Looking to God Psalm 121 & John 10:1-15

Transcription

1 Looking to God Psalm 121 & John 10:1-15 October 2, 2016 Laurel Neal 1

2 Psalm 121 A song of ascents. I lift up my eyes to the mountains where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD watches over you the LORD is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all harm he will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore. John 10:1-15 (NIV) The Good Shepherd and His Sheep Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger s 2

3 voice. Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them. Therefore Jesus said again, Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me just as the Father knows me and I know the Father and I lay down my life for the sheep. 3

4 Looking to God Psalm 121 & John 10:1-15 October 2, 2016 Laurel Neal I As you know, you re in between permanent pastors and in a time of interim ministry. And what I d like to do over these next six weeks is help all you grab hold of what the interim work is in part, by preaching about it. Interim ministry, you see, is about more than just keeping a church and congregation going during a transition. What makes it intentional is that there are 5 general areas of work we ll be trying to tackle and accomplish together. These 5 areas or tasks have been printed for you in the Bulletin this morning. And what I want to do is introduce you to them with today s sermon serving as an introduction. To do the interim work well, we need to train our sights on God. We need to remember who God is as we head into doing this work together and Psalm 121 and John 10 help us do that. In fact, the psalmist asks a great question right off the bat: Where does our help come from? Human beings often need help. We look around for it and hope it will come. Maybe as a congregation, you feel that way right now. How, really, will you navigate this time of transition? And who will help with that? Well, I m here to help, of course, but I need help, too. So I join you and the psalmist in saying, I lift up my eyes to the hills; where will our help come from? If we were Hebrews, living in Palestine 2800 years ago, here s what we d have seen when we lifted our 4

5 eyes to the hills. We d have seen beautiful, solid, unmovable mountains. But we d have seen something else, too. The tops of those ridges would have been dotted with monuments and holy places. Not Jewish monuments and holy places, but pagan ones. You see, all kinds of people lived in Palestine, and they practiced their religions at shrines on the ridges and hilltops. They worshiped the sun god and the moon god. They practiced magic. They performed religious acts to manipulate nature, guarantee a good harvest, and ward off evil. All kinds of people looking for help and finding it, they believed, in gods like Asherah or Baal. 1 So what the psalmist saw on the hills of Palestine was dozens of pagan holy places, all promising help. But the psalmist knows all of these disappoint: that real help the help we need comes only from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. II Jesus says something similar in John 10, but he uses different imagery to do it. Sheep and shepherds were as common in Jesus day as pagan shrines were in the days of the psalmist. So Jesus uses sheep and shepherds to talk about where help comes from. Everybody in Jesus day knew all about shepherds and sheep. Sheep were the backbone of the Jewish economy, and shepherding was a major occupation. Sheep were valuable, but they were also dumb. So owners were vigilant. Vigilant about care, and feeding, and safety. Which meant that every sheep had a shepherd. The sheep of 1 st -century Palestine lived together in flocks and shepherds led these flocks to lush pastures and protected them from danger. Their main tools of the trade were a rod and a staff. A shepherd s rod was a wooden club fashioned to his own grip and worn on his belt. Shepherds used this tool 1 Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1980, 2000,

6 to defend their sheep from wild animals and thieves never as an instrument of punishment. A shepherd s staff was just what you think: a long, wooden pole with a crook d end. Shepherds used the staff to guide and rescue their sheep. By holding out the staff or laying it alongside a sheep s body they could guide sheep along a path, or around an obstacle, or away from dangerous terrain. With the crook d end of the staff, they could pluck a sheep out of a crevasse or extricate a lamb from a tangle of blackberry bushes. At night, shepherds gathered their sheep into the safety of a sheep pen. These were constructed of stones or mud-bricks. They had just one entryway usually a gate. Each evening, shepherds stood in the entryway, counting their sheep and inspecting them for injuries. Several flocks shared one sheep pen, so shepherds took turns pulling the night shift and the on-duty shepherd would lie down across the entryway to the pen. This made the shepherd himself, in a sense, the gate to the pen and his presence made it impossible for thieves to sneak in. Then, every morning, shepherds took turns standing outside the pen and calling their own flock. They did this by name because every shepherd gave names to his sheep and each shepherd also had his own unique call. So sheep knew the voice of their own shepherd and refused to follow anyone else. In fact, sheep could detect the difference between their own shepherd and someone mimicking their shepherd and would scatter in panic rather than follow a stranger. So, against this familiar backdrop of shepherds and sheep, Jesus says some important stuff in John 10. Part of what he says is this: human 6

7 beings are like sheep and always need help. And he s the good shepherd the one from whom help comes. III I hardly need to mention that we have lots of people we look to for help when we need it. Some of these turn out to be worthwhile and some don t. But the one we should always be looking to is God. As we begin our interim work together, we need help. That help will come first and foremost from the Lord, and Psalm 121 and John 10 tell us why. Why we should look to God for the help we need. I want to share three reasons with you this morning. The first reason to look to God is that God exists. God is real. In just 8 verses, the psalmist refers to God three times using God s personal name. He doesn t refer to God generically or abstractly. He speaks of God personally. He calls God, Yahweh. Yahweh is the name God disclosed to Moses when Moses asked him who he was. It s God s personal name, like my personal name is Laurel. This is the God the psalmist is thinking of: the covenant-making God of Jewish history. The God who called a people; who rescued them, formed them into a community, and then guided, disciplined, and cared for them. Like a shepherd with his sheep. Which is how the Old Testament often talks about God s relationship with Israel. Any Jew listening to Jesus would have noticed how Jesus identifies himself with the God of Israel s history. How Jesus claims not just to represent Yahweh but to be the embodiment of Yahweh in world history. THE good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. 7

