Sermon Cloud

DIRTY JOB

            There is a program on the Discovery Channel we like to watch sometimes called Dirty Jobs.  The host, Mike Rowe, is shown performing difficult, strange, disgusting, and/or messy occupational duties alongside the typical employees.

            The show always begins with the same line:  "My name is Mike Rowe, and this is my job: I explore the country looking for people who aren't afraid to get dirty—hard-working men and women who earn an honest living doing the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us. Now... get ready, to get dirty."

            He has tried 109 different jobs in the last six years, including cleaning animal skulls to be used in educational facilities; worm digger; cloth diaper cleaner; excavator at the La Brea tar pits; dairy cow midwife; snake venom extractor; and my personal favorite:  “Avian Vomitologist” where he collected owl vomit for a researcher.  In all of those episodes I could only find one involving sheep, and that was Sheep Castrator.[1]

            Not once, though, has he taken on the challenge of working as a shepherd.  Surely it isn’t that it isn’t dirty enough – the life of a shepherd is anything but picturesque, especially in the Middle East.  

            I have a photograph I took in Syria of a Bedouin shepherd with his flock along the road that runs through the desert wilderness between Damascus and the Roman ruins of Palmyra – the only thing in the picture is one lonely guy with his tent on his back, about 100 sheep and nothing else but dirt as far as the eye can see.  No grass, no trees, no water, nothing that we would put on a list of things that sheep – or human beings - need to stay alive and thrive.

            Sheep have a reputation of being stupid and mindless – but I’ve been told that it was actually cattle ranchers that started the rumor that sheep are dumb, because sheep don’t behave like cows.  Cows are herded from the rear with shouts and prods – but if you stand behind a sheep and try that, they’ll just run around behind you.  Cows can be pushed, but sheep must be led.   I have two screen savers on my office computer that I can put up depending on what kind of week I’m having trying to get the church to go in any particular direction.  If things are going well, I have a picture of flock of sheep coming at me, and if I’m having trouble, the other picture is one of hundreds of white fluffy sheep butts.

            The work of a shepherd was – and is still - dangerous, risky and menial.  It wasn’t the kind of job that attracted the best type of employee for the flock’s owners.  These hired shepherd-servants depended for their livelihood on work that required them to be out in the fields and away from their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, whom an honorable man with the means to do so would have stayed home to protect. Because of this, shepherds were considered to be men of questionable honor – unreliable, even borderline bandits.

            So since shepherds were considered to be mostly questionable low-lifes, the adjective “good” attached to the noun “shepherd” corresponds in the bible to the words “Good Samaritan.”  No Jew could conceive that a hated Samaritan could be good in any sense of the word, and the same follows for “Good Shepherd” – it would be considered a contradiction in terms. 

            The Greek word that English Bibles translate as “good” doesn’t just mean good as the opposite of “bad” – although it does mean that.  The Greek word is kalos, and its meaning is more like “model.”  So Jesus is saying that he is the “model shepherd” – the one who is competent and faithful, praiseworthy, the best one, the one to emulate. 

            That is important, because in today’s text, the group Jesus is speaking to has a number of Pharisees in it.  By this point in his ministry, the Pharisees were investigating everything about him, trying to decide for themselves who Jesus was – a demon from the pit of hell or a miracle-worker sent by God.[2]  

            But before we come down too hard on them, we need to consider that the Pharisees were the religious scholars who were the most concerned with preserving the truth that had been handed down by Moses and the prophets. It was a full-time job.  They lived in an area of the world that was a crossroads of the Roman Empire, and a destination for foreigners with hundreds of different gods – today we’d call it a “pluralistic” society - and their job was to sift through all of the local religious goings-on and set up the boundaries that kept Judaism pure and unpolluted by all of the religious weirdos and nut jobs that threatened to make the wheels come off the Hebrew wagon.  Jesus wasn’t the first miracle worker who had come down the pike, and he certainly wasn’t the first one that people speculated might be the Messiah they’d all been waiting for. 

