darren: What happens when I give you a lot of Jesus?
Pastor Darren: All right.
Pastor Darren: See, the choir's high on Jesus already.
Pastor Darren: Can you hear this?
Pastor Darren: What's wrong with y'all?
Pastor Darren: You marinating?
Pastor Darren: All right, well, so uh we've had three pretty good stories, somewhat famous stories, well-known stories from the scripture.
Pastor Darren: We started with uh uh Pastor Gary, and he was talking about the doubting Thomas story, right?
Pastor Darren: Uh uh where Thomas needed the evidence that Jesus actually had been crucified, and Pastor Gary talking about we kind of see what we want to see.
Pastor Darren: I think there was even an invitation for us to look for what we want to see in Christ, what we want to see in God.
Pastor Darren: Uh last week we uh dealt with the walk to Emmaus story, again, somewhat well known, where Jesus comes to a couple of the disciples after the crucifixion and resurrection uh for all the reasons Jesus might come to them, but at least with that message of remember, even amidst uncertainty, be who you are, be the Christian that Jesus taught us to be.
Pastor Darren: And then today we are in another passage that some of you have uh probably reflected on: John 10.
Pastor Darren: A lot of people call it the uh passage about the Good Shepherd.
Pastor Darren: Uh now, the Good Shepherd, actually, that verse is 11, and we stopped at 10.
Pastor Darren: So uh I'll clue you in that that's what came much next.
Pastor Darren: And in fact, it is part of my talk here.
Pastor Darren: Um, this is a passage I enjoy, partly because I was at the church in Westminster, which they are called the uh Good Shepherd United Methodist Church.
Pastor Darren: And so I preached on this every now and again because it was the name of the church.
Pastor Darren: And I thought, all right, if this is the identity we claimed at one point, we may as well continue to claim it.
Pastor Darren: What is it gonna mean?
Pastor Darren: Uh so I've enjoyed a journey with this passage in the past.
Pastor Darren: Um, what he does in the passage is he gives us three self-descriptions.
Pastor Darren: This is Jesus in the Gospel of John, three kind of distinct descriptions.
Pastor Darren: They're not unrelated, but they are different.
Pastor Darren: First, he calls himself the gatekeeper, then he calls himself the gate, and then in the passage immediately afterwards, he calls himself the good shepherd.
Pastor Darren: So we're gonna kind of delve into that a little bit.
Pastor Darren: But before we get into it, I want to point out lots of scholars would say that these passages are not unrelated to the passage that comes before it.
Pastor Darren: And that passage is a story of a healing, healing of a blind man.
Pastor Darren: We have the disciples saying, Jesus, who sinned this man or his parents, that he is blind?
Pastor Darren: And Jesus answered, Neither this man nor his parents sinned.
Pastor Darren: He was born blind, so that God's works might be revealed in him.
Pastor Darren: Do you remember that passage?
Pastor Darren: Maybe a little bit, maybe a little bit.
Pastor Darren: Here I'll remind you of it a little.
Pastor Darren: God's work turns out to be this healing of his blindness.
Pastor Darren: Jesus reaches down to the ground and pulls up dirt, spits into the dirt to concoct his healing agent.
Pastor Darren: Is anybody excited about this?
Pastor Darren: Are you willing to let me try it on you?
Pastor Darren: Dirt and some spit.
Pastor Darren: He wipes it on the man's eyes and he's miraculously healed.
Pastor Darren: He's able to see.
Pastor Darren: So, our passage coming after that, we would do well to recognize the relationship between those two things.
Pastor Darren: It's it's helpful to know that when we're talking about that, those descriptions of Jesus, he's doing it in the context of spiritual healing, right?
Pastor Darren: Being able to see spiritually, have your eyes opened.
Pastor Darren: So he's talking to these disciples, and he starts to speak of himself as the gatekeeper of the sheep.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: If you were listening in the passage or maybe you've worked with it before, he calls himself the gatekeeper.
Pastor Darren: Now, of the three descriptions of himself, this one seems to be pretty straightforward.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: You're you're a shepherd, you're watching over sheep, you have a protective pen that keeps the sheep, right?
