The Good Shepherd

Easter 4                                                                                                   25 April 2010

John 10

This is Good Shepherd Sunday, a beloved Sunday in the Episcopal calendar.  Almost every Church I know that has stained glass windows has a Good Shepherd window; many dioceses have a Good Shepherd Church.  In our three year Gospel cycle all the lessons for Easter 4 are taken from John 10—where Jesus talks extensively about his role as the Good Shepherd of his flock.  Today our lesson is very short and cryptic, so we must refer to what Jesus said earlier in the chapter if we are to make sense of the whole idea.  I have preached a lot about this theme in the past, but today I am taking a different direction.  I want to think with you about Jesus as pastor and what the nature of pastoral ministry is.  But first, we must lay the groundwork for it.

Jesus could not have talked about himself as the Good Shepherd unless the people to whom he spoke had some idea of what being God’s flock was all about.  There are many scripture passages to which I could refer, but let me offer this verse from Psalm 100: “Know this: The Lord himself is God; he himself has made us, and we are his; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.”  To be God’s sheep, God’s flock, then, is to be his chosen people, the people he has made to be his own and to carry out his mission in the world.  We are not thinking of one little lamb at a time carried home on the shepherd’s shoulder: we are thinking of the priestly kingdom of God’s covenanted people.  Jesus claims to be the Good Shepherd of this people.  That is, he claims to be the one who has the right to rule over and form the nature of God’s covenanted people.  Earlier in John 10 he says, “All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them.”  I think it is likely that he was not talking about leaders like David or Moses here, but of the recent pretenders to the role of Messiah.  Still, it is a strong claim: he is the one who has the right to give the sheep their identity, to lead them out to pasture, to protect them, and to expect that the sheep will know him and follow him. 

To be one of God’s sheep then, to count Jesus as one’s own Good Shepherd, is to accept that one has taken his or her place within God’s chosen and covenanted community, with all of the ideas of mission and vocation that are associated with it.  Once we have this clear, then what does it mean to recognize Jesus as our Good Shepherd?  What is a shepherd supposed to do for the flock?  Well, there is an interesting association of words in one of the letters of Peter:  “For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” [1 Peter 2:25]  The word for shepherd in Greek comes into Latin as pastor.  Not only in Latin but in other languages, pastor is the word for shepherd as well as for a leader in the church.  The word translated guardian is often translated as overseer and is the word episcopos from which we get the word Episcopal which has to do with Bishops.  So the phrase means that all of the covenanted community of God has been gathered up now under the pastoral oversight of Jesus—who is our shepherd and bishop. 

So, I would claim, and many others would support this statement: in the Church, there is only one pastoral ministry: the ministry of Jesus himself.  All who are in any sense pastors in addition to the Good Shepherd, the chief Pastor, are only so by sharing to some extent in Jesus’ own pastoral ministry, as the one and only Good Shepherd—that is, the ideal or the perfect Shepherd, promised by God.  Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel foresaw this day.   “I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the LORD.” [Jeremiah 23:2] “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.” [Ezekiel 34.15] “I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd.” [Ezekiel 34.23]  In Jesus, God himself appears in person amongst his sheep, to lead them and to be their pastor.

So how does Jesus exercise this pastoral, this shepherding, ministry?  It is probably more complicated than this, but it seems to me that there are two main ways: first, he shows his sheep, the covenanted community of God, what kind of life it is to live by his own example and his own teaching.  By living this life, the community becomes what it is meant to be and engages in its mission.  That is, the community of God is formed in order to demonstrate to the world the nature of life lived in reconciliation with God and neighbor and so to model the life of the world to come under present conditions.  It is the conviction of all who live the life of Christ in the Church that this is human life at its most complete and fulfilling.  As we live as Jesus’ showed us, we discover our true selves.  This is an extraordinary claim, but the only one that makes sense of Jesus’ life and teaching.  He showed us this life and demonstrated it by word and deed.  He is our pastor, our shepherd, who leads us in the life to which we are called.

Second, he offers us a share in his own life so that we can actually live that way.  We may be the Sheep of God’s pasture, but we are not able of ourselves to live like God’s own people.  We must be empowered by the Spirit of our chief Pastor, who makes the resurrected life of Jesus available to us in every circumstance.  Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said that his yoke was easy and his burden light.  It is not that the Christian life is not challenging or difficult, but that the resources of grace we need to live it are readily available to us.

In these two ways, Jesus exercises the oversight of his flock: he teaches them what to do and how to live and enables them to do it and live it.  This is how he is our Good Shepherd, our chief Pastor.  And this is how all of those subordinate pastors and associate shepherds do their work as well.  Pastoral ministry means oversight, and the oversight pastors give to the flock of God over which they have been placed by their ordination is to always keep the covenanted community of God focused on Jesus.  Jesus’ junior shepherds and assistant pastors have as their main task to point people in the Churches always to  Jesus’ own life and example and teaching and to lead them into the kind of relationship with Him for themselves by which they can participate in Jesus’ own life. 