8 A few years ago, I flew from Portland to Kalispell, Montana. I changed planes at Sea-Tac and waited in the gate area for my next flight. When the crew arrived, I realized that the pilot was a man I knew from Columbia Presbyterian Church in Vancouver a man named Chris. This had never happened to me before. I know there s always been a real person in the cockpit, but never before had I known the pilot personally. Chris caught sight of me in the waiting area and came over to say hello. We sat and talked for a few minutes and then he headed off to do his job: flying that plane, getting me where I needed to go. I ve never been squeamish about flying. But even so, I ve never been quite so relaxed on any flight before or since. Heck, I had a personal relationship with the pilot. I knew the pilot, and the pilot knew me. During this interim time, we can count on the reality of God. We can call God by name. We can be certain that God knows who we are that God has a sustained commitment to MPC. IV The second reason to look to God for what we need is that God is our wide-awake guardian. Eight times in 8 verses, the psalmist describes God as the one who guards. The one who s awake and watchful. Who never falls asleep at the switch. The one who tirelessly supervises, oversees, and pilots his people. Jesus elaborates on the same theme in John 10. Perhaps you remember the US Air flight that had to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River in January There s a brand new movie in theaters about 8

9 that miraculous landing and the pilot who pulled it off: Sully Sullenberger. It s really good. Go see it. Here s what happened. Shortly after take-off from LaGuardia, the plane ran into a flock of Canadian geese. First there was a lot of thumping, as geese flew directly into the plane s engines and disabled both of them. Then, there was silence, Sully remembered afterwards. And then the smell. There wasn t much time to consider options, make decisions, and execute them. Sully said afterwards he never thought of his family, never thought of the possibility of death. What he was thinking, he said, was this: that he knew what to do. and that he was confident of putting the plane down safely. Which he did. Considering the conditions, he made what amounted to a perfect landing on the Hudson River at 3:30 on a Thursday afternoon. Sully was utterly alert and utterly calm throughout. Everyone on board survived. This interim time we re in it s not an emergency. But it is an important time. What happens over the next year or so matters. It matters a lot. And during this time we can count on the wide-awakeness of God. We can count on the alertness and calmness of the good shepherd. V And here s the third reason for us to look to God during the interim time: the fact that God is with us. With us in the everydayness of our lives. The psalmist uses the imagery of tripping on a stone to get at this. And Jesus uses a detailed description of the daily-ness of the shepherding life. Shepherds accompany their sheep. They engage in dozens of daily rituals, details, and chores. Jesus himself is proof that God knows our human life in all its ordinariness and actually values it. I love what Eugene Peterson says about this. He says the only serious mistake we can make [as we go through life, through something like an interim time] 9

10 the only serious mistake we can make is to conclude that God has gotten bored looking after us and has shifted his attention to a more exciting Christian, or that God has become disgusted with our meandering obedience and decided to let us fend for ourselves for a while, or that God has gotten too busy fulfilling prophecy in the Middle East to take time now to sort out the complicated mess we have gotten ourselves into. That is the only serious mistake we can make. 2 Way back in 1989, another plane full of people experienced an emergency. United Airlines flight 232 was on its way from Denver to Chicago. Partway through the flight, the plane s hydraulic system failed seriously disabling it and making it impossible to steer. For 45 minutes, the crew pooled their expertise in an attempt to get to an airport and land that plane. They eventually succeeded in doing this at the airport in Sioux City, Iowa though not without loss of life. Of 296 people on board, 111 were killed. But 185 people survived. Given the magnitude of the crisis, these results were practically miraculous. Friends of ours, Bruce and Ruth Anne Osenberg, were on that flight, along with their daughter though we didn t know them until the year after the crash. The story of that flight is quite amazing, as is the story on the ground. Both are filled with many coincidences of a providential nature that led to the saving of many lives. But something that stood out to me about Bruce and Ruth Anne s experience was this: the profound connection they have with the pilot of that flight, Captain Al Haynes. His was the voice they heard throughout the 45 minutes before landing in Sioux City calmly explaining the situation; calmly apprising them of developments; calmly coaching them for the landing; hoping to save their lives; all the while facing and living the same circumstances himself. There s something about being in the same foxhole together not just surviving the battle. Bruce and Ruth Anne spent 45 minutes in the same foxhole with Al Haynes, and they love 2 Ibid,

11 him for that maybe more than they love him for saving their lives. For years afterwards, they d go anywhere, anytime, to hear him speak. Al Haynes had been with them on Flight 232; they were sure they mattered to him; and they knew and loved the sound of his voice. Like I said before, an interim time isn t an emergency. In fact, a lot of what we do together will be incredibly ordinary. But the good shepherd will not get bored and shift his attention to more exciting Christians than we are. We can count on God to be in the details of what we do together. To care about them. VI The psalmist begins by gazing up to the hills and asking, Where does my help come from? He concludes with words of confidence: The LORD will guard your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore. And Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly. So let s spend this interim time looking to God. Let s do that first. Let s do it foundationally. Let s build everything else we do around doing that. Because God is real. And God is our wide-awake guardian. And God will accompany us every step of the way. 11