The Good Shepherd

"I am the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays his life down for his sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takesa it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”
John 10:11-18

I felt a real glow of warmth in my heart, maybe like to what Wesley felt when he felt the warming in his heart, as I prepared my sermon on the above text and the other texts from the Revised Lectionary inlcuding Psalm 23. This was not the first time for me, but it never fails to surprise me. Thinking and reflecting on the power of this passage creates extraordinary images of the greatness of God's love for humanity. Jesus assuming the authority from the Father, also assumes his love, and thus so willingly accept the role of the Good Shepherd, not for his benefit as the shepherds in Ezekiel 34, but as the loving, living Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit willing to give all for the sake of the sheep.

Unless we can come to walk in Christ, I don't know if we can fully understand the power of this image of God. However, I find that it is what draws me most to the God I adore in worship and praise. So it is what the image of Christ that I want most for others to see of Christ. But we only can demonstrate this as the body of Christ, in the form of the church, when we accept or assume the role of Good Shepherd while in Christ. Then we will act on the world for its benefit, not to make ourselves fat off of the world.

Radical Hope

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who by his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" 1 Peter 1:3

I like the use of "living hope" by Peter. This is what I think of as radical hope, hope that does not die, but is living. And since it is built on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, it is eternal.

Radical hope, however, does not blind you to the realities of the world. Currently, the world is facing an economic collapse of a scale that it hasn't seen for many decades. Radical hope, says that a transformed people in Christ will move beyond the greed and distrust that created the economic boom and its eventual destruction, to a regenerative economy built on the commandments of God for love in God and love of others.

Radical hope doesn't blind me to the realities of Trinity Asbury UMC where I will be serving as an interim pastor for the next three months. Two months ago, two local congregations were merged and in the past week they lost their pastor due to illness. Yet, living, radical hope tells me that they are not chained to the past, that the transformative work of God, through Jesus Christ, is at hand in them and around them.

I think that Darrell Guder defines it best: ""Living hope," then—to risk a definition—is to confidently maneuver the passage between the certainty of Easter and the certainty of the final Day of Jesus Christ. God gives us living hope to enter each day free of the burden of the day before. We are not enslaved to cause and effect. The past does not hold us. Our lives take shape in the reliability of God's promises."

Be careful what you pray for

I meet with a district superintendent and a lay leader of a United Methodist congregation today to discuss an interim appointment as a local pastor. Since becoming a certified candidate in the ordained elder, I have been anxious over obtaining a local pastor position in the Winchester District. Now I'm provided with this unusual opportunity to move forward in God's story. Amazing!

But this is God's story, and now I need to fit into that story with God's congregation at Trinty Asbury UMC.