Last Sunday before Advent
Service Date:
23 November, 2008
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Have you come across Wallace and Grommit, the inventor who loves cheese and the clever dog who lives with him, the plasticine heroes of several animated films including The Wrong Trousers? In that case you may know another character made by the same animator, Nick Park of Aardman Animations: a sheep called Shaun, who now has his own series on the BBC. If not, I'd like to introduce you to Shaun and some of his friends.
Shaun has an inquisitive, mischievous nature which leads him into tricky situations from which he usually recovers. He is popular, and is a natural leader. He is also a moral character who will try to "make things right".
Bitzer is the long-suffering sheepdog. Bitzer is friendly with Shaun, but not to the extent of abandoning his duties, though he will do anything if he is offered a game of "Fetch".
His dimmish owner, the Farmer, never notices the flock is anything but normal, and Bitzer tries to keep it that way.
The Flock are typical sheep, content to spend the day chewing the cud until Shaun gets an idea into his head, when they will easily follow his lead. They are an enthusiastic audience for Shaun, but are clumsy, easily frightened and not bright, which can get in Shaun's way when he has an idea.
Shirley is so much bigger than the other sheep that she has to be pushed (or rolled) from place to place and can eat just about anything. She is useful as a trampoline or a battering ram and her fleece is a great hiding place for unlikely items--even an ideal food store.
Timmy is an adorable baby lamb who sucks a dummy and gets into dangerous situations. He loves his teddy bear and will cry if he is without him. He likes pizza, and only has one tooth.
So now you know some of the cast - and if you've not seen them in action, I do recommend you tune in to the BBC series - let's hear what Shaun the sheep might make of the story we've just heard in our first reading from Ezekiel.
Have you come across Wallace and Grommit, the inventor who loves cheese and the clever dog who lives with him, the plasticine heroes of several animated films including The Wrong Trousers? In that case you may know another character made by the same animator, Nick Park of Aardman Animations: a sheep called Shaun, who now has his own series on the BBC. If not, I'd like to introduce you to Shaun and some of his friends.
Shaun has an inquisitive, mischievous nature which leads him into tricky situations from which he usually recovers. He is popular, and is a natural leader. He is also a moral character who will try to "make things right".
Bitzer is the long-suffering sheepdog. Bitzer is friendly with Shaun, but not to the extent of abandoning his duties, though he will do anything if he is offered a game of "Fetch".
His dimmish owner, the Farmer, never notices the flock is anything but normal, and Bitzer tries to keep it that way.
The Flock are typical sheep, content to spend the day chewing the cud until Shaun gets an idea into his head, when they will easily follow his lead. They are an enthusiastic audience for Shaun, but are clumsy, easily frightened and not bright, which can get in Shaun's way when he has an idea.
Shirley is so much bigger than the other sheep that she has to be pushed (or rolled) from place to place and can eat just about anything. She is useful as a trampoline or a battering ram and her fleece is a great hiding place for unlikely items--even an ideal food store.
Timmy is an adorable baby lamb who sucks a dummy and gets into dangerous situations. He loves his teddy bear and will cry if he is without him. He likes pizza, and only has one tooth.
So now you know some of the cast - and if you've not seen them in action, I do recommend you tune in to the BBC series - let's hear what Shaun the sheep might make of the story we've just heard in our first reading from Ezekiel.
This shepherd called the Lord - he sounds a lot brighter than our farmer. And it sounds as if he cares about his sheep, too - he's more like my friend Bitzer the dog, who's always trying to keep us safe.
I really do sympathise with the Lord about trying to collect the sheep together when they've been scattered. They are my mates, but I have to say they're not the cleverest, and they do tend to panic if something strange happens and head for the hills. Then it takes ages to get us all back into the field again, even with Bitzer and me working our tails off, so the Lord must be really patient.
But there's one thing worries me about this story. Why are the sheep in his flock fighting each other? There's only one really fat sheep in our flock, Shirley, and she wouldn't do anything to hurt little Timmy - well, not unless she sat on him and didn't notice, and then we'd all push her off again. Sheep are meant to stick together - there's enough grass for us all in the field.
I do wonder what this man David's going to be like as a shepherd. I hope he can look after those sheep and keep them safe, but he'll need someone like me to help him. A sheepdog just doesn't know the flock the way I do.
Shaun the sheep is so good at looking after the other sheep who've gone astray because he is a sheep himself - he knows how they think, what they want out of life. But Shaun's also a sheep with as much brains and courage as a human being - in fact, he's a lot cleverer than his dozy human owner.
Ezekiel was looking forward to a time when God would send a good leader to look after the people of Israel, who'd gone astray and ended up scattered through a foreign country. He looked back to King David, the best king Israel ever had, and believed God would send someone like David to put things right. But we know God did even better than that. When Jesus was born, God became human - seeing things from our point of view, but able to love the whole world the way only God can love, with no end to it. So just as Shaun, the sheep who's as clever as a human, looks after his flock like a good shepherd would, Jesus, the human who's God's child too, is our king, the one who looks after us and leads us to God.
Hymns:
R&S 387 was written in 1769 for the opening of a prayer room in the Prayer Meeting at Olney which John Newton, the former slave trader and writer of ‘Amazing Grace', had established. The tune Abridge by Isaac Smith is better known in Scotland as St Stephen.R&S 373 is a much more recent hymn, words and tune by Patrick Appleford being first published in Thirty 20th-Century Hymn Tunes of 1960. It was originally written for use in a Communion service, but remembering Jesus' life is something that Christians can profitably do in many different ways.