Pastor Darren: And in the metaphorical sense, there's a protective pen of spiritual understanding for us, right?
Pastor Darren: Whereas Jesus' sheep, the ones who follow Jesus, there is a pen that we can be in.
Pastor Darren: It is not completely separated from the outside world.
Pastor Darren: It is a pen of spiritual understanding, but we can still connect with the outside world.
Pastor Darren: But in that pen, we are able to stay under Jesus' guidance, safe to a certain extent.
Pastor Darren: And the important thing is that we know the voice amidst all of the competing voices in our lives and around us, all the different uh influences that would claim our uh allegiance.
Pastor Darren: We need to know Jesus' voice.
Pastor Darren: Pretty straightforward understanding part of scripture.
Pastor Darren: But here's what's interesting: even though it's straightforward, these disciples don't seem to get it.
Pastor Darren: They don't seem to understand because Jesus goes a step further, right?
Pastor Darren: Uh maybe um maybe they needed more dirt and spit wiped on their eyes.
Pastor Darren: So he gives them more metaphorical dirt and spit.
Pastor Darren: See, inside I'm laughing because I find that really funny.
Pastor Darren: I hope you are too.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: So he raises the stakes.
Pastor Darren: Now the pen, this protective, spiritually protective place is kind of makeshift now, because that would often happen.
Pastor Darren: If you were taking the sheep out to some other place so they could graze on some fresh grass, you would have to kind of put together that pen.
Pastor Darren: You'd have to get it organized yourself.
Pastor Darren: And often in that pen, it wouldn't have a door.
Pastor Darren: The shepherd would sleep in the doorway of that makeshift pen.
Pastor Darren: So, so that shepherd is kind of uh uh a guard, I guess you'd say, but also there in case something somebody goes in or the sheep try to get out.
Pastor Darren: So you you can hear why Jesus shifts in his understanding of himself, because it it's a different context, but kind of the same thing.
Pastor Darren: If we are deconstructing this metaphor, he is saying you need to follow him.
Pastor Darren: He is the access point, he is the way through, he is the pathway, be like him.
Pastor Darren: Now, presumably, in the last description, the good shepherd description, these disciples are still not fully seeing, so he ramps it up again.
Pastor Darren: This time he is describing the need for him, Jesus himself, to give up his life.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: He's speaking, uh even though John was written after Jesus' life, he's speaking words from Jesus that are anticipating what is going to be his end.
Pastor Darren: And he's talking about how he needs to give up his life, hired hands, thieves, etc., all of them in tough times, they're going to leave.
Pastor Darren: They don't have the investment in you, they may not even care about you.
Pastor Darren: But the Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd will lay down his life for his sheep, and that's how you will know it really is him.
Pastor Darren: So this is the truth that we are invited to to see, right, to understand, to own inside of ourselves, this truth that he is the good shepherd, he is the pathway, and we would know it because of his love and allegiance to us, his sheep.
Pastor Darren: So, what are our lessons?
Pastor Darren: There's a couple right off the bat that came to my mind.
Pastor Darren: First is we're supposed to listen for that voice, right?
Pastor Darren: We're the sheep that know the voice, so that we don't get misled by thieves, by hired hands, by others who would want our attention.
Pastor Darren: Um we can listen in different ways.
Pastor Darren: Sometimes the best listening is by doing, even getting in and doing the work of God, social justice, helping people out, offering the love of God in heart and in caring.
Pastor Darren: But another lesson that we might ask ourselves, we might challenge ourselves, and it's a favorite pathway of Pastor Darren, is how good are we at listening for that voice?
Pastor Darren: Because it can be difficult sometimes hearing it, identifying it.
Pastor Darren: How closely do we understand Jesus in a way that we are going to hear that voice amidst all the other clatter?
Pastor Darren: Because that can be difficult too, right?
Pastor Darren: I mean, we live in a time where people are always trying to reach for our attention, always trying to speak to their power, their awareness, their intelligence, their connection.
Pastor Darren: We live in a time where some people even think they're Jesus.
Pastor Darren: Moving on quickly, so that can be different, right?
Pastor Darren: That can be difficult to understand fully what Jesus is trying to say, to understand that voice amidst all the others.
