Mine? Ours! Sermon Preached by Rev. Aaron M. Schellhas Based on Ezekiel 34:11-24 Season of Pentecost September 15, 2013 St. John's Lutheran Church, Woodstock, Illinois Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. The text upon which we will meditate this morning is from the Old Testament reading, Ezekiel, chapter thirty-four, especially verses seventeen through nineteen. God speaks to His people through Ezekiel, and He says: As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and male goats. Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture; and to drink of clear water, that you must muddy the rest of the water with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have muddied with your feet? Please pray with me: Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be pleasing and acceptable to You, our Rock and our Redeemer. Holy Spirit, be in my lips and in the ears and hearts of everyone present that they may hear Your Word. Amen. When my daughter Natalee was really little, probably five or six years ago, there was one movie that seemed to be on perpetual replay in our household. It was Disney s Finding Nemo. As such, I became very accustomed to hearing the same lines and could quote whole sections of the movie from time to time. Some of the lines actually stuck with me. One scene particularly kind of burned itself into my mind. It s the scene where, if you recall, Dory and Marin are in kind of a difficult situation. They re sitting there on a dock with their friend Nigel, the pelican, and all around them is a flock of seagulls. And they re in trouble, because all those seagulls are looking at those two fish and going, That looks like a nice snack. And do you remember what those seagulls are saying? Mine mine mine mine! So when the seagulls finally do descend upon Dory and Marin, there s a big kafuffle, a big shuffling around, some elbowing, pushing, shoving, and Dory and Marin, as Dory likes to say, es-cop-ay, I mean, escape. All the birds want the fish, and nobody gets any. They re pushing and shoving; nobody eats. The mentality amongst these seagulls is pretty clear: if I can t have it, then nobody can! 1
I think sometimes we can have this same kind of mentality. It s so easy to slip into this possessive posture toward something in a way that excludes other people in an unhealthy way. We ve all probably seen a child sitting in a corner with a toy, trying to guard and protect it as another child politely, or maybe not so politely, asks to use that toy or to play with it. We ve all probably seen a child take his ball and go home. So it s time for something that I m going to call from now on Truth Telling Time. We did this a couple of weeks ago. It s an opportunity to share some things with your family of faith here, to talk about things that are important, to tell the truth, to be open and honest with one another. It seems to be an effective way to generate discussion. So it s an opportunity to talk during the sermon. I know your mom probably always nudged you when you were talking during the sermon; actually, we re going to encourage that. So I want you to discuss a question in groups of three or more; and I d encourage you to get together, to form your groups, with maybe someone whom you might not always talk to the most. Answer the question as honestly as you can. It might be difficult to share openly, honestly, but I find that the conversation is richer when I share some things that are closer to my heart. So here s the question: What are some things in my life of which I am overly protective and which I choose not to share? I m talking about anything as simple as a physical item, a treasured possession, that you guard zealously, or maybe there are some emotions or experiences that you hold really close to your chest and don t really like to talk about not that I m asking you to talk about them today, but just say That s something that s hard for me to talk about. Take about three minutes to form your groups or three or more and discuss. Go. [Discussion time] What was one of the things you shared that you kind of protect? You can raise your hand or just shout it out. Okay, some childhood experiences are kind of precious or kind of off-limits; you don t talk about them. Yes? Okay, experiences that are painful, like a friend committing suicide; we don t want to talk about that too much. Anybody else? Okay, yeah, treasured possessions, things that you want to protect. Anything in particular? Any treasured possession? I heard somebody talking about a convertible; if I jumped behind the wheel, they d probably get a little antsy. I don t like people touching my guitars, just pick them up and start playing no, no, no, please. I m encouraged to see that there was a lot of discussion around these things, because that s kind of the point: people don t like to talk about the things that they hold tightly. So thank you for doing that. It s a sticky subject. There are plenty of things that we should very carefully guard in this life. I think the sanctity of marriage is one of them. What goes on between a husband and wife is between them and God, because they made a promise to Him and to one another, and nobody has the right to get in between that, in the middle of that, unless there is just blatant, open evidence that there is something going on there that is not within God s plan for marriage. How about the sanctity of human life? The gift of life is a gift from God that should be 2
guarded and protected, especially for those who cannot speak for themselves. And God s Word it s something that should be held onto tightly, and we should never, ever let go of it. But wait, wait just a second! Did I just hear a pastor say that we should hold God s Word close to us, and never let it go? Wait, I thought Jesus told us that we should share with everyone! What s this guy talking about? Isn t that what Jesus told us to do, share it? Well, the answer is, yes, both/and. Never let it go, and share it. The promises of God are a priceless treasure of which we should never, ever let go. The life we find in following after our Hero, the One who has saved us from all the really, really nasty things in life, especially eternal death, that s something we really need to hold on to. The cross of Jesus, the symbol of Who He is to us, what He has done for us, that s something to hold on to! The resurrection that we profess as Christians, it s something we should never let go of! It is ours, it s something God has give to us, His dearly beloved people, and it s what makes us people of hope, especially in a setting like a funeral. We hold onto Jesus, our Lord, our Master, our Savior, our Life, our Good Shepherd. And more important, most importantly, our Good Shepherd holds on to us. That s what Ezekiel is talking about in our Old Testament lesson for today. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is going to do for His people what nobody else can do. And I ve got to tell you, Ezekiel makes it pretty clear that ones whom Jesus charged with this responsibility, in his time, are not doing what they re supposed to do. Not by a long shot; they re missing the mark in huge ways. So through Ezekiel, this is what Jesus says in the portion of our reading right before the portion you heard today; He basically says, You re supposed to be taking care of the sheep, but what are you doing? You re barbequing the sheep! You take their food and all the good things that I want to give to them through you, and you hoard them for yourselves. You re consuming the things that are supposed to be for everyone! How dare you! Now, I gotta tell you, as a pastor, as an under-shepherd of Christ, these words make me a little weak in the knees, because they re strong words of judgment and condemnation, and I know that I m not perfect and I don t always do the job that God s given to me the best. And I will be held accountable to Him. But that s the point! Jesus, the Good Shepherd, does take care of us! Will your pastor let you down from time to time? