Sheep Without A Shepherd

A sermon for the eighth Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on July 22, 2012.

Mark 6:30-44

In the movie What About Bob?, Dr. Leo Marvin, a popular and published and egotistical psychiatrist from New York City, takes his wife and family to a peaceful New Hampshire lakeside cottage for a month-long vacation.
His patient, Bob, is unable to handle a month without seeing Dr. Marvin.  He tricks the staff at Dr. Marvin’s office into giving him the address of his vacation home and makes his way up to Lake Winnipesaukee.  He gets off the bus at the station in the town where Dr. Marvin is staying and immediately begins yelling as loud as he can in the parking lot, “Dr.  Leo.  Marvin!”
It just so happens that Dr. Marvin is with his family in the village store adjacent to the bus stop and as they are leaving he hears his name being called.  

To his utter horror, he looks to where the yelling is coming from and sees Bob.  He tries to get away as quickly as possible, but Bob sees him and his family getting into the car and excitedly calls to him and runs over to greet him.  He gets there and sees Dr. Marvin’s expression and says, “Oh, is this a bad time?”  Dr. Marvin takes him away from the car and tells him that he doesn’t see patients on vacation and that Bob should buy a bus ticket and go back to New York.
“Can’t we have a little talk?” Bob replies.
“You’re testing my patience!” is the response.
“C’mon, I’m doing the work, I’m baby-steppin’, I’m not a slacker -- check it out I’m in really bad shape, come on, please! please! Gimme Gimme Gimme I need I need I need I need.”
Dr. Marvin eventually tries to trick him into leaving by giving him a prescription for “a vacation... from your problems!”
Bob is incredibly relieved by such an act of kindness from the doctor -- for taking time to give him therapy -- the only problem for Marvin -- Bob chooses to take his “vacation from his problems” in an actual vacation, at Winnipesaukee, down the road from Dr. Marvin.
Continuing our reading of Mark chapter 6, we leave behind Herod’s grim festivities and follow Jesus and his disciples as they go off to a deserted place to rest for a time.
They had been busy -- running here and there sharing the good news of God’s in-breaking kingdom.  But they had been too busy and they were exhausted and hungry.
But we read that “many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.”
When they got to their destination, they stepped ashore and there was yet another crowd waiting for them.
We can all imagine how we would react (or perhaps have reacted) to getting to our retreat destination, our vacation spot, to be free from our work-- only to find that our work had followed us there.
Perhaps we’d rush to get into our car and down the road like Leo Marvin.
But Jesus’ response was not to rush off and avoid the crowd -- turn back get back in the boat and find another, more isolated spot.
Jesus, we read, “had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd;”
“and he began to teach them many things.”
Jesus’ response to the crowds and their needs is not to ignore them, not to run away from them, but to allow them to create within him a deep feeling of compassion.
He doesn’t look at these as “work” -- he doesn’t look at them as “problems” -- as “projects” -- rather in good biblical fashion he looks at the crowd and sees them as sheep without a shepherd.
In the Old Testament we read of two shepherds.  One is God who shepherds, cares for, and guides the sheep who are the people of Israel.  The other shepherd is the king who is entrusted by God to shepherd and care for the people’s material needs.  
But again and again, the kings would seek their own benefit at the expense of the people that they ruled.
And so we read the words of the prophet Jeremiah to the “shepherds” the kings and priests of his day:  “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them.”
and again in Ezekiel:  “Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.”
Jesus is looking upon the crowd and he has deep compassion for them, because they have been abused by the neglect and self-serving actions of those in charge of their welfare.
Sheep without a shepherd.
So here again we are being invited to recall what had just come before.  A snapshot of Israel’s current shepherd, Herod.
There he is partying, drinking, eating, enjoying himself in luxury -- having great fun -- a very expensive fun -- which even pays the price of John the Baptizer’s life in order to keep the good times rolling.
And here in Jesus’ presence is the underbelly of that luxury.  The people who are desperate for a good leader, for hope, for direction, and, quite frankly, for food.
There would probably be plenty of food in the dumpsters outside of Herod’s palace.  But many of these people went without.
Sheep with a negligent or self-seeking shepherd are sheep without a shepherd.
And scripture reminds us that to have rulers and governments and economic practices which neglect or exploit the poor and needy is not something new.  There have always been bad shepherds.
But we are a people who repeat the prayer of Psalm 23.  The Lord is our shepherd.  Even when we have no shepherd we have the Good Shepherd.
And perhaps that is part of what Jesus taught the people there on the shore of the sea of Galilee.  “The Lord is our Shepherd, We shall not want.”  Perhaps he dwelled for a bit on “He leads us beside the still waters.”  Which translated another way can be heard as, “waters to rest by.”  Jesus perhaps saw these anxious and fearful people as sheep needing to be reminded of their heavenly shepherd.  
But words would not be enough.  As James tells us in his letter:  “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
And perhaps this is why when the disciples wanted to send the people away as it was getting late -- so that they could go and get something to eat in the towns, Jesus looked at them and said, “You give them something to eat.”  The disciples were ready to be content to have shared in this time of teaching -- it’s bad enough that they had to give up this vacation time for that.  But now Jesus wanted them to feed these people?  Unbelievable!
‘Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’
But Jesus calls them to have faith in the God the shepherd who is present with them and can make much out of even their smallest offerings.  And the miracle followed the disciples willingness to walk in faith, stay with the crowd, and give up their five loaves and two fishes.
“Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.”
And Jesus, the good shepherd contrasts with Herod -- while one tries in destructive desperation to maintain the approval of the few, the other has compassion on the many.
Our faith and covenant reminds us that our mission is to proclaim good news. That good news is not just words but it's concrete actual change in lives and communities.