Pastor Darren: But for me, I came down to an area of learning that well, it's the last verse, the last half of verse 10 from our passage today.
Pastor Darren: I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Pastor Darren: That is one of my favorite verses.
Pastor Darren: If I was a tattoo guy, I might get that one tattooed on.
Pastor Darren: I thought about tattoos, I was talking to a couple of buddies, a couple colleagues, other pastors.
Pastor Darren: I said, Hey, when are we all gonna go out and get our tattoos?
Pastor Darren: And then they said, Yeah, but then you're gonna look like another one of our colleagues who has tattoos.
Pastor Darren: And we all looked at each other like, mmm, I guess not.
Pastor Darren: So we're cowards, this is what I'm telling you in the long way.
Pastor Darren: But it is, it's one of my favorites.
Pastor Darren: I love this missional guiding for our life.
Pastor Darren: Not only are we looking for life abundant as human beings, but God is looking for life abundant for us.
Pastor Darren: I really like that idea of that that life guidance.
Pastor Darren: And it begs the question, how much time do we spend on that question?
Pastor Darren: That question of what does make life abundant?
Pastor Darren: You know, for a lot of people that answer is is kind of driven by uh a heaven percept perception, driven by uh uh a divine perception.
Pastor Darren: It's a it's a heaven-based answer.
Pastor Darren: I'm following, I follow Christ so I can get to heaven.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: That that's where life abundant will be mine when I get there.
Pastor Darren: I haven't always found that perspective to be really, really helpful, mostly because I think it affects my perception of this world in a way I don't like.
Pastor Darren: This this sort of heaven-based attitude, it it brings kind of a a testing ground perception of why we're here and what this world is about.
Pastor Darren: We start to look around to see who is worthy and going, hmm-mm-mm.
Pastor Darren: And who's not so worthy?
Pastor Darren: I don't like that that space, right?
Pastor Darren: And and it's a problematic place too, because we have to accept that we are putting rubrics on what we see in the world.
Pastor Darren: We're uh uh deciding what's good and what is bad, and they are likely influenced largely by our own perceptions.
Pastor Darren: We're giving ourselves permission to judge others, and I don't like that space, you know.
Pastor Darren: Well, he's made this and that choice in life, so I don't really I don't really owe him that much when you think about it.
Pastor Darren: The other problem I don't like about this is what does this say about how God views the world?
Pastor Darren: It feels a little uh like God could give or take each and every one of us.
Pastor Darren: Literally, because that judgment is always lean, it's always leering in the background.
Pastor Darren: I've seen some people justify really unloving, unjust behavior because they're in that spot.
Pastor Darren: Have you heard that phrase, so heavenly focused as to be of no earthly good?
Pastor Darren: That resonates with me.
Pastor Darren: I feel like I've been in that space.
Pastor Darren: For me, the abundant life that is being talked about here, that Jesus is talking about, it has to be talking about the life we have here as well as whatever lay beyond.
Pastor Darren: Have you ever thought about that question?
Pastor Darren: Where is that abundance in this world?
Pastor Darren: What would it look like?
Pastor Darren: My guess is you think about it off and on, somewhat frequently.
Pastor Darren: We have talked about a book study here, a Richard Rohrbrook Richard Rohr book.
Pastor Darren: Surprise, surprise.
Pastor Darren: Clearly, you're learning this year.
Pastor Darren: Uh I am uh devotee.
Pastor Darren: But a lot of people are talking about uh reading a book called Falling Upward.
Pastor Darren: Have many of you read that yet?
Pastor Darren: Let's do hands because we might do it in church.
Pastor Darren: Okay, this is good.
Pastor Darren: Just a few of us.
Pastor Darren: So maybe we'll do it so the rest of you can get introduced.
Pastor Darren: To put it succinctly, and probably not covering everything, oversimplification, but it talks about how adult life can be understood in two halves.
Pastor Darren: The first half is spent on this question of what?
Pastor Darren: What am I going to do?
Pastor Darren: What will I create?
Pastor Darren: How far am I going to reach?
Pastor Darren: How much will I achieve?
Pastor Darren: What will I be leaving for my family?
