Easter II                                                                                                                                                                        Fr. Forrest Burgett

Trinity Anglican Parish                                                                                                                                                  Given: 04/18/10

“Jesus said, I am the good shepherd;  the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”        (St. John  x. 11.)

Today is traditionally known as Good Shepherd Sunday.  The Collect asks help in following in our shepherd’s footsteps.  The Epistle tells how our shepherd gave his life for his sheep.  The Gospel recounts Jesus’ admonition that eventually there will be only one flock and one shepherd.

The Good Shepherd says, “I know my sheep and am known of mine.”  Two ways come to mind when we consider how to know Jesus and how he knows us.  We typically know something either intellectually or emotionally.

Outside of his teachings, we know very little about Jesus’ life on earth.  We know he was born in Bethlehem around 6 BC.  He was taken to Egypt to avoid Herod’s wrath and then raised in Nazareth.  He visited the Temple at the age of twelve.  He worked for a time as a carpenter.  He was baptized by John in the Jordan River.  He healed and preached for approximately three years.  And He was executed as a criminal in his early thirties.

Through the scriptures, we know some other things about his person.  He is one person with two distinct and wholly integrated natures.  He is both man and God.  All these things are important because Christianity is unlike every other religion in the world.  Christianity is a religion whose origin is verified by secular historians.  It’s not a philosophy about life.  It’s a religion based on what actually happened in our history.  These facts are known, documented and important.  On the other hand, atheists and agnostics acknowledge the history and it doesn’t seem to help them know Jesus any better.

It would appear that knowing Jesus intellectually is not sufficient.  Some believe the important thing about knowing Jesus is to feel a certain way about Jesus.  They call this “being born again” or “accepting Jesus as my Savior”, or “giving my life to the Lord” or “letting Jesus into my heart.”  All of these expressions emphasize the importance of our feelings toward Jesus.  We are certainly blessed when we find these feelings overcoming us.  More than a few of us work to perpetuate those feelings of overwhelming peace and joy.

Where you give your heart says a great deal about where you expect to find your treasure.  And yet, we don’t always find these warm feelings and emotions overwhelming us.  There are moments, when we are emotionally as dead as stone.  That doesn’t mean that we’ve ceased to be Christians.  It simply means that we are human and feelings alone are not dependable.

We live in a time when love is seen as feelings rather than a commitment.  An emotional rush is indeed thrilling, but it may disappear at the next movement of the barometer.  The unreliable nature of feelings accounts for the mess we have made of love in our society.

How do we know Jesus?  The mind and the heart are indeed involved in knowing Jesus, but they are not enough.  To know Jesus truly is to know him as Lord.  Intellectually, that means we must know that he is God and man.  Emotionally, we must know him with our hearts.  Even together, that is not enough to really know Jesus as Lord.  To know him as the Lord, to whom we are totally committed, we must also involve our wills and that must affect the choices we make.

Today we celebrate that the Lord is our Shepherd.  That makes us His sheep.  Jesus called himself our shepherd.  He did not call himself “our best philosophical idea yet.”  He did not call himself “our most thrilling emotion ever.”  Both are true but that is not the significant portion of his message.  Rather, he called himself our shepherd.  We are to be his sheep;  not just his students and his groupies.  We are his sheep.  Like good sheep, we know him by following him.  We are to live as he taught.  We are not to change with every great idea someone develops.  We are to worship as he taught.  We are not to incorporate secular standards to attract more sheep.  Jesus did not change God’s will and if we follow his footsteps, we will not attempt to change it either.

In the end, there is no other way to know Jesus.  We can’t think our way to being good Christians.  Likewise, we can’t feel our way to being good Christians.  But, we can follow the example he set out for us.  We are to live as he taught us to live.  We are to follow those whom he himself sent to be our shepherds.  We are to worship in the way he taught us, as recorded in the New Testament.  That is, to live by the Church’s precepts in communion with the Church’s bishops and centering our lives in the Church’s Eucharist.

If we know him, then he has promised that he will know us.  “I know my sheep and they know me.”  He will know us in this way because he will see something of himself in us.  Those who follow him faithfully, in their lives and in worship and in the life of His Church, will reflect something of Christ.  Granted, what he will see in us will be imperfect.  That imperfection applies to each of us individually as well as to all his sheep collectively.  And yet, that imperfect thing he will see in us could have come from no other source.  When we present ourselves at his heavenly sheepfold, he will be looking for that imperfect sign of him in us.  It is for that sign that he came once to make his life available to each of us.  And he comes to offer himself - both for us and to us - in every Eucharist we celebrate.

In today’s world, we would probably feel more comfortable being described as something other than a sheep.  A lion in keeping with our symbolism for St. Mark would be good.  An eagle in keeping with our symbolism for St. John would also be good.  Even an ox or a calf as we use for St. Luke is not all bad.  But Jesus chose sheep for a reason.  Sheep do not prey on others and do not seek their own individual pasture.  They follow their shepherd without question.  And that is what we are called to do.  We are to follow Jesus’ footsteps.  We are to follow Jesus’ teachings.  Jesus followed God’s will even unto death and we are to follow that example.  We are not to be the alpha leader that stands out in a crowd and finds a unique path through this life.  We are to seek, find, and follow the Will of God as illustrated by the life of his only begotten Son.

Christ is our shepherd and in his care we will lack nothing.  He’ll protect us from hunger, from beasts and the heat of the noonday sun.  He’ll take us to green pastures - and lead us beside still waters.  He will convert our souls and bring us forth in the paths of righteousness for his names sake.  Even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we can do it without fear.  He’s been there.  He knows the way.  He will prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies.  Our heads will be anointed with oil and our cups shall be full.  With Christ’s love to guide us, we can say to one another, “Surely his goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

As members of Christ’s body and as members of his flock, we must declare our allegiance.  “Unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be ascribed as is most justly due, all might, majesty, dominion and power henceforth and forevermore.  Amen.”

Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty;  for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine;  thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.  (1 Chronicles xxix. 11.)