John 17:6-19

“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

“I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.

“But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.

“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

‘Tis the season for goodbyes … and farewells … and “so longs” … graduation season, I mean. Yesterday, I got to offer the Invocation and the Benediction at the commencement ceremony for my alma mater – Capital University, over in Columbus, Ohio. It always brings back all sorts of memories to be on that campus and yesterday, for graduation, was no different – maybe even a little more poignant – to reflect on what all of that meant for me 28 years ago. (I would have bet a million dollars I wouldn’t be the one offering the Invocation or Benediction at a Capital commencement back then. And none of my friends would have taken that bet, either.)

Well, it’s not an Invocation, or a Benediction, or anything like a commencement address, but we call what we hear from Jesus this morning part of his “Farewell Discourse” – his own sort of “goodbye” and “so long,” if you will. Jesus was readying himself for the cross, for his death, for his resurrection, and for his ascension into heaven, too. And all of that gives these prayerful last words some heft, some weight, and some poignancy of their own.

And, even though he knew what was coming for himself – all of that suffering and death, I mean – Jesus’ greatest concern was for his family and friends. He wants to entrust them to God’s care. He wants them to be protected, to be guarded, to be safe. He wants them to know joy; to be “sanctified in the truth” as he puts it. He wants them to go about their lives – in the world, but not of the world – fulfilling their call as children of God. And so he prays these heartfelt, passionate words of love and concern and hope for his people – for his disciples, for these children of God he’s been walking alongside and raising up in the faith until now.

It’s why this prayer from Jesus – as all over the place and stream-of-consciousness as it seems – is perfect for a day like today when I feel like my words have too much ground to cover, in too little time. For one thing Mother’s Day is on the hearts and minds of many of us today. We will also celebrate the confirmation of a handful of our young people as they affirm the promises of their baptism this morning. Plenty of you are getting ready for the end of another school year and for graduations of your own. And many in our community are grief-stricken over the loss of little Sammy Teusch, the 10 year-old 4th grader who took his own life last week over in Greenfield. Like I said, there’s just too much ground to cover and not nearly enough time for all of it.

One of the most meaningful ways I’ve heard motherhood described before, is that the choice to have a child is to decide forever to let your heart go walking around outside of your body. There’s a lot of letting go, relinquishing, and surrender – there’s a lot of faith, then – in the act of living life as a mother. And it seems that’s something like what God did in Jesus – to set the divine free in the world; to put God’s very self at risk; to let the very heart of the almighty leave the safety of heaven’s protection and go walking around in the realm of brokenness that is the world as we know it.

So I think Jesus’ “famous last words” of love, his petitions of hope, his prayers of concern and for the protection for his people, have a lot to say to us still, no matter what it is that brings us here. I think Jesus is so earnest as he prays, because he knows he’s going; that he’s about to leave his friends, his family, his disciples to their own devices – he’s about to let his children … his heart – go walking around in the world without him, and he’s more than a little concerned about what might come of that.

Don’t most of us know something about what he’s feeling? Haven’t we been on one end of this sort of surrendering at some point – whether it was sending your child off to their first day of kindergarten or moving them into their college dorm for the first time? Maybe it was walking your daughter down the aisle on her wedding day.

Maybe it had nothing to do with children at all. Was it kissing a loved-one goodbye before the nurse wheeled them off to surgery? Was it “farewell” to a friend who moved away or “goodbye” to a co-worker or to a career of your own, even? Maybe it was the final goodbye to someone you knew you’d never see again, or even a goodbye that didn’t happen in time, because no one saw it coming.

I imagine Jesus has something like all of that – and more – in mind with his prayer. This loving surrender and letting go with all kinds of hope and faith and some measure of fear, too, for what was to come for those he was leaving behind. Would they remember what he taught them? Would they keep the faith? Did they know how much they were loved? Were they up to the challenges that would come their way? Were they ready for the hard choices, the setbacks, the let-downs, the disappointments, the failures, the risks, the heartbreak they might face?