We have often used the phrase “pastoral ministry” to mean something a little different, but in reality it is the same thing.  Pastoral ministry is often thought of as the one-on-one meeting of the pastor with a person who is sick, troubled, in the hospital, needing counsel, or preparation for baptism or marriage, and so on.  These things are contained within pastoral ministry and are not different from the other kind of pastoral work just outlined.  In everything, true pastoral ministry seeks to point people to Jesus—to his example and teaching and the grace of his life made available to us in our present circumstances.  The main pastoral work in any community is this latter pointing of everything towards Jesus.  It is a ministry shared by all of the leaders in a community, as that wonderful section from our catechism makes clear:

Q. Who are the ministers of the Church?

A. The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.

Q. What is the ministry of the laity?

A. The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.

But this is also the reason why certain people are ordained: they promise in their ordination vows to maintain this focus on Jesus—in their own lives and in the congregations entrusted to their oversight. 

Q. What is the ministry of a priest or presbyter?

A. The ministry of a priest is to represent Christ and his

Church, particularly as pastor to the people; to share with the bishop in the overseeing of the Church; to proclaim the Gospel; to administer the sacraments; and

to bless and declare pardon in the name of God.

You would think that this would be obvious, but often church life gets carried away into other things.  And of course, there are many useful things that can be done by a Christian community.  But the main thing is to keep focused on Jesus—to let him exercise his pastoral ministry amongst us.

You may not be surprised to hear once again, that we have a model for this.  You all remember the Christian Life Model with its attempt to get at the health of our spiritual life, both as individuals and as a community, by looking at Worship, Doctrine, and Action.  Each of those three elements is composed of three more:  Worship is comprised of Mass, Office, Personal Prayer; Doctrine, of Scripture, Reason, and Tradition; Action of Stewardship, Evangelism, and Service.  What we sometimes leave out in our presentations is a fourth triangle, the element of Oversight, which is directed towards the whole of the Christian Life itself.  The job of oversight is to keep all of the elements of the Christian Life in balance.  In the life of an individual person, this oversight function is something he or she has to do, perhaps with the help of a spiritual director.  In a parish, Oversight—that is, Pastoral Ministry—is the job of the priest or bishop and the lay leaders of a parish. There are three elements of Oversight: first is, Spiritual Direction.  This means that the job of pastoral leadership, especially from the priest, is to keep the focus of the community on Jesus.  After everything I just said, that ought to be pretty clear. 

The next element is what the makers of the model call Transformational Community.  This refers to the fact, as I mentioned above, that the Christian community is the covenanted community of God—it exists in this world as a missional organization.  As one of the developers of this model put it: “the parish needs to know what it is if it is to know what to expect of itself in life and ministry.  It is the People of God, the Body of Christ, an extension of the Incarnation within a particular space and time.  It is not a club, not a corporation, or a social reform movement.  It is not held together by sameness —sameness of race, nationality, sex, politics, or class.  Its life does not depend on success, society’s approval, internal agreement, being clear about its goals or reforming its structures.  Its members do not all have to participate in every activity, personally know everyone else, or understand, be comfortable with, or like everyone in the congregation.  The parish is held together by and in Christ.  Its life depends on Christ. It is the Holy Catholic Church.  The church does not exist to meet our needs but to carry out Christ’s mission.  In practice, this means seeking ways to focus the parish and each group in it on the mission of the Church—the whole Church of Christ.”  [Robert Gallagher, Power from on High]  Or we might say, the chief question for church members to answer is not, What am I getting from my participation here? But what is God getting from my participation here?

Finally, there is the task of Administration, or Institutional Management.  This is the carrying out of institutional chores as ways of reflecting in the order of the parish the holy order of Christ.  It is to take seriously the ways of organizational development and making sure to utilize all of the gifts of the Body of Christ in this place.  These are the three elements of Pastoral Ministry, the Ministry of Oversight, in a parish—in a diocese, too.  All elements of leadership are engaged in making sure that Jesus is at the center and that all focus is on Him and that his holy order manifests itself in everything we do.  It is a tall order, and we may not always get it right—in fact, we surely will fail from time to time.  But we know how to deal with our failures, too: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” [Ephesians 4:32—5:2]

It is not always easy to live in the Church, to be a part of a local congregation, to carry on the covenanted life with God in a place.  It takes discipline and a willingness to be converted, as we saw last week.  But there is simply no other organization to which we can belong that has such a claim to make for its own life.  There is no other group of people charged as we are with demonstrating to the world the life of the age to come, what God’s intentions were from the beginning, offering a model  for living together in love and transcending the conflicts of class and race and gender.  As Paul put it: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” 

Clergy sometimes find it easier to do other things than keep the focus on Jesus.  Congregations sometimes find it easier to have their clergy do such things and do such things themselves.  But there is no other way that is genuine and true—no other pastoral ministry in the Church than that of Jesus—whose ideal pastoral ministry we celebrate on this day, the Day of our Good Shepherd.