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Weekly sermons from the traditional and contemporary worship services at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas. Rooted in Scripture and the Anglican tradition, these messages explore how the gospel speaks to our faith, our everyday lives and the world around us.
I have a question. How many of you have spent any time at all with sheep?
I mean, real live sheep out in a field.
A while ago, the church where I was serving wanted to do a whole series of
studies for children, and of course, for their adults too, on various heroes in the
life of the church. And over the course of about five to six weeks, different
people would just appear at announcement time, fully garbed in
costume, come up to the center, and for five minutes describe who they
were and why they were considered important in the life of the church.
Everybody from the Apostle Peter to St. Claire, sort of you name it.
I got asked to be Francis.
So I went to a local Franciscan monastery and asked if I could borrow one of their
garbs, and they were very happy to lend to me.
And then I thought,
"I need a sheep."
And I started calling around to see if I could find one, and sure enough, there was
somebody actually in our congregation who was a farmer who in fact had sheep.
So he promised to bring me that sheep on Sunday morning.
It was tiny, which was actually perfect.
So I come up the aisle holding the sheep.
Of course, everybody goes, "Aw," just like that.
And I talk a little bit about Francis and what all of this might mean in terms of
particularly Francis's understanding of who we are as Christians, as God's
sheep.
And then we were to bring the sheep home, and then he would come and pick it up.
So all of that was fine until we had left the sheep in our backyard.
We had to get the sheep.
Sheep are fast.
We didn't have a big, big backyard, but it was probably about the size
of this room here, and it backed up to pasture.
There were Brahma bulls usually on the other side of the fence.
So here we are, without exaggeration, dive-bombing to grab
the sheep. And it took us all, but maybe all of us, I mean, me,
Laura Lee, the kids. Can you imagine Laura Lee dive-bombing for a sheep?
She did it. So did I. And we finally got the sheep.
It was picked up, and it was taken out.
And then not long ago, Laura Lee and I watch a show on Prime, which
is about
a farm. Same thing happened. They want to corral the sheep to try to just give them
their shots. I mean, this is a vet. Sheep do not want to go into the very corral
where they're going to get the shots.
All of this matters when Jesus describes himself as the
shepherd and we being the sheep.
Because not unlike sheep, we actually don't like
somebody stepping in our way and forbidding us from doing and going where we want
to do and where we want to go. So, and if we could have the shot, please, that's on
the-- There we go.
The reason this is up here,
you have to think about this for a minute because this applies directly to the
lessons today. I'm not just sort of shooting off about it, is that what Jesus
has done in this picture is that he has gone to rescue a sheep.
Why did he need to rescue the sheep?
Because the sheep want to go where they want to go.
They don't necessarily want to follow the voice of their shepherd, and in fact,
they'd rather go their own way. And sure enough, one of the sheep, just like my
backyard, just like the sheep on the show that we watch on TV, were hightailing it
entirely in the other direction. Jesus finally
gets the sheep, and the reason he's holding the sheep like this is so that
the sheep do not get away. There's absolutely nothing
picturesque about this picture, except it has a lot to do with the
determination of Jesus to make sure that he rescues.
Because if that sheep is left to its own devices, then there are all kinds of wild
animals out there that would love to have that sheep for dinner.
And so Jesus finds a way to be able to get the sheep and carry it back.
Now, you also need to know that by the time that Jesus rescues a sheep like that,
that sheep is filthy.
It's been everywhere.
And therefore, for Jesus to literally pick up the sheep and put the back of his
neck against the chest and lower parts of the sheep means that Jesus is in
contact on the back of his neck with some of the dirtiest parts of that sheep.
That's how tenacious Jesus is in
terms of his love for us.
And that, in fact, even though we don't always feel it, that
position right there of where the sheep is and where Jesus is, is actually what
is positionally true for us right now.
Because left to our own devices, we would easily be
distracted by you fill in the blank, whatever it might be.
It could be something on your phone.
It could be another interest that you have that would literally try to draw you
away from the love of God, the desires that are inside of our heart.
We are a very confused mixture inside as human beings.
But in that place, then what Paul writes in the epistle lesson,
"Let love be genuine," or actually what the word is in the Greek is,
"Let your love be authentic."
That position is what makes that possible.
