WE HAVE A SHEPHERD!
(Preached on Sunday, November 23, 2008)
For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. -Ezekial 34:11
While all birth is traumatic, that of a baby giraffe seems especially so. At birth the newborn calf falls ten feet from its mother=s womb and lands on its back on the ground. Within seconds, it rolls to an upright position with legs tucked under its body. From this position the giraffe considers the world for the first time, shaking off the last vestiges of the birthing fluid from its eyes and ears. The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look and then positions herself directly over her calf. She waits for about a minute and then she does the most unreasonable thing. She swings her long, pendulous leg outward and kicks her baby, so that it is sent sprawling head over heels.
When it doesn=t get up, the violent process is repeated over and over again. The struggle to rise is momentous. As the baby calf grows tired, the mother kicks it again to stimulate its efforts. Finally, the calf stands for the first time on its wobbly legs. Then the mother giraffe does the most remarkable thing. She kicks it off its feet again. Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible in order to stay with the herd, where there is safety. Lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs all enjoy young giraffe, and they=d get it, too, if the mother didn=t teach her calf to get up quickly and get with it.
Perhaps you are feeling like that new born giraffe these days? UCC pastor, lecturer and author, Anthony Robinson is certainly feeling that way. He said it was the Athird kick@ that really got his attention. The first one was the 40 percent drop in the value of our retirement savings. (That certainly grabbed my attention!) The second bell tolled for him when he was called by a new seminary where he was scheduled to present a lecture series. The caller, the Seminary=s President, was very sorry, but they had to cancel the lecture series, since they were closing their doors at the end of the present term. But the third time was the 25% salary reduction he received when the Canadian dollar suddenly lost 25% of its value against the US dollar. When he went to teach at the Canadian Seminary for this year the two currencies were equal in value. That one really hurt. AThat=s not fair,@ he muttered to himself. AI don=t deserve this.@ Feeling like that at all recently? I imagine if we could hear the thoughts of the baby giraffe they would be very similar: AHey, I just got here. What did I do to deserve all this punishment?!?@
What is positive for the giraffe, and what might help us too, is the knowledge that there is someone present who is going through the tough times with us, someone who cares and is looking out for our best interests. The mother giraffe is present, looking out for her baby. The prophet Ezekial reminds us that we have someone looking out for us, too.
Ezekial was speaking to a demoralized people. They had been kicked while down and knocked off their feet just when they were getting back up. They had been trampled on by the surrounding nations. They had been conquered and turned into a colony without self-determination. Then, when their rulers messed up, they were re-invaded and totally trashed. Their temple was now destroyed, and almost everyone carried off into exile, forced to live as aliens in a foreign land. These people were sure that God no longer cared for them.
So, the prophet who had only had harsh words of doom and gloom for the people, changes his tune. Now he speaks words of reassurance. God loves them. God is with them. God has not forsaken them. It was their leader=s, their human shepherds, who had messed up. It was their greed, their bad leadership, their selfishness and self-centeredness and arrogance and self-aggrandizing egos, that got them into this mess. Their leaders, who were supposed to be their shepherds on God=s behalf, had been lousy shepherds. But God was still with them and God was now going to take over the care for them that their leaders should have been exercising. God was going to be the shepherd they needed.
Now you may struggle a bit with the idea of having a shepherd. Many modern, technological, urban people struggle with relating to this pastoral, rural imagery. But think about the realities of life for a moment. While we like to think of ourselves as captains of our own fate, masters of our destinies, the current economic instability has demonstrated how much of life is outside of our control. For all of us, to some extent our fate is in the hands of someone else: a manager, supervisor, CEO, board of directors; a coach, a sergeant, a military officer; a mayor, a governor, a President. What we need from such people is good judgment and justice, intelligence and integrity. Clearly that is not what we have been receiving.
Good leadership is what Ezekial is talking about, more than flocks and herds in some distant rural culture. And he presses home the point that Israel=s God is a better ruler and guide in human affairs than any human ruler. For this God is sensitive to human weariness; to losing one=s way; to woundedness and confusion. The relationship of sheep to shepherd is a relationship of vulnerability on the part of the sheep and responsibility by the shepherd. It is a relationship of dependence, protection and trust. Trust, really, is the focus. But when life beats down upon us, kicking us and knocking us off our feet, it is very difficult to trust that God still loves us and is still with us, caring for us.
Which is exactly why we need the church. Trust is really more of a communal affair than a private action. It is as we risk leaning on one another that we learn to trust. It is as we risk, and share our deepest self with another person, our fear, our joys, our dreams; as we are listened to and not judged, but affirmed; as this other person shares with us as well, that we learn we can trust each other with the things of ultimate importance in our lives. This sort of community where we can risk who we are openly and be accepted and supported brings healing and strengthening to our souls. It leads to our learning to let go and rely on those we have learned to trust. And this then helps us become a little more able to trust God. The community can also help us through the tough times when we struggle to trust by trusting for us.
Times like we face today are especially good times to dust off our spiritual practices and spend more time in prayer. Prayer is not just a time to dump our problems at God=s feet, but also a time to listen to the call from God to be a servant. A time to examine our conscience for life lessons. A time to find the ability to forgive others as we have been forgiven. There is a lot of blame being thrown around these days, as people debate how it was that we got into this mess. But more than finding blame, this is a time to pray for wisdom and for understanding. It is a time to pray for people facing job loss, for people whose retirement plans are suddenly up in the air, and for people whose bills are piling up. It is a time to pray for those whose moods go up and down with the stock market, which these days makes for a very long bad mood. We may not be able to fix the American economy ourselves, by we can pray for it.
As we pray, we will discover that we are turning our attention more and more to the one true Shepherd who never lets us down but is always there to gather us in, bind our wounds, and assures us that tomorrow there will be another day, another sunrise, new pastures and fresh water. There are many ways we can learn to trust. There are many ways we can experience the presence of God in our lives. There are many ways we come to know the presence of the Shepherd. But most important to remember is the truth that always, ALWAYS, the Shepherd knows our names; the Shepherd knows us; the Shepherd trusts us; AND MOST IMPORTANT, THE SHEPHERD IS ALWAYS WITH US, IN OUR MIDST. That is something for which we can truly give thanks!