            So there sit the acknowledged gatekeepers of the legacy of Moses, listening intently to every word that Jesus says, and when he starts talking about shepherds, they would have instantly recognized the scriptural metaphor of leaders as shepherds of God’s people.  These were stories they had known since childhood. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and David were all shepherds.  Zechariah had used shepherds to compare earthly governors and God[3].   Ezekiel wrote that God promised to shepherd his people and to set a “model shepherd” over the people.[4]

            The Pharisees, the religious leaders – the shepherds, if you will – of God’s flock, hear Jesus saying plainly that he was that model shepherd that Ezekiel had prophesied about and they were about to be replaced.   He is pointing out that all their efforts at religious boundary-setting hadn’t led God’s people to food and water, and their gate-keeping had just kept most of the sheep penned up, hungry and thirsty; while leaving “the other sheep that are not of this pen” outside the sheepfold, without a shepherd, hungry and thirsty and in danger of being eaten by the wolves.  Jesus’ assessment amounts to a pretty devastating performance review that concluded that they were no more reliable than a hired hand.    

            I should back up and explain here that the men and boys who worked as shepherds didn’t own the flocks they watched over.  They were hired to care for someone else’s sheep – they were entrusted with another’s wealth.  It was a very serious thing to lose a sheep, so sometimes the shepherds would fight off wild animals - you might remember that when King David was a boy he killed a lion to protect the flock.  A shepherd who lost a sheep could not just return to the owner with a story about how it had wandered off somehow – he would have to return to the village with a piece of the dead animal – a bloody ear or tail, and a few wounds on himself as well – as evidence that he had defended the animal with his own life. 

            Now before we go on, we need to think for a minute about the parables that illustrate what the Kingdom of God is like.  The Kingdom of God isn’t anything like we’re used to.  When we lose a penny, we lost a penny.  In the Kingdom of God the woman turns the house upside down to find her coin and throws a party when she finds it.  When a sheep goes missing in our world, it doesn’t make sense to put the whole flock at risk by leaving it alone to find the straggler – but that’s what happens in the Kingdom of God.  In our families, when one of our kids says he wishes we were dead and leaves home, when he comes crawling back, we say, “See, I told you so.”  In the Kingdom of God the Prodigal Father tells his wayward son only how much he was missed while he was gone and throws a party. 

            The common theme in the parables about the Kingdom of God is that there is always a point of absurdity – they turn on someone doing something that everyone knows would never happen in the world as we know it.  Going “above and beyond” what good sense and good stewardship calls for, spending hundreds of dollars on a party that celebrates finding a single penny, rewarding rebellious children – a mark of the Kingdom of God it seems, is extravagance.

            And when Jesus says that in the Kingdom of God the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, we say “Really? Nobody would do anything that stupid where I come from.”  I mean, if you were a shepherd, you were paid almost nothing; most of the time you were cold and hungry and lonely.  You would have been scorned and ostracized by polite society, someone whose life was considered so worthless that you were expected to give it up to save one sheep out of a hundred.  And there you are, alone in the wilderness with no witnesses to whether or not you actually try to look for a wandering sheep, or if you really stay awake when the wolves are about.  In the real world, do you really think that any shepherd is going to risk his life when nobody’s looking – to take on the wolves and die - for one lousy sheep?  Not in my world.  But Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world, and in his kingdom the model shepherd does die for the sheep; and when his world invades our world the model shepherd not only lays down his life, he takes it up again.[5]

            In the Kingdom of God, Jesus is at one and the same time shepherd and sheep; the sacrificial lamb who responds to his Father’s voice, and the voice of the good shepherd to whom we respond.  He is the one who took on the same worthless life that we were leading – who became one of the flock -  and then laid down his supremely worthy life in order to save us and make us worthy, righteous and holy; and he took his life up again and returned to us, never to let us go.  He has not lost anyone the Father has given to him.[6] 

             Jesus said that he had a relationship with his sheep – and they could recognize his special call.  When I was growing up there were six children in my father’s large house.  In an effort to cut down on some of the yelling when we were coming and going, my father had all of us choose a distinctive whistle.  Whoever was coming in or going out would whistle their own notes loudly at the door – or like a party line with its own ring, our parents could whistle our notes when they wanted us – and we could all keep track of each other.

            It was the same with shepherds – when the flocks were comingled inside a communal pen for the night, there was no way the shepherds could sort out the sheep in the morning.  So each shepherd had a call that was special only to him, and when the gate was opened, the sheep belonging to that shepherd would sort themselves out. 

