Sunday, May 03, 2015

Blindly Following the Shepherd - April 26, 2015

Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23:1-6; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18

A couple of months ago, there was a two-week period when my youngest son would walk through the house with his eyes closed. He’d hold his hands out in front of him, and then walk through the room to see if he could avoid bumping into anything. At first, he would move slowly and hesitate, but the farther he got into the room, the more confident he would be and the faster he would go, until he got to me and then he’d open his eyes and smile, with a mixture of triumph and relief. Triumph because he’d actually managed to get through the room without losing his way, and relief because it’s actually a bit scary to walk around blind. Who knows what you could bump into, or if you might end up falling down the stairs?

Generally speaking, we like to see where we’re going and we start to get nervous when we can’t. When things get dark, either literally or metaphorically, we start to get anxious. Darkness and blindness are some of the oldest visuals we have for describing times when we’re unhappy because we don’t know what’s going on or what’s going to happen. Our psalm for today - one we could probably recite by heart - talks about walking through the valley of darkness. It brings up thoughts of stumbling about in the dark, unable to see anything at all, tripping on rocks, banging into boulders, falling into holes, taking the wrong path and getting lost. Unless we’re feeling pretty safe and secure, we don’t like to walk in darkness. We don’t like to go forward blindly.

But life forces us to, doesn’t it? Human life is one moment after another of walking in blindness, never being able to see what’s ahead of us. We are always, in a way, living in darkness, without any way to know what is coming. And that can make us anxious and stressed. I know that many of you worry about what’s to come as you get older - about when your bodies will start letting you down, about when you will have to give up your car or move out of where you are now, about how long you will be able to take care of yourself. Life is so unpredictable, and when we try to see the future, to prepare for what’s coming, everything is dark. I know that many of you worry about your grandchildren and about what the future has in store for them. Even I worry about what things will be like for my grandchildren and I don’t have any yet! But we don’t know what things will be like - we can’t see whether the economy will get stronger or weaker, or whether climate change will drastically change the world, or whether life will become a struggle for survival. We can’t see their path, and we know that they will have to move forward blindly, just as we do, and so we worry.
But this is life, isn’t it? This is the story of human existence. It’s the story of the church’s existence. And the story of this congregation’s existence. We are always moving forward blindly, and it’s always unsettling. We know that Jesus is calling us forward, but we can’t see which way to go, and, like sheep and all of God’s creatures who are afraid of the dark, we get frightened.

People tend to do one of three things when frightened and anxious. When we’re forced to move forward but can’t see where we’re going, we move into flight-or-fight mode. Actually, it’s flight-or-fight-or-freeze mode, as psychologists say now. When faced with a scary and unknown future, sometimes we take flight - like the frightened hired hand in our Gospel reading, who’s faced with wolves and takes flight - we run away from where we’re at - we run away from commitments, or from getting involved, or from getting into things. It takes a strong person to face our fear, and most of us aren’t that strong. Look at poor Peter in the courtyard after Jesus was arrested, running away from his relationship with Jesus. Look at the poor disciples, fleeing Jerusalem after Jesus was crucified - escaping to Emmaus, hiding in rooms with locked doors. We try to flee, but the problem is that sometimes we end up flying away from Jesus, and getting lost as a result.

Sometimes, if we don’t take flight, we fight. When the way forward is dark and frightening, we deal with it by trying to take control of every single thing in our lives, trying to plan out every possible option, making plan after plan after plan, in an attempt to see in the dark and predict every possible outcome. It’s not a bad thing to make plans, but when we use these plans to try to fight the uncertainty of the future, we inevitably encounter something we hadn’t even thought of, and everything falls apart. Fighting the darkness is about as effective as trying to run away from it, especially when it turns out that, in our blindness, we’ve somehow mistakenly ended up fighting Jesus and the path he wants us to follow.
And, sometimes, we freeze. When the darkness surrounds us, we hide our heads under the pillow and try to pretend that everything is normal and that nothing has changed and that nothing ever will. We engage in wishful thinking that stalls us where we are, and even if we hear Jesus calling us, we’re too petrified to follow the sound of his voice and so we never get to him. 

