The Good Shepherd

Last Sunday I was privileged to preach for the first time at the church where our family has recently settled, The Church of the Good Shepherd with St. Peter, Lee.

It was my first time preaching with the Lectionary in mind, and was also, as it turned out, Good Shepherd Sunday.

You can listen to what I said, although the recording quality is not great, or the text is reproduced below.

It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to speak with you today. I’ll tell you a little bit about me – about us – and where we’ve come from as I go along, but I think this is the first time I’ve preached a regular sermon in an Anglican church. For me, one of the interesting parts of that is the Bible passages which are decreed or given or suggested for the services each Sunday, and in fact for every day of the week. Today we’ve heard a couple of passages read, but there are a total of five for this service. And a bit of me loves that because I love the Bible, reading it, thinking about it, trying to hear what God is saying.

You’ll be pleased to know that I’m not planning to give a detailed exposition of all five passages, but as I was looking at them I found it exciting to see the same God speaking through the many different kinds of writing we have in the Bible. We see a God who mourns the ways that God’s good creation has gone wrong – a God who is present and acting to bring restoration – and a God who invites us to join in with that putting right.

I guess the headline from today’s passages is clear: “I am the good shepherd” says Jesus in our gospel reading, and “The Lord is my shepherd” says Psalm 23, one of the best-known Psalms. It’s ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’, and it is indeed a privilege to have been asked by Rev. Shepherd to speak on the Good Shepherd at the Good Shepherd.

Jane and I and our family have been around here at The Good Shepherd since just before last Christmas, but there are some people here who we have known in different contexts for many years – some we knew before we were married, some whose children went to the same school as our adult children, and some who’ve been in the same churches as us over the years (and some in all of those ways). And it’s been great to start to get to know others too, who we have begun to get to know over the past few months. So thank you for your welcome into The Good Shepherd family as we start to build relationships here.

Relationships are important, aren’t they? Just over four years ago something happened that maybe brought the importance of relationships into sharp focus – we started the Covid pandemic lockdown. We were all supposed to stay at home, and when we did venture out to the shops we had to observe ‘social distancing’, perhaps better called ‘unsocial distancing’.

For some it became a very lonely time, perhaps only able to see one other person, or possibly no one else. For others, life was very crowded – in our house, two of our children who were then students returned home to strain the wi-fi connection with online learning, and two new young children arrived to join our fostering household, and so, with the three of us who were there already, we lived through much of lockdown with seven of us in the house.

Either way, relationships shifted at the start of lockdown – some were reduced, some had to morph into weekly get-togethers on Zoom, some were intensified – maybe many were strained in some way – maybe even our relationship with God was affected by how we could, or couldn’t, gather to worship together.

So, I was thinking, what do our Bible passages today say about relationships – our relationship with God, our relationships with other people, our relationship with our environment – maybe even our relationship with ourselves?

…with God

Psalm 23 opens with that statement about our relationship with God – “The Lord is my shepherd”. Whether you’ve only recently started coming along to a church community or whether you’ve been in church your whole life, you might well know the opening words of this psalm. The psalm is often used in funeral services and appears in other places, including as the theme tune for an old TV series.

I grew up in a Baptist church, and this was one of the Bible passages I knew from very young, like some of you I expect. I grew up knowing that Jesus loved me and I chose, at a very young age, to love Jesus back, and to aim to follow him. That church, and my family life at that church, grew in me the love of the Bible that I still have and, as Jane has put into words for me, introduced me to Jesus as a family friend.

We sang songs, including ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd’, ‘Wide, wide as the ocean’, and of course, ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so’. I grew up knowing that I was loved by God, and that God’s love was so high I couldn’t get over it, so low I couldn’t get under it, etc… and that the Good Shepherd leads his people by the still waters and into green pastures. What could be better than that?

But if that’s all we see in Psalm 23 we miss half of what this psalm is about. Yes, God’s heart is to be in good relationship with us, and for us to know God’s good provision. But the writer of the psalm also knows that life is not always like that – look at verses 4 and 5 – he refers, in poetic language, to the darkest valley (or the valley of the shadow of death) and to his enemies. Life does not always work out as we or God would have chosen, and there are really tough times.

The psalm writer’s experience is not that God sorts all those things out and makes them go away, but that God is with him in the midst of them. God is there with us in the darkest valleys. And, in the presence of our enemies, God isn’t just there, but God has laid out a feast in their presence!

What do the metaphors ‘darkest valleys’ and ‘enemies’ mean for you? Whatever they are, this psalm (and the words of Jesus and the rest of the Bible) bring us assurance that God is present with you in them, as some of us were exploring through Lent with Selina Stone’s book.

