Your shepherd knows who you are

In this world, so often we are unknown to each other.  We live our lives with few people knowing who we really are.  Hardly anyone takes the time to listen and understand us.  But Christ, our shepherd, knows exactly who we are.  He came so close to us so that we could know him as he knows us.  And he's calling us to let go of our fears and anxieties so that we might get to know those around us as well.

4^th Sunday of Easter (Year B) – Sunday, April 29, 2012

Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA

Texts: Psalm 23, Acts 4:5-12, 1 John 1:16-24, John 10:11-18

I'd like you to take a trip with me for a moment, imagine going on your first vacation in years. You saved up, made your plans, taken care of everything. You've been in the car all day, and now, finally, you've arrived at the hotel. You walk up to the front desk, and your conversation goes something like this:

Welcome to the Grand Hotel. How can I help you?

I'd like to check in, please.

Sure. Name, please.

Uh...Davis. We reserved a king suite with a view.

Well sir, I have your reservation but we don't have “king suites with a view.” We have king suites. Some have views, some don't. Let's see what we got here. I'm sorry all I have left is two doubles in the economy wing.

I'm sorry, I don't understand. I reserved a king suite. I paid extra for it. The agent told me it would have a view.

Well, sir, I can't control what some person told you. Listen to what I'm saying: we don't have any more king suites.

Wow, I just want to check in to the room I reserved.

Well, I'm trying to check you in to your room. But I can't do that 'til you give me your credit card and ID, can I? There's a lot of people behind you in the line, you know.

Whatever, here.

Ok, here's your keys. Breakfast is at 7, but you better come early because it gets crazy in there. Extra towels in your closet, so don't call, and check out is at 10 am, not 10:15, not 10:30, 10 am. Got it?

I think I got it, but ---

Good, NEXT!!!!

So it goes when we are left in the care of a hired hand. Just making it through another shift. In today's mechanized, digitized world we are so often just a number. Just another guy in line. So often the hired hands running the world don't know who we are, and they don't care enough to find out. When the wolves come, they're running the other way.

To a suit-clad executive in a board room, you're just one more paycheck cutting into the bottom line, so he cuts you, or gives you two jobs to do with your one salary. He doesn't know you, he doesn't know the kids you're trying to feed, or the rent you have to pay. To an overworked ER doctor, you're a chart, a collection of vital signs, not a person, with a story to listen to, with a patchwork of symptoms to figure out. Even to people who live around you, these days you are seldom more than a competitor for a parking space. Not neighbors. Not keepers of one another.

So often, we are invisible to each other. When we hear about somebody getting laid off, when we pass someone struggling on the street, we're no different than that hotel clerk. Most of the time we see that person as just another guy in line. Why should we expend our energy, our time, to help someone else with her problems when we're so burdened with our own? Why should anyone care about us? It's not as if we have a stake in each other. We aren't invested in each other. If there's something in it for us, sure we'll work a shift of caring for a change, but when it's time to punch the clock, it's back to looking out for number one.

We didn't make this world. We didn't make each other. We're all just renting time and space in this world that belongs to God, in this beautiful, but deeply fallen and sinful, world that God made. We're not trying to preserve each other or the world, both precious creations of God. We're competing with each other to take whatever we can, while we still can. We see the world as an endless competition for money, for power, even for safety or love or attention. We don't have the perspective of the one who created it all, the God who crafted each person as her own child. 

 

But thankfully the Creator did not leave us alone. God the Creator, the owner, if you will, became one with creation, became the one called Jesus of Nazareth. God got closer. God took on the weakness of human flesh to find you right where you are. God came down to walk right up to you, saying “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.” Jesus tells us that the way he knows the Father and the Father knows him, that's the way he knows us, that's the way he teaches us to know him. Jesus isn't just another hired hand clamoring for our devotion, or our money, only to forsake us at the critical moment. Jesus, through the mystery of God, is the one who made us, the one who knows us as a parent knows a child, the way a potter knows the work of her hands, and yet the one who walks beside us and the one who lays down his life for us.

Your shepherd, Jesus, knows who you are. He knows your hopes and your fears, your joys and your sorrows. He shares them all, even to the point of death on a cross, and resurrection to new life. He has invested his life in you, and in each of us. And Jesus promises to make us members, keepers, of one another, in a way that only he can. He gives each of you an identity as his child, his sheep, his beloved and protected ones. He finds each of us so that we may find each other, so that we might come to know one another like he knows us, as his fallen, yet beloved child. He goes out to find all those who aren't yet a part of this fold, and he promises that they will listen to his voice. He promises that there will be one flock, one shepherd. He binds us together with his body and blood and promises that one day we will see each other with his eyes.

As somebody who's worked in hospitality for the last seven years before I came here, I've learned the difference it can make simply to get to know someone. To learn what someone's life is like. It's a powerful thing to know the guest who gets into town late every Sunday night, so can you keep the same, quiet room for her every week, with the bed turned down and the fridge stocked with her favorite soda. If you know she has two kids at home, you go get her something nice to bring home to them at the end of the week. You take ownership of her wellbeing, you try to see things from her perspective.

Jesus doesn't promise you a five-star hotel experience. But Jesus is your shepherd, and he knows you. He knows that you need life, and so he laid down his life so that you may have it in abundance. He tells you, “I am the good shepherd,” and so he is. He is God's Word. And so hearing this promise, and being washed in it, and eating and drinking it, Christ enables you to say, “the LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.” Christ makes it possible for us to say these beloved words, that there is nothing else we need, that we need not fear any evil, that even in death we will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. 

 

A whole new reality opens up for us. We no longer have to spend our lives taking whatever we can. Christ gives us an ownership stake in each other. Christ makes it possible to invest all that we have and all that we are in our brothers and sisters. Christ is giving you your whole life to get to know your siblings around you, to get to know them as he knows them, and to shepherd them as he shepherds you. Your shepherd is calling to you, and there is nothing left to want and nothing left to fear. Amen.