But, even knowing this, as I said, unless we’re feeling safe and secure, we don’t like to walk in darkness and we don’t like to go forward blindly. Safety and security don’t come from us, though. No matter what we do, we’ll never be able to make ourselves feel completely safe and secure, because we can’t. Humans don’t have that capacity. We simply can’t see in the dark on our own. We simply can’t see when we’re blind. It’s not possible. We need help.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of darkness, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Jesus is the one who leads us through the dark. Jesus leads us along right paths for his name’s sake. Jesus is our shepherd, whose voice we recognize, who calls us to him and whom we can reach even when we’re blind. Jesus is our safety and our security when we can’t see our way. You know - when my son would get lost walking with his eyes closed, he would stop and hesitate, and if I called to him, he would immediately turn to me and walk straight towards me. He knew my voice, and he knew I was a safe place. And Jesus is this for us, and more. Jesus calls us, calls us to come toward him, and even though our path is dark, we know that when we turn to him and move forward, we will make it to him in safety. His voice is our guide, and he protects us from getting lost or injured on our way.
Our safety and security comes from the reality that because Jesus is our shepherd, we will end up where we are supposed to be, even though we can’t see it ahead of us. This is the promise given to us through Christ - as Christian individuals and as a Christian community. It means that we can move forward blindly, trusting that God, who has fulfilled God’s promises to our ancestors, has sent us a shepherd to keep us safe and bring us to green pastures and to still waters.

We can trust this to be true because God has already done it. In those first few days after Jesus’ death, the newly forming community of Christians was just as blind as we are now. They were making their way forward from the miracle of the resurrection, but with no idea of where they were going. A few weeks ago we heard about Jesus walking with the disciples along the road to Emmaus, and about how they were unable to “see” him for who he was. They were blind when it came to the future of the Christian community. And yet Jesus led them to break bread together, a sign of the Christian church. Jesus shepherded them to become a fellowship for whom communion was a sign of Christ’s presence among them. Today’s reading tells us the story of the very early church struggling to find their way through what we now call Pentecost. They didn’t know where they were going or what Jesus wanted them to do, other than to heal the sick. They probably thought they were all going to be crucified by the Romans, just like he was. Yet they continued to move forward. And because they moved forward blindly, because Jesus called them towards him, we are here today. Jesus called that community to move forward, and through the centuries has called every Christian community to move forward, through the generations and through the years, until today, and here we are. The congregation of St. John. The disciples in the Book of Acts could never in their wildest dreams have imagined us sitting here today, and yet Jesus called them to act in love and move forward despite the darkness of their future, so that you could be here today and take communion and receive the grace and love of God. Who could see such a future?


Hiro doesn’t walk through the house with his eyes closed anymore. I think the novelty of not being able to see wore off quickly, and he prefers to know where he’s going, just like we all do. But ultimately we cannot see everything, or really even anything, that is to come. Nor is it our job. We are not shepherds. We are not charged with the responsibility of deciding where Jesus will call us or of seeing our destination before we arrive. This is not even the job of pastors, even though we pastors have often adopted the image of shepherd as our model for leadership. Only Jesus is our shepherd. Only Jesus escorts us through the darkest valley. Only Jesus protects us so well that we can sit down - with enemies all around us - and enjoy a wonderful feast. Only Jesus calls us along safe paths when we cannot see the way in front of us. Of course, we can try to stop ourselves from following him - and next week I’m going to talk about how we do that - and sometimes we have a hard time recognizing Jesus’ voice - which I’m going to talk about two weeks from now - but Jesus’ call is both irresistible and empowering, and Jesus as our shepherd escorts us to where we need to be. Jesus has done it, he is doing it, and he will do it. We may be blind, but we are not lost. Jesus is with us, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Now and forever. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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