S. T. A. R. T.

John 10:1-10

This Sunday is known as ‘The Good Shepherd’ Sunday – almost everyone knows some variation of this parable: the shepherd who knew all the sheep’s names, the one who left 99 sheep to rescue one, and gathered them into the sheepfold to be safe.

Here is another image of the shepherd – this time from astronomy. As you look up into the night sky, Saturn is the brightest celestial object after the moon, that mysterious planet with its rings. We learned from the first Voyager probe that Saturn has moons and that the ring is a collection of these moons. The astronomers who identified these moons and their function in the ring dubbed them “shepherd moons.”

The shepherd moons bring order from chaos, harmony and beauty from disorder. They ‘shepherd’ millions of particles – some as big as a bus and others as small as a speck – into the Saturn rings.

The shepherd moons are a metaphor for God. They bring together and hold different particles into relationships. Shepherding, in this sense, gathers us as persons and as communities. The shepherd moons represent God, who unites things we often see as unrelated in beautiful, symmetrical harmony. The rings of Saturn are an image of our varied, complex, pluralistic world, with many different perspectives, which form a unit by the shepherding care of God.

The shepherd in this image is the one who brings and holds together different parts of our world. Shepherding creates an identity, a person, and a community. It is to make clear that God brings together those things we often take apart. We live in a pluralistic reality, with many different groups, but they are all cared for by God.

God gathers the different particles – that’s us! – together. Diverse experiences make us who we are: our past, our families, our faith, and our self-reflection of ourselves. We create a new reality from those things we find around us. God attracts single units into one reality. In our liturgy and worship – our tradition – we carry the seeds of meaning that keep getting revised. Jesus sums up the past images and breaks open new ones.[1]

Jesus can be a shepherd for our life in the same way. He is guiding us out of confusion by sheltering us. We have nothing to fear; all we must do is answer His voice.

God’s love is always here, despite our waywardness. This love comes to us unmerited, there for the asking. It is unlimited love, confronting evil in love. Like Martin Luther King, the good shepherd, and his followers put themselves in the path of danger and are willing to pay the price.

The Good Shepherd challenges us to find the love of God in the world around us, to look for God in unexpected places, unanticipated events, and unconventional faces. It tells us to look for the grace of God where we least expect it. The bottom line is that God’s unlimited love is there for everyone.

How we feel and see this unlimited love grounding and directing us is the question. In the church, we learn the meaning of Jesus as our shepherd. The sheep know the shepherd’s voice, and He knows the individual needs of those within his care. There are real wolves and thieves out there – people who do not have the best interests of the common good in their hearts. The good shepherd will do everything needed to protect them.

The church’s job is to offer support and teach us. We are in webs of relationships; we choose the best of the gifts offered to us. We must imitate this unlimited love. Ultimately, it is up to each of us to make sense of our faith.

How many of you here would like a fresh start in your life?

How many would like to be in the fold of the Good Shepherd?

This morning I want to share a formula for starting over, regardless of failures in the past. The method is known as ‘S. T. A. R. T.

S. T. A. R. T.
S –       Stop making excuses.
If we want a fresh start, we must stop making excuses for our failures and blaming others. We’ve got to stop seeing ourselves as victims of our circumstances.

Other people can hurt us, other people can harm us, and other people can scar us. We have a choice – we can determine how we respond to those hurts. Nobody can destroy our life without our permission. The only person who can ruin our lives is ourselves.

T –       Take An Inventory Of Our Life
We must take an inventory of our lives. That means we must evaluate all our experiences and discard those failures. We must take stock of our life experiences and learn from them.

Failure can be our friend or foe – we determine which. We can choose to learn from failure or choose to repeat it. If we learn from it, then it can be our friend. However, it is our foe if we don’t learn from it. We must learn from our mistakes.

As we take inventory of our life, we must ask ourselves three questions.

1. What have we learned? If we don’t sit down and think it through, we’ll repeat the same mistake because we didn’t learn from it the first time.
2. What have we got going for us? Have we got our health? Have we got our freedom? Have we got some friends? Have we got a church family? What do we have that we can get a fresh start with?
3. Who can help us? We need somebody by our side – a friend, a partner, a support person, or a support group. Find someone that can help you. We need somebody else to walk along with us, enabling us to get a fresh start in life. Jesus will be there; He will help us pull our lives back together and ensure we get started on the right foot.