Because life in the world is risky. For Jesus it led to the cross. For the rest of us, it can mean all sorts of sadness and struggle. There is sickness out here in the real world. There is disease and disaster and dying. There are accidents and addictions. There are broken relationships and unfulfilled dreams. There are bullies and despair and suicide, for crying out loud.

And all of this is what we set our children loose into – not just on the day of their confirmation – or at their graduation – but every morning when we put them on the bus or hand them the keys to the car or send them off to college, to their first job, their first date, to be married, whatever. And all of it is what God sends each of us into, just the same, as people on the planet at some time … in one way or another.

As I watched all of those college graduates marching around at commencement from my perch on the dais yesterday, I thought about all of the moms and dads, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and more – beaming with so much pride, hope, joy, and some measure of worry and concern too, I imagine – as they watched their hearts go marching around in caps and gowns and on to whatever is next. And I thought about little Sammy Teusch’s mom and dad, too, who’s heart left that one last time, shattered, and won’t ever be the same again.

And that’s why Jesus’ prayer matters for us. It reminds us that his words and his ways are of God – and that ours can be, too. We are reminded that we belong to something bigger than ourselves – something more than we can see on this side of the grave. We are reminded that we are one with the rest of God’s good creation. In spite of the differences and the divisions the world might try to impose upon us – we are one – bound together by the love and grace and mercy of our Creator.

And because of that, with Jesus’ blessing, encouragement, and holy example … we can do this, people. We can go about our lives in this world – afraid and uncertain and sad and overwhelmed more often than we’d like; but hopeful, anyway – as God intends – with faith and love to carry on in spite of the heartbreak; with faith and love to share, because of the heartbreak.

We are called, you and I … as baptized children of God … to be the very heart of God walking around in the world, doing justice, loving kindness, sharing grace and mercy and peace and goodness, so that Jesus’ prayers will be answered – for us and for the sake of the world God so loves.

Amen

John 10:11-18

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the good shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and runs away – and the wolf snatches and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because the hired hand does not care about the sheep.

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. There are other sheep who are not part of this fold. I must bring them along also and they will listen to my voice. So that there will be one flock, one shepherd.

“For this reason the Father loves me, because I am willing to lay down my life and take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own accord. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again. I have received this command from my father.”

In addition to it being the Fourth Sunday of Easter, today is also, often called, in many places “Good Shepherd Sunday,” where churches all over the world hear some bit of this portion of John’s Gospel where Jesus waxes poetic about his identity as “the Good Shepherd.”

It’s a popular image, I suspect most of us have seen or heard of before: Jesus, with livestock draped over his shoulders. There are paintings and stained glass windows showing as much. There are a few “Good Shepherd” and “Our Shepherd” Lutheran Churches right here in Indianapolis. I was baptized at a Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, in Vickery, Ohio. But I often struggle with what to say about it – or what new thing to say about it – I guess. On one hand it seems like such an obvious cliché. On the other hand, I’ve never met a shepherd, so…

So, today might seem like a stretch. It’s not the first time you’ve heard that from me, and it won’t be the last, but I found myself wondering about “the hired hand” that Jesus mentions in this morning’s Gospel, this time around, as a way of wondering differently about “the Good Shepherd,” too.

Well, here’s “the stretch.” Jesus’ mention of how “the hired hand” doesn’t know or care about the sheep…? How the “hired hand” sees the wolf coming and runs away – leaving the sheep to be snatched and scattered because the “hired hand” doesn’t care about the sheep, in the same way the Good Shepherd does…?

All of that reminded me of George Costanza. (I told you it was a stretch, but after last week – with Jeannie’s fall and all of my waterworks about my Father-in-Law – I thought we could use a laugh this morning, so I’m going with it.) Jesus’ talk about the “hired hand” made me think of this ridiculous bit of Seinfeld, where George Costanza is at a child’s birthday party.