Meaning for you and me,
as I begin to yield to him
in a very clear
way, what that does is actually cement my
sense that I am being held by him,
and that I can trust his grip
to lead me into the safest of pastures, to take me into the places
where his love literally flows into me and allows me to be the instrument
that he uses to make a difference in the lives of other people.
If that's not true, then the Romans lesson is not possible.
We can't do it. And it gives sense to the harsh
rebuke that Jesus gives to Peter when Jesus is telling them
about, "I need to tell you what we're going to be facing and what is going to
happen to me," and that he is going to suffer and die and be raised from the dead.
Jesus loves Peter.
He's his friend. He understands that what Jesus is describing is
torture,
humiliation,
the very things you would never want to ever happen to someone that you know, and
in a way that was brutal. Of course, if he was given into the hands of those
leaders, Jesus would die. Capital punishment would be enforced.
So of course, Peter would say, "God forbid, this can't happen to you."
And what Jesus' rebuke is, "You have your mind on earthly things.
You're thinking how a human being would think.
You need to be thinking about the ways of God."
And the crux of that is that you and I have all kinds of ideas about what we
all should or should not be doing. But the question is, does it look
like that And that becomes in some ways, the definition, the
expression, and even the model of what love in Christ Jesus is and
how it gets expressed. It comes from a life that is doing what it can to
literally yield to that position of being submitted to Jesus Christ.
And out of that submission, the power flowing in and through me because it is his
love, not my own, and I'm doing my best to step into positions that quite frankly
may be his will, but really are way above my pay grade sometimes in terms of my own
capacity to be available with people.
I want, and it's true for all of us, I'd like a convenient life.
Doesn't always have to be easy, but it has to be convenient, meaning things that I
want to do.
And yet what God has for me is not a convenient life,
but an obedient life. I read one commentator who put it this way.
He said, "What the gospel shows us in the way that Jesus rebukes Peter,
and the challenge that it offers us, is that we have to be willing to give up
when it comes to God, the will to lead, and instead
take on the will to obey."
That's the heart of the matter.
But as all of this says us, that for us is our act of love.
Our act of love for the Savior who laid down his life for us
is our willingness to say yes to him, even when it is
inconvenient, when it stretches us, when it puts us in places where we don't want
to go. Why? Because the fruit of it is worth it.
We're invited into places that may be profoundly challenging or very difficult, but
God desires people who are willing to enter into those places because that's when
the power and the life gets released.
That's where people are touched with his love, when we are literally brought to the
end of our own understanding and are willing to step forward anyway and say
yes to him because we have that sense that is what is asked of us.
Grant us, we pray, and I call it the love of your name.
And what is that? That the love is saying, "Yes, Lord.
Yes, Lord, because I know you hold me tightly
around your neck, and that the dirt on my body is not inconvenient to you, and you
don't mind that I'm right next to you in all of the humanness of who
I am. That as it were the dirtiest and smelliest parts of my life are not something
that you don't know about, and you hold me tightly right here on the neck,
leading me into the places where you want me to go." And even though a part of me
says, "Oh, God, I wish this wasn't happening," there is also a part of you that
says, "That this, in fact, is the safest place to be.
This is, in fact, where the grace is.
This is, in fact, the place where he is expressing his
love for me, that I get to be a part of what it is that he is doing, and
that he wants to take me with him, as it were, on his adventures." And will it be
costly? The answer is yes,
without hesitation.
One of the passages here, the way they're woven together is very clear that the way
Jesus' love gets expressed through us and in us is sometimes
we are asked to join with him in his suffering.
The scripture in no way shies away from that.
But that's where the love of God gets expressed.
It's not a convenient life at all, but it
is the best life of all.
So today,
Lord, how may I serve you?
Help me keep an eye on what's happening in the people around me, so that I notice.
Servanthood often begins just by noticing.
Not wrapped up in everything that I need to get done or want to get done, but that
I'm willing to kind of, Lord, help me to lift up my head and see other people,
because often I just don't.
So if I see somebody in need, immediately inside of me is, "How can I help?"
And that becomes the thing I keep asking, rather than, "God, watch out for them.
I've got things I've got to do." And a willingness to enter into, as I said, this
kind of inconvenient existence, so that in the end,
God uses you. God uses you to do
things that you never thought possible or imaginable.
Grant us the love of your name.
And that is a life expressed in noticing,
saying yes, and being willing to live the
inconvenient life for his glory.
Amen.