Last week we dwelt on what it might mean to proclaim the gospel to all people if the gospel is of the one true God and not the many false gods, a gospel of faith and not fear.  I think today’s gospel reading really only further helps to show what it means to proclaim the gospel.  And our Faith and Covenant goes on to say, “We also hold it to be the mission of the Church to labor for the progress of knowledge, the promotion of justice, the reign of peace, and the realization of human kinship.”

Our mission is to proclaim the good news, to exalt the worship of this God who is the good news.  But also -- to promote these things -- knowledge, justice, peace, and human kinship.  Because these are not separate from but follow out of a proclamation of the gospel and an exalting of the one true God.  It is a seamless garment.
If the community of disciples, AKA the church are to represent the good shepherd, what it means to live a life grounded in a faith in the God of the 23rd Psalm, we are not going to just teach the crowd God’s providing grace, we are going to seek to be that grace -- because faith without works is lifeless and empty.
This is why we raise money for our blessing fund -- to help with real needs of real people locally.  This is why we support in our time and money the Fall Mountain food shelf -- because that’s where 2 fishes and five loaves are being turned into abundance in our very midst.  This is why we send money to support home mission programs and other ministries.  Because the gospel has broken into the world, the grace of God has changed our priorities, has changed our understanding of who and what is important -- and so as we pray to God our good shepherd who gives abundantly more than we ask or imagine, our lives are shaped around an understanding that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

In his address to the nation in response to the Saturday shootings in Colorado, President Obama helped us think through how we as a individuals and communities might respond.

“If there’s anything to take away from this tragedy it’s the reminder that life is very fragile.  Our time here is limited and it is precious.  And what matters at the end of the day is not the small things, it’s not the trivial things, which so often consume us and our daily lives.  Ultimately, it’s how we choose to treat one another and how we love one another. 

It’s what we do on a daily basis to give our lives meaning and to give our lives purpose.  That’s what matters.  At the end of the day, what we’ll remember will be those we loved and what we did for others.  That’s why we’re here.”

Something similar to this is what Jesus is communicating near the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's gospel: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?....Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

We get so caught up in worries about life, eating, drinking, clothing, etc. Or as Obama put it, “ the trivial things, which so often consume us and our daily lives.”

If we are a people who live in light of God's grace, a people who exalt the worship of the one true God, forsaking the many false gods which call for us like sirens, we need not let trivial matters consume us, we should rather fix our eyes on God and God's desire for the restoration of relationship – the kingdom of God and its righteousness. When this is our focus, we remember that our neighbors are loved by God and we are no better and no worse than they – that God has loved us all equally and created us all for God's mission of reconciliation.

This is what we should take from today's gospel reading. We live in a world of inefficient and self-seeking shepherds – whether we think of the shepherds as actual leaders or the programs and systems which we find ourselves involved in socially and politically. We can't just depend on leaders and programs to help people. It's a good thing that they're there, but the most important way that the gospel is going to go forward is through neighbors allowing each other into each others' lives and laboring for knowledge, justice, and peace in our local actions. We get overwhelmed by the problems in the world, but we forget that our call is not to change the world, but to be ministers of grace to those that God has placed in our lives.

Jesus saw the crowds and had no responsibility, no official position to help them, to teach them, to feed them. But Jesus knew the Father of light, the giver of good gifts – and Jesus responded with compassion to these shepherdless sheep.
And so we sing: “In Christ there is no East or West, / in him no South or North, / but one great fellowship of love / throughout the whole wide earth.”
The realization of human kinship is the realization that we are all recipients of God’s undeserved forgiving and redeeming love.  Grace is the great equalizer and makes low the hills and fills the valleys.
And so we promote these things not as separate but as connected to the gospel of grace that we have received.  And our social action will be but the hands and feet directed by the heart changed by God’s love.
May we walk in the way of Christ.
May we let the gospel change us in our words, our thoughts, and our actions, that we might be the hands and feet of Christ, and embody the mission “to labor for the progress of knowledge, the promotion of justice, the reign of peace, and the realization of human kinship.”
Amen.