“Living Sheep-ishly”

A meditation based on Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 2:19-25; Psalm 23; John 10:1-10

April 13, 2008

Redlands United Church of Christ

Sharon R. Graff

Seven months ago, after battling pancreatic cancer for over a year, Dr. Randy Pausch, who is a 46-year old Professor of Computer Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, was given two to six months to live.  So he did what any professor in his situation would do: he gave a lecture!  But this was not any lecture.  To the audience’s surprise, he did not speak about death or dying, or about the recurring cancer riddling his body.  Dr. Pausch’s lecture, part of the university’s long-standing “Last Lecture Series” for retiring, graying professors was, instead, 90 minutes of frolicking, humor-filled, life-experience examples of how to follow your childhood dreams and to help make dreams come true for others along the way.  This last lecture was peppered with advice like “never lose the childlike wonder…help others…get a feedback loop and listen to it…and show gratitude…”  At one point, with eyes lit up like a night sky full of stars, Professor Pausch advised the rapt audience, “Have fun…always have fun...I’m dying here,” he said, “and I’m having fun, and I’m going to keep having fun every day I have left, because there’s just no other way to do it…”  As of today, thanks to the wonders of You Tube, over 10 million people have listened to this last lecture of Randy Pausch.  And just this past week, Professor Pausch’s lecture—now expanded—was published in a book by the same name, “The Last Lecture,” and he and his wife, Jai, were interviewed on a television special watched by millions.  By any standards, his was a powerful and memorable “last lecture”…one that continues to have impact far beyond human imagination.

Several of you have brought Professor Pausch and his story to my attention this week and, after I was inspired by watching him speak, I’ve thought much about the notion of a “last lecture…”  It’s akin to “the one good sermon” we all have in us…that one message that, were we to preach it, would change lives and make a difference in the world…that one message that no one else can deliver quite like you. 

I sometimes wonder as I read the gospel according to John if Jesus meant for it to be a type of last lecture, that one good sermon that was only his to preach.  Take a step back from the very familiar good shepherd passages we’ve heard this morning; look at the broad strokes of John’s gospel, and we can see that in it Jesus talks about his purpose, but not directly.  He uses metaphor to instill in his friends the deep meanings of his ministry among them.  The Word that was in the beginning…the light that shines in the darkness…the bread of life…the living water…the light of the world…and now, in this passage, the good shepherd who calls the sheep by name and whose voice the sheep trust and follow.

One of the commentary authors I consulted in the preparation of this meditation honestly admitted that he had nothing new to contribute to the whole discussion of sheep and shepherds.  There’s honesty for you!  It’s all been said before, he wrote…sheep scatter, sheep follow blindly, shepherds care above and beyond the call of duty, sheep run away frightened, sheep come when called, sheep recognize their shepherd’s voice, sheep are wounded, sheep are healed, sheep are stalked by predators, sheep are safely loved…we’ve heard it all before.  Too true.  Those of us who were blessed to enjoy last year’s Christmas pageant written and led by our congregation’s children and youth, could add a few observations about sheep ourselves…sheep rarely sit quietly, especially in a choir loft…sheep are the cutest cast members ever…sheep graze all over the church…sheep lovingly greet us as we enter worship, rubbing gently and warmly against our legs…looking up at us with affection and joy!  Yes, we know something about sheep around here.

But what does it mean that Jesus chooses such a metaphor to describe his ministry?  And by extension, what does that same metaphor of sheep and shepherds tell us about our ministry?  For in this same gospel of John, Jesus makes clear that we will do greater things than even he has done.  Perhaps Jesus is offering us a way to see ourselves as both sheep and shepherd.  Perhaps, as we know all too well, our sheepish living is not the only paragraph in our last lecture.  We have only to look back at the past months or years of our lives to see that, like sheep, we sometimes run scared and scatter from those in our flock.  Other times, like sheep, we follow blindly, are stalked and wounded, healed and loved.  And yes, in the eyes of God who created us, we are definitely the cutest cast members on earth!  It is relatively easy and natural for us to see ourselves in the role of sheep.

Let’s go a step further this morning.  Imagine with me that you are being called to step into another role…the role that Randy Pausch took on with hundreds of university students through the years…the role that inspires and loves, that leads and heals, that sees needs and seeks to fill them…such is the role of shepherd.  Such is the role that Jesus invites each one of us to assume.