Pastor Darren: We spend those first 20, 30, 40 years in that space, and it drives us, and there's ambition that comes from it.
Pastor Darren: But then the second half starts to come.
Pastor Darren: And instead of focused on that question of what, we start moving into the question of why.
Pastor Darren: Why do I do this?
Pastor Darren: Why is it worthwhile to be done?
Pastor Darren: And it really is a natural progression of aging, right?
Pastor Darren: You get to that spy space where you've been rushing, you've been driving, you've been trying to get to wherever you're getting, raise your kids, uh, move up in the world, all those things, and then finally you're like, why am I doing this again?
Pastor Darren: And then usually a lot of your life, the rest of the way, is sort of navigating that other question and drawing it out more, describing it for yourself, getting it clearer and clearer in your mind.
Pastor Darren: You'll recognize you're moving into that space when you start asking yourself uh things like, is my family coming first?
Pastor Darren: Am I really thinking about what really matters here?
Pastor Darren: Am I taking care of myself?
Pastor Darren: Is the thing that I've been working so hard to create make something I'm proud that's being created, that is changing the world in a positive way.
Pastor Darren: You'll know it when you realize it's not all about what you do, but also about how you do it.
Pastor Darren: Who is being blessed, who is being challenged or injured.
Pastor Darren: For me, that question kind of started taking shape with churches, because I've been in a lot of churches, that's kind of the way it goes with pastors, and uh I've been blessed enough that most of where I've been has done well.
Pastor Darren: You know, I'd not don't have my Nobel Peace Prize yet.
Pastor Darren: We've done generally good work, and then you leave, and what comes behind you sometimes is its own version of really good.
Pastor Darren: Sometimes it's not very good, and it doesn't hold up.
Pastor Darren: And my investment in, oh, I created this, and here's the stripes, and this is what I've left, kind of fades away a little bit.
Pastor Darren: It's not as strong.
Pastor Darren: But what I realize on that journey is there are some things that I'm still in relationship with, I'm still connected to largely my family.
Pastor Darren: Like, oh now that's something that I keep my stripes for.
Pastor Darren: That's something I continue to be proud about.
Pastor Darren: It's something I have a deeper understanding of the why.
Pastor Darren: But it looks kind of like that journey when we're talking about that why question, and maybe you've been on a journey with it yourself.
Pastor Darren: And I think that really is a lot of the focus or the helpful focus for us with this verse.
Pastor Darren: And maybe it's why there's such a strong emphasis on knowing the shepherd's voice.
Pastor Darren: Because we're asking these deep, deep questions, and we can be answering them in so many different ways, not all of them helpful ways, or deep ways, or faith inducing ways, meaningful ways.
Pastor Darren: We've got a lot of voices around us.
Pastor Darren: We need to be like those sheep who follow the shepherd.
Pastor Darren: So I wanted to end with with this.
Pastor Darren: Are sheep weak?
Pastor Darren: I know in the common understanding, we think of them as being kind of weak.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: Oh, they just follow.
Pastor Darren: They don't they don't uh uh think for themselves, they just all go in these masses together, they try to stay together, they only do what the shepherd tells them to do.
Pastor Darren: In our world, uh uh that's not necessarily honored, respected, appreciated, right?
Pastor Darren: Do we really want to be like sheep, just following, not thinking for ourselves?
Pastor Darren: I feel like the world's perception of sheep is weak.
Pastor Darren: And yet, how difficult can it be to continue to live by Christian principles in a world that isn't always holding those values as well?
Pastor Darren: How difficult is that?
Pastor Darren: How hard is it to speak for justice, especially when there's a cost for that justice, maybe even a financial cost?
Pastor Darren: How hard is it to treat others with Christian love when they aren't being very lovable?
Pastor Darren: How difficult is it to lay down our lives for what the voice tells us is right?
Pastor Darren: It would seem to me that the Christian who knows the voice of the shepherd is the one who was going into the burning building and not justifying the demise of that building.
Pastor Darren: Maybe the sheep aren't weak at all.
Pastor Darren: We're just the ones who know where true uh courage, true strength come from.
Pastor Darren: Amen.