A sermon for St John’s Episcopal Church, Canandaigua, NY
I bring greetings to you all in the name of love from the Diocese of Ohio and from the Church of the Epiphany in Euclid, my home parish.
Ohio is my home, but you might guess by my accent that I didn’t always live there. I grew up in England and then halfway through my childhood our family moved to Wales. If you know anything at all about Wales, it likely has to do with sheep. There are sheep, and there are more sheep, everywhere you go. There are sheep on the roads and in the hedgerows. There are sheep on impossible ledges on the mountainsides, and at the bottoms of impossibly steep valleys. Coming back from church one rainy Sunday I saw a whole dozen or more sheep crowding into a bus shelter to get out of the weather. They get everywhere.
You rarely see a shepherd, but each sheep bears the mark of someone who has claimed it, named it, and who has the ultimate responsibility and care of it.
Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd.” He says that his sheep know his voice, that they know, we know, who cares for them and who keeps us. He is the shepherd who guides us through the valleys of deep shadows, who will not let our foot slip on that steep ascent back into the sunlight. He is the shepherd who not only lays down his life for us, but who takes it up again, returns to the scene of the crime in resurrection, so that we may know the abundance and persistence of God’s life and love for us.
There is, Peter says by way of the Holy Spirit, no other name given among mortals that will save us, that will heal us, that will make us whole.
This scene, in the fourth chapter of Acts, is still following on from the miraculous healing of the man beside the Beautiful Gate the previous day, in the previous chapter. Perhaps you already talked about him here, but if not, he had asked Peter and John as they were passing for money, and Peter told him, “Silver or gold have I none, but what I have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”
There followed, you may imagine, quite the commotion around the temple, and we heard last Sunday how Peter upbraided his fellow Israelites, saying, in effect, “Why are you surprised? God has always been active among us, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and now see how God has glorified Jesus, the Christ. It is by his name that this man has been made strong. It is by his name that we are made whole.”
This, by the way, as the Lectionary Lab podcast reminded me as I was studying this week; this is in no way a rejection of God’s promises to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, nor to any of their inheritance. It is in perfect consonance with those covenants that Jesus would lay down his life for the sheep of every fold, and it does not undo the continuing covenant that God has with the Jews, nor with all flesh, as God covenanted after the Flood and the Ark and the rainbow.
Rather, Peter says, you need nothing more. You need look no further, you need no one else to show you the wholeness and healing power of God’s life-giving mercy.
Still, the authoritiesd came and arrested them and imprisoned them, as they did with Jesus, because they were afraid of the power that had erupted in their midst. And now the next morning they ask, “What is this power? Where does it come from?” And Peter again tells them, “It is Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”
It is no secret power, no special magic. There is no trickery here. This is exactly what it looks like: the resurrecting power of the risen Christ making whole, healing and transforming the lives left behind. Jesus is still the Good Shepherd, gathering up the lame sheep and restoring it to green pasture, still waters.
We, on the other hand, have a tendency, as chief priests and elders and lawyers, to look for power that we can control, that we can wield, that we can own.
You know that I was invited here this weekend to talk about gun violence, and the ways in which we as people of faith can counter its inculturation among us – and, by the way, that’s why we are wearing orange stoles today. Orange is the colour that hunters use to say, “See me; don’t shoot me,” and it’s the colour chosen by a group of young people in Chicago to protest and lament the death of a friend, which is now used to represent our lament and our commitment to ending gun violence around the nation.
We talked yesterday about the statistics that tell us that there are more guns in the United States today than people – millions more. We have tried to take the power of life and death into our own hands, into our own homes, with frankly devastating results.
We discussed yesterday how nearly three-quarters of guns in civilian ownership were purchased or kept for personal defense, when the numbers tell us, all thing being equal, that a home and its inhabitants appear to be less safe with a gun than without one.
We had a surprisingly hopeful conversation about all that yesterday. We talked about economic solutions and research-based solutions and interventions based in health and equity and law, and all of it was good and valid and hopeful, because there is never nothing that we can do. Because with God nothing is impossible, there is never nothing we can do.
But first, yesterday morning, we spent significant time in prayer, in scripture, in the intentional presence of God, because if we turn to our own devices, instead of leaning on the rod and the staff of the good shepherd, and following his lead through the valley of deep shadows, how will we find our way back into the light? Because unless we remember where our healing comes from, unless we remember how we are made whole, unless we remember who is our shepherd, we will stray, each to her own way, and become scattered, and less strong, and less whole.
The author of the letter of John writes, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
The truth is, I am tempted to say, Let us not pretend that there is any name – Smith, Wesson, Glock, Remington – by which we may be saved, but only the name of Jesus. Let us not pretend that there is any power in us to save ourselves, except the power of love that Jesus has demonstrated for us, to lay down our lives, little by little, piece by piece, for our neighbours, for love, for the love of God.
And when we are tempted to protest, “But this is the real world; let them disarm first,” I am tempted to say, let’s remember that Jesus did just that, in the garden, when they came to arrest him with swords and clubs, and he responded with mercy, and the disarming of his disciples.
He did not run away like a hired hand, neither did he leave them to the wolves, for here he is, still speaking, still acting, still healing through Peter and the Holy Spirit.
I am tempted to say all of that, but I know, I know that sometimes we feel more like the sheep huddled in the bus shelter, dripping with rain, wondering when someone is coming to take us home and dry. I know that there have been times when we have waited in the valley, wondering how long it will take for the light to break through and show us the way out. I know that sometimes, we are afraid that the rod and the staff will break if we lean too hard upon them with our prayers.
They will not break.
For here is God, once more spreading a table before us in the face of all that troubles us. Here is the Good Shepherd, once more gathering us as a flock, through water and oil, reminding us to take strength and courage from one another, to encourage one another to hear his voice. Here is the wine, the cup running over with the mercies of God. Because, like those impossible sheep on the mountainside, no matter where we find ourselves, we are marked and claimed and cared for by the one who has called us each by name, and by whose Name we are made whole.
Amen.
Lectionary texts
over the water 