A –       Act in faith
We have to go out into new territory. The Bible says that the key to changing anything is faith. If we want to change our circumstances, it takes dedication. If we change anything in our lives, we have to have faith.

To start acting in faith means we must stop having pity parties. We’ve got to stop feeling sorry for ourselves. The more time we spend regretting our past, the more we waste our future. We set ourselves up for more failure by focusing on past failures. Whatever we focus on, we tend to create in our present life.

R –       Refocus
If we want to change our lives, we must refocus and rethink our thoughts. How we think determines how we feel, and how we feel determines how we act.

Let me give you an example:

A beggar sat daily on a street corner across from an art studio. An artist had seen him for days and decided to paint his portrait. When the artist completed the picture, he invited the beggar into the studio. The artist said, “I’ve got something I want you to see.”

Inside the studio, the artist unveiled the portrait. At first, the beggar did not recognize himself. He kept saying, “Who is it?” The artist just smiled and said nothing. Then suddenly, the man saw himself in the portrait — not as he was in his dismal state, but as he could be. Then the beggar asked, “Is that me? Is that me?” The artist replied, “That’s who I see in you.” Then the beggar said, “If that’s who you see in me, then that’s who I’ll be.”

T –      Trust
We must trust God to help us succeed. Depend on Him; we don’t need to depend on ourselves. We’ve already proven that we can’t do it on our own. That’s why we’ve failed. They stumble and fall, then get up and say, “I’ll just try harder!” It’s like you go up to a wall and bang your head against it, and the wall doesn’t fall. You try it again, and Bang! Again. You keep doing it thinking, “Maybe it will fall over this time.” That’s the definition of insanity – doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. We will get the same result if we keep doing the same thing. We cannot change who we are; only God can do that. I am not speaking about the outward man but the inner man, the person of the heart. Success is not trying harder but living smarter and giving God control of our lives.

The good news this morning is in Isaiah 43:18. God says,

“I want you to have a fresh start in life; I want you to have a new beginning, I want to do something new in your life. ”

Aren’t you glad God wants to do something new in our lives? Doesn’t it excite you that God desires to give us a fresh start, a new beginning in life?

The Lord says, `Forget about what has happened before. Do not think about the past. Instead, look at the new things I’m going to do.

Listen to what God is saying in this verse. He says we mustn’t think about the past. Forget about what’s happened before. It’s over, done; we can’t change it.

We must understand that God is far more interested in our future than in our past. That’s where we are going to spend the rest of our lives. He says,

Forget about your past. Forget about the former things. Don’t think about it. Look at the new thing I’m going to do.” (Isaiah 43:19)

How can we have a fresh start?

We can have a fresh start by:

S. T. A. R. T.

• Stop making excuses
• Take an inventory of our lives
• Act in faith
• Refocus our thoughts
• Trust in God[2]

Will you have a fresh start in life?

Will you have a new beginning?

It. Is. Your. Choice.

Delivered at Saint John’s Episcopal Church, Columbus, OH; 30 April 2023

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[1]      Adapted from Rev Dr George Hermanson, United Church’s Five Oaks Retreat Centre, Ontario, Canada
[2]      Adapted from John O Mooney

George Floyd & Ma’Khia Bryant in the Arms of Jesus

John 10:11-18

This Fourth Sunday of Easter is also known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’. Throughout the readings and prayers for this occasion, we encounter, time and again, Jesus defined as our shepherd and ourselves as the sheep of his flock.

I was going to preach today exclusively on Jesus as the good shepherd, but in light of recent events affecting our Black brothers and sisters, I feel compelled to speak to those events.

For more than two weeks, all the world waited with bated breath as we watched the trial of one of the policemen accused of murdering George Floyd. Most of us were astounded at the preponderance of prosecution evidence and disgusted at the defense Derek Chauvin’s attorneys presented. Most people were sure that there would be a conviction of Derek Chauvin, his executioner, but because of past experience with white cop/black victim incidents, many of us were afraid the ‘thin blue line’ of defense would prevail. However, this time the legal system returned a valid conviction on, not only one, but all three charges.

But before we could celebrate that justice was delivered in the George Floyd trial, just less than an hour before the verdict came in, 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was shot and killed by a white Columbus policeman. This is the seventh death of Blacks by law enforcement in the last four months!

Then Friday, a deputy killed Andrew Brown Jr., in North Carolina while attempting an arrest.

Please say with me their names:

Miles Jackson . . .

Andre Hill . . .

Casey Goodson, Jr. . .