R&S 265 was first published in the 1930 Baptist book Hymns for Today, already paired with the Londonderry Air, the Irish folktune more commonly partnered with the song ‘Danny Boy'. According to the Companion to Rejoice and Sing, it provides ‘a much-needed middle ground between objective hymns of praise and introspective prayers of penitence and need'.
R&S 262 has been compiled from the work of Matthew Bridges and Godfrey Thring, both Victorian Anglicans though one more Catholic than the other. The tune Diademata (‘Crowns' in Latin) was composed for Bridges' original hymn.
Sermon:
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 100; Matthew 25:31-46; Ephesians 1:15-23What's the difference between the sheep and the goats in Jesus' story this morning? Looking back (because at the time it can't have been obvious), while the goats saw need and let it pass them by - that's all it was; they didn't even actively do harm - the sheep saw that their actions could make a difference, and decided to follow that insight through, whether it was giving food or drink, clothes or attention or welcome. And that emphasis on action, on doing good things for others, can be one of the ways we expect and, indeed, one of the ways you are continually told from the pulpit, to live out our Christian lives.
Do to others as you would like them to do to you, Jesus tells his friends in Matthew's Gospel, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
That's all well and good. Giving loving service to others is not only one of God's commands, but also something that lifts us out of our own worries, and can give us a wider picture of the world as well as a sense of God's presence. Yet focussing on our activity as a sign of our contact with God has a downside too. For if, as Paul tells us Jesus said, it is more blessed to give than to receive, what about those who receive? What about people who are in need of food, clothes, attention and so on? Not only may they have an expectation of gratitude placed upon them, for supplying a lack, that may or may not have been their fault, but was certainly not their choice; but there's a bigger problem: how can they do what God wants if they are perpetually helped, perpetually one-down, perpetually done to rather than doing?
This is not just a theoretical question. It is something I see people wrestling with week by week here in St Andrew's, as they live through difficult times in their lives. For our understanding of the faith here is, I think, very active and practical. We offer friendship through social activities. We offer places and times where people's needs for food, for company, for contact with their children, for goods to furnish a new household are met. We offer opportunities for people to sit on committees which organise these good things, or to work more directly in our local community.
So far so good. But what happens if, through illness or increasing age or other changes in our lives, people in St Andrew's are less able to offer their time or their energy to accomplish these good things, and begin instead to come into some category of need themselves? If we are not careful, the transition from helper to helped may feel like a demotion, as if we are no longer following Jesus properly if we cannot serve others.
In my home congregation, one man carried the dual burden of church secretary and treasurer for several decades, and performed both functions with efficiency and grace. But when we finally found several replacements to carry out the work that he had done all on his own, he withdrew from church life altogether. I never found out exactly why this was, but my guess is that his identity as a Christian in that church was so bound up with service to others that he could find no place with us once that form of service had run its course.
But that mistaken valuing of activity over passivity, service over being served, has only understood half of Jesus' parable about sheep and goats. We know that when those in need are served, it is Jesus we are serving. But if sometimes we are the ones who serve Jesus in other people, it must also be true that at other times we find ourselves in Jesus' position, waiting for needs to be met by other people.
This may seem a strange conclusion to draw on this day of all days, the last Sunday before Advent, when we are considering Christ seated at God's right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come; Christ who has all things under his feet. How can this king of heaven describe himself as passive and in need of others' help, vulnerable to the possibility of their despising and rejecting him? According to our psalm this morning, is he not the one through whom heaven and earth, sea and dry land came into being? And is he not God's shepherd for us, his somewhat wayward sheep?
Well, yes, certainly; but there again, no.
Yes, Jesus is for all Christians our highest authority, the one whose life is a pattern for ours, whose commands we try to follow. In the metaphor we've been thinking through this morning, he is our shepherd.
But not only that: as Shaun the Sheep and John's Gospel remind us, Jesus is also a sheep: the lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice whose innocent death has broken the cycle of violence and retribution. And just as Jesus is both divine and human, both shepherd and sheep, his life shows us a model both of active service and of passive neediness.
For the three or so years we know about from the Gospels, Jesus was active. He healed, he taught, he talked with people, showing them his divine nature by word and deed. But at the beginning of his life on earth he was as needy and vulnerable as any other newborn baby. And at the end of his life on earth, when he was handed over to his enemies, he chose to react in silence and passivity, for them to do with as they chose. So when we admit that we too have needs and require the help of others, we are still following Jesus.
Of course, recognising the presence of God in our helplessness and neediness may not make it easier to accept. Some of you will know that my mother's health has not improved much, and that my father and I are looking for nursing care for her. My father bears the brunt of her day-to-day support, while I visit when
I can. I wish I could do more to help them; but even the little I do means that
I have less time and less energy to give to my work here with you. That means that I have had to look for help from others, and will continue to do so; yet though there are willing and able helpers on every side, I find it hard to be the recipient of your kindness. And maybe some of you will share my difficulty.
Even for Christians, society's pressure on us to be independent, to manage on our own, not to be a burden to others, can be very strong. Yet if Jesus is really God as well as human, we will find God in our own need of help as much as in our care for others. Sometimes we may have to admit that we just cannot tell how God will meet all our needs, let alone the needs of the whole world. Yet this we know: Jesus, not only good shepherd but also lamb of God, is our king.