In 2005, when this congregation sent me to represent you at the Peace March in Washington, DC, I had the privilege of attending worship at the Church of the Savior, the congregation after which Redlands UCC is patterned.  I’ve spoken here several times about the people and programs of Church of the Savior, and as many times about their pastor, the Rev. Gordon Cosby, who has faithfully led this amazing congregation for over 60 years.  I’ve never told you, however, what he spoke about in his teaching message that morning.  Using images from the gospel of John, Rev. Cosby invited his friends to remember that, in ministry, we are always talking about people, about community, about flocks.  He urged us to see that the main task for us who have been caught by Jesus, who have been shepherded by him, is to catch and to shepherd women and men, children and youth; to nurture them, as we have been nurtured, so they grow up to catch and nurture others. 

Rev. Cosby continued, by focusing on the image of shepherd.  “We are not talking about the importance of grasping biblical principles,” he said, “but about being yourself in and with your flock…”  Like Jesus before him, Gordon Cosby described our dual roles of both sheep and shepherd as holy, as sacred…  He invited us to imagine who is already in our flock of 5 or 10 or 15 or maybe even 20 people.  Who are those people in our lives that we nurture just by being ourselves? 

Then he turned our attention to the gospel of John.  Late in that gospel, after the crucifixion and the resurrection, Jesus returns one more time to the image of good shepherd.  In chapter 21, Jesus introduces a new event…it is an image of abundance.  As the weary disciples fish all night and catch nothing, a distant Jesus standing on the shore, says, “What about throwing your nets on the other side of the boat?”  They do, and the nets are filled to overflowing…153 fish in all.  In telling this story, which surely he had told dozens of times throughout his long ministry, Rev. Cosby’s eyes lit up like the light shining in the darkness…he held out his hands to us in the congregation like he was giving us the bread of life and pouring over our parched souls living water… Then he smiled and winked, just as Jesus probably smiled and winked at an astonished Peter who was trying to count fish in a net that had been empty all night long… 

Gordon Cosby whispered, saying, “Jesus whispers into Peter’s ear… ‘Remember at the first?  You were overwhelmed then, and you’re overwhelmed now…  After breakfast, I’ve got a few things to talk with you about…let’s eat first!  Oh, by the way,’ Jesus continues, ‘I’ve got my food on the fire already.  Put yours with mine.  This is how it’s gonna be…I bring a little of me…you bring a little of you…together, we’re in this work…from now on.’”  And after breakfast, as the others gathered closer than any flock they’d ever seen, Jesus established the one rule for how they were going to do ministry with him.  “Love one another,” he said.  “Now, here’s your work…you are to become a good shepherd to your flock…an ‘SOS’—‘shepherd of sheep’…you’ve been watching me be a good shepherd…now you go and do the same.”

Good pastor that he is, Rev. Cosby continued his message with the immanently practical advice of Jesus.  Being a good shepherd, he intoned, means, first, finding appropriate grazing ground for your sheep…probably that will not be in white middle or upper middle class United States.  Take them where they can really feed and get water.  Where will you take your flock?  Jesus took his little flock to a leper colony, to dinner with prostitutes, into groups of children and among society’s outcasts, to sit with the homeless…so take your flock where they can be positioned to drink deeply. 

Second, being a good shepherd means that you know your sheep by name.  You know their stories, their hurts; you’ve helped bandage their wounds and never missed the chance to party with them.  You know them by their inner nature, who they really are, and they are going to know you as well.  This kind of shepherding, Rev. Cosby noted, calls for a new level of intimacy.  Seek it and do not fear where it may lead.  Finally, to be a good shepherd means to lead the sheep safely out of the fold.  It means going ahead of them and knowing that they will follow.  For out in front you, the shepherd, face the dangers first, and your flock follows you because they know your voice and trust you with their lives.

In one of his recent pastoral articles, Rev. Cosby writes these words, which seem a fitting gate of the sheepfold for us to pass through today…  He writes,

“At this point in my life, and at this point in our world’s life, I am asking what is to be my focus—to what am I to be giving my limited time and energy?  What is the new thing, the genuine thing, that God wants me to be learning, doing, being right now?  For me the central question is what it means to be the authentic church of Jesus Christ…To be both sheep and shepherd…It’s not a question any longer of which issues are of primary concern and what kinds of programs might best serve those issues, but a question of being.  How are we to be in the world so as to live the Jesus life with greater boldness and passion?...In the remaining time God gives me…I want to embody [Christ’s] transforming presence in the world…I no longer seek to be a human doing, but a human being.”