John 10:11-18
Hearing the Shepherd
James Sledge April
22, 2018
Every
now and then, someone from another congregation calls the church office to ask
about leasing space for their worship service. Most of these requests have been
immigrant faith communities who are just starting out or have outgrown the
space they are renting.
Obviously
there are logistical challenges to having two different congregations in one church
building, and so when we get such a request our Worship Committee and our
Building and Grounds Committee look at the particulars and make a
recommendation to the Session. Clearly we’ve never managed to work out the
details to everyone’s satisfaction during my time as pastor here as we’ve not
had another congregation on site since the Episcopalians left nearly six years
ago.
But
assuming that we were able to work out the logistics and come up with a rental
agreement that suits us and the other congregation, we would still have one
more hurdle to clear. Any lease of our worship space requires the approval of
National Capital Presbytery.
In
our denomination, individual churches hold their property “in trust” for the
denomination. It belongs to us only so long as we are operating a Presbyterian
congregation here. If a church closes, the members can’t just sell the
property and split the proceeds. That property goes to the denomination.
And
so the denomination has a vested interest in making sure its congregations
don’t take out risky loans, don’t end up with a lien on the property, or get
into a lease that might tie the congregation’s hands at some point in the
future.
Along
with these mostly financial concerns, the presbytery also “reserves the right
to disapprove a lease to any organization (including a church) if it or its
parent body (1) actively disparages the Presbyterian Church (USA), (2) denies
that the PC(USA) is a branch of the true church of Jesus Christ, and/or (3)
engages in activities or promotes values that are antithetical to those of the
PC(USA).”[1]
I
wonder exactly what that last one means. Would we not rent space to a church
that doesn’t ordain women? How about LGBT folk? Should we be concerned about
where they stand on same sex marriage? What sort of values must they have to
rent space here?
Such
questions make me wonder about what makes a church truly a church? Where are
the boundaries? What is it that gives a church its identity? If you moved to
another city and were looking for a church, what would you want to know? What
would put a church on your list to visit, and what would keep it off?
It
turns out that it’s difficult, even impossible, to do church in a generic sort
of way. If worship is going to be an important part of your church, you have to
decide what that worship will look like, what sort of music to use, if you plan
to use music. You must decide what sources of insight are most important. If
there is a big theological controversy, what has the final say? We
Presbyterians speak of scripture as the ultimate authority, but Catholics put
church teachings on a par with scripture.
Because
it’s so hard to be a generic church, because you pretty much have to be some
particular kind of church, there are all sorts of modifiers people use to
describe their church. I belong to a progressive church. I belong to an
evangelical church. We’re a contemporary worship church. I go to a
non-denominational mega-church. We do “high church.” And the list goes on and
on.
Amidst
all these different sorts of church, it may be interesting to stop and think
about what it is that most defines us. Is it that we are a church of Jesus
Christ, or that we are progressive, liberal, evangelical and so on?
Jesus
says, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” Just
a few verses earlier Jesus describes the true shepherd this way. “He
calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…He goes ahead of them and the
sheep follow him because they know his voice.” When I visited the
Middle East some years ago, I saw Palestinian shepherds leading sheep in this
fashion. They didn’t drive the sheep, but called them, and the sheep followed
them down the trail.
As I was thinking about Jesus as the shepherd
who calls for his sheep, I imagined those sheep as American Christians in all our
assorted varieties. Jesus calls and says, “Follow me,” but the Democratic sheep
doesn’t want to be in the same line with the Republican ones. The evangelical
sheep want nothing to do with the progressive ones. The white sheep and the
black sheep go off into separate groups. The sheep that like pipe organs make
fun of the sheep who have guitars and drums in worship… And the shepherd weeps.
It
seems to me that we sheep often times worry more about our differences with one
another than we do with following the shepherd. We convince ourselves that
we’ve figured out how to be better sheep than those other sheep. Or worse, we
decide that we aren’t sheep at all and don’t really need a shepherd. We speak
nicely about the shepherd, but we’re not following him unless it is somewhere
we’ve decided on our own that we want to go.
One
of the sobering, perhaps troubling assumptions of our gospel reading – and of
Christian faith – is that we are sheep, sheep who need a shepherd, who are
prone to get ourselves lost and make messes of things. It’s hard to look at the
world we’ve created and not realize this, realize that Jesus comes as a Savior
because we need saving from all manner of things, including ourselves.
Just
as a critical step for an alcoholic’s recovery is admitting that they’re an alcoholic,
a critical step in Christian faith is admitting that we’re misguided sheep who
need a shepherd, a Savior. Without this step, we can hang around the edges of
faith, like the crowds who came out to see Jesus. But we can’t become his
disciples, his followers. To do that, we have to realize he knows the way, and
we don’t.
But
even though it can be hard for us to admit our need for a shepherd, our need of
saving; even though we may cringe at the thought that we need a shepherd every
bit as much as those other messed up sheep we look down on, there is good news for
us in our gospel reading. No matter what lost, misguided, stubborn sheep we may
be; no matter how, like toddlers, we insist we can do it ourselves; no matter
how often we ignore and dismiss the shepherd who calls us, the Good Shepherd
refuses to give up on us.
The
Good Shepherd would do anything for us, even lay down his life. The Good
Shepherd longs for us and aches for the day when we can let go of those images of
strength and accomplishment we try to project, and admit how much we need him. The
Good Shepherd always stands ready to embrace us and hold us, no matter what
we’ve done or failed to do, no matter how impressive or ordinary we are. Over
and over, until we finally listen, the Good Shepherd calls us, saying, “Come,
follow me.”
[1] Manual
of Property Policies and Procedures, Administrative Commission on
Congregational Property of National Capital Presbytery, p. 14
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