Adam Toledo . . .

Duante Wright . . .

Ma’Khia Bryant . . .

Andrew Brown, Jr.

This slaughter has got to stop!!

No matter whether George Floyd was a found sheep, or a lost sheep, he was still a child of God, and deserved to be treated as such. But Derek Chauvin saw him as a threat to himself, and maybe others, and mercilessly took his life by kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes. He forgot God’s commandment:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (Luke 6:31)

What he did was not subdue George so that he could not harm the police, but maliciously kept his knee on George’s neck until there was no breath or movement – and then kept it there for another three minutes. He was not lawfully carrying out his duties as a police officer sworn to uphold the law and protect the people of Minneapolis. If you see the video, there was only a blank detached stare in Chauvin’s eyes during that whole nine-plus minutes; with no sense that he realized that George Floyd was another human being.

And for once, in a nation of inequality, the brave jury of twelve people, as well as a number of police, determined that Derek Chauvin had committed a crime and should be punished for it. We all know that this one verdict is not going to correct the horrendous murders of black men and women, but it may be a start. Statistically, 98.3% of all police-involved shootings do not result in indictments, trials, or changes in policy and procedures.[1] We all need to work to bring awareness and remedy to police violence and brutality in our society, whether it comes from police or other people.

After the verdict came in, I imagined in my mind, that George Floyd was cradled in the arms of Jesus, being held in the love and comfort by the Savior of us all, protected from any further harm or grief or pain.

Still, as we breathed a collective sigh of relief Tuesday, our community felt the sting of another police shooting, resulting in a sixteen-year old black teenager dead from four gunshots.

Whether Ma’Khia was a troubled foster child, or this started as a spat with two other girls about a messy house and unmade bed, it came when Ma’Khia wielded a steak knife and was summarily shot by a Columbus police officer. The incident and actions of the police officer are still being investigated, so this is not the time to make presumptions. But nevertheless, another one of our Black sisters is dead at the hand of law enforcement.

It is time to mourn Ma’Khia, along with the others whose lives have been snuffed out by extreme use of lethal force by police, when it is likely that they would not have used such force if the victim had not been a person of color.

And so, I again imagine in my mind, that Ma’Khia Bryant is being cradled in the arms of Jesus, being held in the love and comfort of the Savior of us all, protected from any further harm or grief or pain.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, said:

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:25–28).

That is what a good shepherd does. And that is what Jesus does for each of us – and we are his sheep.

He is, for all of us, the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for us. He searches for us when we’re lost, to save us and to show us the way to eternal life (Luke 19:10).

The Shepherd knows each sheep by name, they know his voice, and they follow him. He protects them. The hardest thing the shepherd has to protect us from is ourselves and our own foolishness.

We tend to be like sheep, consumed with worry and fear, mindlessly following after one another. By not following or listening to the Shepherd’s voice (John 10:27), we can be easily led astray by others to our own destruction.

George Floyd and Ma’Khia Bryant, although they no longer live in this human plane, are Jesus’ sheep, and now live eternally with Him. No one can remove them from the arms of Jesus.

But just like sheep, we generally do not ‘get’ it – that is why Jesus repeats this passage of scripture so often. He says:

• • He is the Good Shepherd,
  • He laid down his life for his sheep,
  • And he knows the name of all his sheep,
  • His sheep follow him.

And still we do not always ‘get’ it!

If we are going to look at Jesus as the ‘Good’ Shepherd, we must remember that we are the sheep. We all have been lost, but

Jesus comes and gathers us all back into the safety of the flock.

He shows us how to follow him, listen to him, and come back to the safety of his arms. And he also provides an example of how we can be shepherds to those around us. Jesus challenges us to not only follow him, but be the voice and person to lead others to Him. We each can be the sheep that follow him, but also a member of the flock that lead others to Him.

We are all called to be his sheep.

I would like for you to set aside some quiet time this week pondering

“Who is a good shepherd for you and for whom are you a good shepherd?”

I invite you to take these questions with you –

When we listen to Jesus, as sheep listen to the shepherd, how do we respond?

If we do not respond, are we really listening?

Do we hear him when he speaks to us?

Do we listen when we hear him?

How do we respond to the voice of Jesus?

Amen

 Delivered to Saint John’s Episcopal Church, Columbus, OH; 25 April 2021

 

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[1]      Carlos Watson, “A Verdict for America”, CNN, Washington Post; 24 April 2021