“I am the good shepherd”, declares Jesus in John’s gospel, picking up the ‘shepherd’ language from the psalm – “I am the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.” And as John’s first letter says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.”

Jesus’ death was the ultimate expression of love. Jesus’ death and resurrection achieved ultimate victory over all that is opposed to God – what the Bible calls sin and death. And Jesus’ death and resurrection, as we’ve just celebrated at Easter, saves us from what is wrong with us and the world, and is able to restore our relationships. We don’t see that perfectly now, but we know the Shepherd who walks with us through the tough times, and we have the hope and the promise that all will be well in the end, in the new creation.

Our relationships are damaged, and Jesus’ desire is to restore them – starting with our relationship with God, our good shepherd.

…with one another

But Jesus is concerned with more than our relationship with God, vital though that is. When I started to look at the passages for this morning, that opening of Psalm 23 led to another question in my mind…

“The Lord is my shepherd”, prompted the question, “And whose shepherd am I? Whose shepherd are you?”

About 20 years ago was the last time we changed churches, and we joined Catford Community Church. Several former members of CCC are now here, and they might remember the question that one of the original leaders of the church used to ask us sometimes: “Who have you got spiritual ambition for?”

Within the church community we’re called to look out for each other, to care for each other’s needs, to spur each other on in our walk with Jesus – who are you doing that for?

As we just read, First John says that, as an expression of love, “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” But it doesn’t stop there – it carries straight on with, “And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” We are called into a community of mutual support, where we each bring our gifts to serve each other, to give ourselves – to give our lives? – to each other, and to serve God together.

What does this look like? The same letter continues, “Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and truth.” Our actions are important too – how do we take steps to build relationship with one another, to build each other up, and to spur each other on in loving God and loving our neighbour?

Our passage from Acts this morning relates how Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples who was becoming one of the leaders of the early church, was called to account for his actions in showing Jesus’ love and power to someone he met at the Temple one day. That man had been lame from birth and reduced to begging for money each day after being carried from home by friends. Peter and John, another disciple, had seen him, had told him they had no money to give him, but could give him healing and agency and standing in society again – all in the name of Jesus. In the words of the song we sang many years ago on Scripture Union beach missions, “He went walking and leaping and praising God!”

The religious authorities were not happy about this – they demanded an explanation from Peter and John, and Peter responded, with not a little irony I feel:

If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.

Acts has many stories of the early followers of Jesus acting to bring good to people around them, and to share that Jesus had changed their lives.

God’s desire is to restore our relationships with one another, enabling us to live out the Bible’s commands to love God and love our neighbour – those we think of as in the church and those we think of as outside – in actions as well as words.

…with creation

The other passage that was suggested for this morning is the story of the great flood – Noah’s ark and the animals – in Genesis chapters 7-9. That shows God’s re-setting humanity’s relationship with creation, which had gone wrong because of humanity’s violence after the good start that God gave it.

But we don’t have time to look at that this morning, because I want to finish by getting back to the Good Shepherd.

The start of psalm 23 again:

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.

He refreshes my soul – there is one more relationship that God wants to put right – your relationship with yourself – my relationship with myself. God wants to refresh how we see ourselves, as loved by God, as part of God’s good creation.

As you know, we’re a fostering household – Jane and I are foster carers – and I was at a fostering conference on Friday. We were reminded there that, to care well for children, we need to be a consistent, secure place where we can hold those big emotions and feelings that can affect children. And to be able to do that for someone else, we have to be able to handle our own big emotions, and understand where they come from.

And I think that’s true too for us all, whoever we might be in a position to care for – we all need to get straight with ourselves, which is what God wants for us too – he restores my soul, he restores your soul – maybe through time and conversations with a trusted friend or counsellor, or spiritual advisor as Bridget mentioned last week.

God is the ultimate consistent secure place where we can take those big emotions and feelings and experiences that are too much for us to handle – he is the Good Shepherd who, in Jesus, laid down his life for his sheep.

What is God putting a finger on for you at the moment?

• Is God inviting you to explore a deeper relationship with Jesus by the Holy Spirit? – make time to pray, meditate listening for God, read the Bible, spending time with God.
• Is God nudging you to grow in your relationships with other people – neighbours in your street, people you know at work, even people here at church? – making time for a phone call or a message or a coffee (or other preferred beverage)
• Is God pointing towards your relationship with creation, with nature – what might that look like for you?
• Is God saying: see yourself as I see you – loved and worth giving my life for? Do you need you soul restoring, your relationship with yourself restored?

These can all be expressions of our call to be sheep who seek to follow the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep, and who calls us to do the same.