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Pastor's Place
Last Sunday's Sermon There are many different portraits of Jesus in the Gospels. There’s Mark’s portrait of the the mysterious wonder worker who lays aside his awesome power to die helplessly on a cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. Mark’s resurrection story ends in chaos, women fleeing from the tomb, afraid to say anything to anybody. We won’t look at Mark’s portrait until next year. But we did see part of Matthew’s on Easter when his Jesus, the great lawgiver who’d announced his new covenant in the Sermon on the Mount, now tells his disciples to meet him on that same mountain where he’ll give them final instructions how to teach that law to others. Luke portrays Jesus as a gracious host welcoming outcasts and strangers to his table. So it’s no wonder last Sunday we saw Luke’s risen Jesus revealing himself to a stunned but overjoyed couple in Emmaus as he blesses and breaks a loaf of bread at a meal. But for the rest of this Easter season we’ll be looking at John who shows not just one portrait, but a whole gallery– Jesus, the Word Made Flesh, Jesus, the Living Water, Jesus, the Bread of Life, Jesus, the Light of the World, and in today’s Gospel, my personal favorite, Jesus, the Good Shepherd. I remember when I was a kid, my dad used to read to us from Egermeier’s Bible Stories. It had a painting of Jesus walking a narrow path, a sheer rock wall on one side, a steep dropoff on the other, a little lamb draped safely around his neck. I loved that picture. I wanted to be that lamb. And there was another one which showed Jesus with a shepherd’s crook standing over a flock of sheep lying peacefully in a green meadow beside a pool of water. I liked that picture too. But is that really what we are, sheep, who just trustingly follow our shepherd wherever we’re led, or are we more like, oh, I don’t know, cats? Years ago when cats were our only children, Cathy and I had a two-year-old named Pita, like the bread, or the acronym. One gorgeous summer evening, as the sun was setting, Pita slipped out the door, as she was wont to do, and I tried to coax her in, as I was wont to do. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.” She looked back at me with those big golden eyes of hers as if to say, “Right,” and kept walking. Kind of like, well, like we do with God sometimes. Every evening, as we begin to wind down for the day, or every morning when we first wake up, or every mealtime, or every break time, God calls us. Here (whatever your name is). Time for prayer. Time to read the Scriptures or whatever inspires you. Time to be quiet and listen. But we have too much to do. Or the game’s on. Or we need to go online and check our e-mail or our friend’s facebook. Instead of coming back to God, even for a moment, we just keep walking. We get so used to leading our lives, we forget we’re supposed to be following. Even though at baptism Jesus called us by name we’ve get so used to ignoring him we rarely even hear his voice. We don’t think we need it. Any more than Pita thought she needed me. She was a cat. Cats don’t need anybody. They can fend for themselves, thank you very much. And so, even though I really wanted her to come in where I could feed and water her and shelter and protect her from the predators in our neighborhood, I had to let her go, into the tall grass past the garden and beyond. Just as in the same way, over the years, sometimes God has had to let me go. After all, God didn’t make me a puppet, to pull my strings to get me to do exactly what God wanted. You can’t love a puppet. A puppet is just you pulling strings. You can only love a person who in freedom may do what you want. I don’t know how many times God has watched me blunder into some decision, some behavior, some line of thought and said, “No! Roger! Don’t do that! That’s not why I made you! Come back.” But I wasn’t listening. I didn’t think I needed to. I’m a human being, and a darn smart one at that. I can find my own way, thank you very much. It wasn’t until it got dark, and that happens very late in mid-June, that I began to worry. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty,” I called out into the night, but no Pita. It wasn’t like her to miss supper. Something was wrong. And there was no way we were just going to go to bed and leave our baby outside alone. And so, armed with flashlights, we good catherds set out in the darkness, searching for a wayward cat whose name that night did not stand for the pocket bread. Much as the Good Shepherd always comes looking for us. Wherever we wander, whether it’s into some crisis of faith–a descent into doubt or despair or even atheism, or we wander into something more concrete, an affair, with a bottle, drugs which weren’t prescribed for what you using them for, a person you’re not supposed to be with, credit card activity you don’t have the money to pay for, or maybe we just wander into a life away from God, which can be very enjoyable, but leaves you with nothing solid to hang onto when things go wrong, and they do go wrong, wherever we wander, heaven does not sleep until we’re found. We may not see him. We may not hear him. But the Good Shepherd walks in the darkness of our lives, calling for us. We looked everywhere for that cat, shining our flashlights on streets where she might have been run over, in ditches where she might be lying injured, in culverts and pipes where she might have gotten trapped. No Pita. Until finally after hours of searching, way past bedtime, unlike the Good Shepherd, we catherds were ready to give up, and headed home but just before our corner, we thought we’d call one last time. