Power, Love, and Hope | A Sermon on Jesus, the Good Shepherd
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on the Fourth Sunday of Easter (C), May 8, 2021.
Acts 9:36-43; Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 23; John 10:22-30
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not be in want (Psalm 23:1).
We need only open the newspaper or turn on public radio to be confronted by misery, violence, oppression, greed, uncertainty, and loss. We all live fragile lives, encased in mortal flesh as we are, and yet that fragility feels closer now in so many ways than ever before. Things are not as they should be, and our souls want and want and want.
A recent article addressing the war in Ukraine reads: “[At our best and under normal circumstances], we act in solidarity together, providing healthcare and support, to postpone death, take away isolation, understand fear. Yet, war reverses all of that. It hastens death, dismantles solidarity, and destroys trust. That’s why it’s so horrific.” [1]
Hastens death
Dismantles solidarity
Destroys trust
The impact of war. Both war as we are witnessing in the Ukraine, and war as we experience it in the folds of our lives. Wars big and small that we wage against our planet, our fellow man, our selves, and our God.
Climate change, addiction, family conflict, hopelessness, racism, apathy, political unrest, abuse of all stripes. And on and on. Hastens death. Dismantles solidarity. Destroys trust.
Leaving us to cry out, from where is our help to come?
And Scripture responds, for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes (Rev. 7:17).
For the Lamb will be their shepherd.
If you are not particularly impressed by shepherding imagery you would not be alone. We have lost the significance of this metaphor, this understanding of God as shepherd, Jesus the good shepherd. What once was a startling, joyous, subversive promise now lands a wee bit flat to our modern ears.
And yet, consider the Israelites, to whom God, as shepherd, was first promised. Exiled in an unfamiliar Babylon, longing desperately, desperately, for a return to their native land—to the Israelites shepherd spoke of safety, freedom, and solidarity –of coming home.
For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when some of his sheep have been scattered abroad, so will I seek out my sheep; and I will rescue them . . . I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled . . . [For] you are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God.
These are the words of the prophet Ezekiel spoken to those exiled in Babylon. And this is the promise: that God, the one who knows us and loves us and keeps us, will seek us out and bring us home –no matter the wars we wage, no matter how far astray we go.
In the New Testament, it is Jesus who shoulders this promise and claims the mantle of Good Shepherd. It is us, the people of God, who are His sheep.
Behold I am sending you as sheep among the wolves (10:16), says Jesus as he commissions the disciples in the Gospel of Matthew.
Scripture repeatedly speaks of God’s people as sheep –and not just sheep, but sheep under threat. Nine times we’re given this motif. Nine times we’re reminded of our fragility. And yet, ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me (Psalm 23:4).
Hear again the promise of our Lord:
I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me . . . My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish . . . No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and my Father are one (John 10:14, 27-30).
The enormity of what is being conveyed here cannot be understated. It is no less than the assurance of “ultimate power and ultimate love” [2] held in the one person of Jesus the Christ who calls us, you and me, His very own.
Power and love. Often these seem at odds, antithetical. Perhaps in our hands they are and always will be. We strive for both, and yet so very often get it so horribly wrong.
In the words of Fleming Rutledge:
Giving love doesn’t sound threatening. Granting power is another matter. All around the world, Christians on the top of the socioeconomic heap have talked endlessly about love while preventing people of a lower bracket from having any power. Power to the powerless is an infinitely threatening idea because it might mean that you and I have to give some of it. [3]
Power and love.
Without love, we have nothing. We know that it is very difficult indeed to live, to truly live, without love. It is as oxygen to our souls.
Without power, we are, of course, powerless. And powerlessness is difficult to bear, often leading to severe apathy or devasting violence. [4]
And we know that both lovelessness and powerlessness can leave us hopeless. Who can speak of hope where there is no love? Who can speak of hope where there is no power?
This is why Jesus’ claim of the Good Shepherd is so monumental, so earth-shattering. Again, in the words of Rutledge, “in the Good Shepherd, power and love meet. If the shepherd loves the sheep but cannot protect them, the image becomes merely sentimental.” [5]
God who is love and Jesus who is the Good Shepherd with the power to protect the sheep are one. God who is Almighty and Jesus the Good Shepherd who loves His sheep beyond measure are one. Love and power meet and where they meet hope is born.
And this hope may not shield us from the pain of this world, but it does transform this world and our place in it. It makes possible the prayer of Psalm 23.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want (1).
If at war we:
Hasten death
Dismantle solidarity
And destroy trust
In God
Death is vanquished
True solidarity is achieved
And trust, trust in a power and love greater than we ourselves could hope to attain alone, is secured.
After all, it is the Lord who is our shepherd. The Lord is the Lamb who sits at the center of the throne. The one who is all powerful and the one in whom we place our faith and are thus empowered. In a world that suggests to us that power and love cannot walk hand in hand, it is the Lord who walks with us in power and in love and in Him we shall not want.
In Him we are home.
President Jimmy Carter recently published a letter in The Bitter Southerner, one of my favorite publications. In it, he writes:
Home is a complicated idea. Is it the physical bricks and mortar in which you live, or is it a feeling? It is the people you see each day who contribute to the feeling of belonging that comes with “home”? Can you feel at home anywhere? [6]
Children of God, the answer is yes. Our home is in God. You and me, we are the sheep of His own fold, lambs of His own flock, and we are never out of His reach, cost what it will and come what may.
Yes, we are a wandering people, prone to leave the God we love, to seek power at the expense of justice, to wage war writ large and writ small. And yet He is our Good Shepherd.
The one who is love, who is power, calls to us. Beckons us home in Him. Emboldening and empowering us to be a force of love in a broken world, ambassadors of a true hope. And no one and nothing will snatch us from Him.
For surely His goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives; And we will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever (Psalm 23:6).
Amen.
*Image is from a painting by Gebhard Fugel from the 1920s and is in the public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AK_Fugel_RV_Hirte.jpg
[1] Samuel Wells, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”: Reading Psalm 23 in perilous times,” ABC Religion & Ethics, 13 April 2022, https://www.abc.net.au/religion/samuel-wells-psalm-23-in-perilous-times/13839770.
[2] Fleming Rutledge, “Fourth Sunday of Easter: John 10:11-30” in Means of Grace: A Year of Weekly Devotions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021), 128-129.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Jimmy Carter, “Letter From Home,” The Bitter Southerner, 30 March, 2021, https://bittersoutherner.com/a-letter-from-home/jimmy-carter.