In the show, George smells fire, sees smoke in the kitchen, and runs out of the party, knocking over a clown, an elderly woman with a walker, and pushes several children out of his way, trying to get to the door and escape to safety. He gets accosted by the clown, the party’s host, and emergency workers afterward where he tries, shamefully, to explain himself and defend his actions.

“The hired hand, who is not the good shepherd … sees the wolf coming and runs away…” “The hired hand runs away because the hired hand does not care about the sheep.” Okay. Funny stuff aside.

Part of what Jesus is saying – and had been trying to prove throughout his ministry – is that the world was and is filled with too many “George Costanzas.” I mean, too many “hired hands.” There were and are, it seems to me, too many pretending to share grace, to do God’s bidding, to be Messiah, Savior, GOD … but too many who can’t… who won’t… who don’t… none who could ever measure up to the fullness of love we know in Jesus, the one and only, real, Good Shepherd – which Good Friday’s cross and Easter’s empty tomb prove to be true. The Good Shepherd lays down his life, of his own accord, and takes it back up again, at the Father’s command – all to bring the whole wide world into the flock.

And it’s always helpful to notice where we are in the Bible (John, Chapter 10, remember) in relation to where we are in the church calendar on a day like today. I mean, we’re a few weeks after the resurrection – on the other side of that empty tomb – with the cross and crucifixion in the review mirror and the good news of Easter, hopefully, still ringing in our ears. But today’s Gospel reading takes us back a bit in the life and times of Jesus, just about halfway through John’s version of the story.

When Jesus was talking about the Good Shepherd, he was in the thick of things, but hadn’t made it to Calvary and the cross, just yet. At this point he was still pointing ahead to all of that, and the resurrection was just a pipe dream. Nevertheless, he had been busy…

He’d reluctantly turned water into wine at that wedding in Cana. He’d met secretly with Nicodemus and tried to answer all kinds of questions and curiosities about his status as the Son of Man, sent to save, not condemn, the world. He’d been baptizing like crazy, even more prolifically than John the Baptist, and attracted the suspicious attention of the Pharisees because of it. He’d had that conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well – the one who’d been married five times? – which raised a lot of eyebrows, in and of itself.

He’d saved the life of a royal official’s son, helped a lame man walk out of the healing pool in Jerusalem, fed 5,000 people on the side of a hill, saved the life of that woman who’d been caught in adultery, given sight back to a blind beggar, and, of course, there was all sorts of preaching and teaching and more in the meantime.

And THEN, today, he gets to this talk about sheep and hired hands and what it means to be a – to be THE – Good Shepherd.

All of this is to say, I think that – in the midst of his very prolific life and ministry but long before his death and resurrection – Jesus is still trying to prove who he is and how he came to be in the world. And he’s still trying to convince people – in advance of the crucifixion and long before the resurrection – that he was different … better … up to the challenge … faithful … the one they were waiting for, whether they knew it or not.

He was no hired hand. He was the real deal. He would not leave them orphaned, or scattered, or snatched from the grip of God’s grace. He wasn’t in this for himself. He was following God’s lead. He would answer God’s call. He was the one and only, Good Shepherd who could be trusted above all else.

And what was supposed to be their hope in advance of the resurrection is our hope, still, on the other side of the empty tomb. Jesus stands over and above the politicians, the pundits, the pastors, the powers-that-be – and even Tay Tay and all of her tortured poets.

What we have in this good and gracious shepherd is one who comes down, into our world and down into our lives with a love and a loyalty like the world doesn’t offer – a love and a loyalty none of us deserves. When we let that love guide us and when we follow where it leads, we’ll find ourselves never lost, but found; never scattered but gathered together; never snatched away or trampled underfoot, but lifted up, welcomed back, carried home to safety, joy, hope and peace in the very presence of God – no matter what tries to snatch us or scatter us along the way.

Amen

So Long, Farewell, You Got This

Good Shepherds and Hired Hands