            The longer we follow Jesus, the more familiar we become with his voice, and the quicker we are to recognize his call.  The sheep hear and follow, and if they hear, it implies that they are also alert and listening.

            Then there is the matter of the “other sheep that are not of this pen.”  John makes it clear that the work of gathering the flock belongs to Jesus and to God, and we are to provide a space where all the sheep are welcome.[7]  The Pharisees hadn’t welcomed all of God’s sheep, especially the gentiles, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the blind, the lame, the eunuchs.  They wanted a standardized breed – only righteous, religiously pure Jews.  Earlier, in John 9, they’d wanted to exclude the blind man that Jesus had healed; others were afraid of being excommunicated – barred from temple worship – sentenced to damnation, really, since to be barred from the temple meant being unable to make a sacrifice for their sins - because they’d become disciples of Jesus.   

            Even today the church too often sees itself as the boundary-setter, the gate-keepers of the Kingdom of God.  Some evangelize with a heavy hand – “turn or burn” – and some people are so turned off that instead of turning to God, they turn away.  They don’t recognize the Shepherd’s voice in that. 

            Some religious communities say they welcome everyone, but after everyone comes inside the pen, they begin to sort out “us” and “them” – and erect obstacles to baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  Some make their version of speculation about the Last Days a litmus test for admission to their fellowship, or even a reason for withdrawing from a fellowship.

            Others make certain gifts of the Spirit a dividing line for “who’s in and who’s out.” For generations denominations with Presbyterian roots have worshipped at the feet of education, barring people from ministry who either lack specialized higher education.  There is an old joke that is used to explain why there are so few Presbyterian churches west of the Mississippi: “The Methodists went west, and the Presbyterians went to Princeton.” 

            It is not our job to make ourselves one flock, by setting arbitrary boundaries and limits on our communities as though we know what God wants. It is the shepherd’s job to lead us and train us how he wants us.  If you get enough sheep in any one place, you are going to have some sheep that are learning at a slower pace than some others are.  Some of them will be better at some things – like say, giving to the poor – and not so good at other things, like maybe swearing.  Then, of course, there’s a lot of work for God to do straightening out the mess we’ve made of our sex lives, and certainly that isn’t going to be accomplished anywhere outside the church!

            The Holy Spirit is a better guardian of the Truth – a better provider for the sheep, a better protector of the flock – than any human pastor or elder, who are really just sheep among the sheep.  If anything, the pastors and elders among us are mostly charged with paying better attention – listening harder for the voice of the shepherd and being among the first to move out when he calls.

            In the last three weeks, the lectionary has concentrated on the resurrection and bodily appearances of Jesus.  But Easter only began with Jesus’ resurrection and appearances. Easter continues through the life of the church as people live their human lives differently, with an attitude of listening to the Lord’s voice through preaching, the sacraments, and the words of forgiveness that we hear in worship each week. 

            There are Christians who believe they can hear the voice of the Lord all on their own – and while that may be true occasionally, for some people at certain times that suits God’s purposes – but for daily life in the Kingdom that is not how God has it set it up for us.  If we are paying attention and listening for God, we have to be gathered with the flock – we have to be present in worship in order to hear the voice of God over the din of the culture, or we will find out that the Pharisees were not that far off the mark in their efforts to try to keep the pagan cultures from infecting the holy people of God.     

            Another way we listen for the shepherd’s voice is to listen each other.  The Holy Spirit dwelling in each one of us often has a word from God for us from others, or from us to others.  We do well to listen to the voices of Christians at work in law firms and cattle ranches, retail salespeople, school teachers and construction workers, police- and firemen, and nurses on night duty to get a feel for what it means in our time that the shepherding Christ has his other sheep in all of these places, including the watering holes where they gather for TGIF.

             I know of a congregation where a large number of people have come to faith because the church’s praise band played in bars on Friday and Saturday nights, and then got into conversations with people about where they’d be playing on Sunday morning.  There are some seriously faithful people in those places who know that there are some wandering sheep in those ravines.

            Like Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs searches the country for people who aren’t afraid to get dirty – the people who make civilized life possible for the rest of us – the Holy Spirit of God searches for his sheep so we can live out our lives doing the kinds of things that make life in the Kingdom of God a possibility for the whole world. 

            And if you’re already part of the sheepfold – get ready to get dirty!

            Alleluia, Christ is risen, indeed.  Amen.