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.” Then we heard it. A faint “meow”, almost lost in the wind, coming from somewhere up high. I shone my flashlight in the trees around Judge Mathers’ house. She wasn’t there. But as I slid the beam across the roofline to scan the trees on the other side, I caught a flash of golden eyes. Pita was trapped at the top of a three story house, with no idea, I’m sure, of how she even got there. Of course, we remember. All the dumb decisions, all the hasty actions, all the angry words we wish we could take back, but can’t, which trap us in situations we never intended– broken relationships, bad relationships, dead end jobs, the wrong place, the wrong time. Or maybe we didn’t do anything at all. Things happen. People get sick, accidents occur, things break, jobs get lost, marriages fail through no fault of our own. But we’d long ago lost touch with the Good Shepherd, and there we are, meowing our hearts out, wondering if anyone’s there. I was, standing atop a rickety extension ladder we’d borrowed from the judge, three stories up, trying to convince a frightened and skeptical cat I could carry her to safety. Good thing I had cheese. Slowly, cautiously, almost hopelessly she edged toward the good catherd, much as we do toward that Good Shepherd when we’ve been a long time and a long way away, and I grabbed her, the ladder shifting the other way, hold on to it, her claws digging in, trying my best to calm her as I gingerly made my way down. Halfway she was purring as contentedly as though she’d never been away, like a cozy Christian on Christmas Eve, holding a lighted candle, singing “Silent Night”, or shouting “Alleluia!” Easter morning while the trumpets blare out the news, well, if it’s not spring break the trumpets blare out the news that Christ is risen, or any of us when we sing a moving hymn or hold out our hands to receive communion and suddenly realize the Christ we thought was missing in action has been there all along. But, of course, you know what happens next. Before my feet even touched the pavement, that little acronym jumped down, and started to walk away. “Pita! Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty,” and turned and looked at us with those golden eyes, tail swishing, displeased that we would even think of shepherding her, and stalked back into the night. There were things to do, smells to check out, adventure in the wind, and she didn’t need me.....now. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus tells us in the verse after this morning’s lesson. The question is, do we really want one? Will we really follow one? Or would we rather follow our own hearts and heads, like cats? | Newsletter PASTOR’S CORNER It is May, spring is here and along with it comes the time for confirmation. On May 11th the 8th graders at Grace Lutheran Church will participate in the Affirmation of Baptism service and will become confirmed members of Grace. But what does this mean for them, and for that matter, for those of us who have been confirmed already? There is an old joke about a husband and wife who had been married for many years. The story goes that after 35 years of marriage they finally sought counseling. During the first session the wife said that she was mainly upset because her husband never said, “I love you” to her. At this the husband said, “Well I told her I loved her when I married her 35 years ago. Don’t you think if anything changed I would have let her know about it?” Now, we all know what’s wrong with this picture. In spite of knowing a few guys like that in my lifetime, I have a hard time imagining someone saying, “I love you” once and leaving it at that. We somehow understand in the fabric of who we are that love can’t remain spoken just once. It bears repeating. It begs for repeating. Love is made for repeating. For us, as Lutherans, affirmation of Baptism (confirmation) is usually a once in a lifetime act. It is that day when we move from being “church kids” to confirmed members, we have pictures taken with the pastors and family, and then we are adults in the eyes of the church. Right? But aren’t we missing out on something if we assume that confirmation is a one shot deal? Aren’t we missing some of the flavor of the Christian life that Luther spoke of when he said we daily return to the waters of our Baptism? I think so. When was the last time you thought about your confirmation? When was the last time when you “confirmed” your faith? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean when was the last time when you dressed in your Sunday’s best and have a red carnation and a party. I mean when was the last time when you affirmed your baptism? When did you last splash around in the waters of grace and want to say, “Yup. This is for me.” The truth of the message of the Gospel is that each and every day we find God, in the waters of our Baptism, reaching out to us and saying, “My dear child, I love you.” Isn’t that something worth returning to? I invite you, in this season of new growth and beginnings, to return to the waters of your Baptism and remember each day, along with those being confirmed on May 11th, that you have been “…baptized into one Body.” (1st Corinthians 12) Pastor Kurt |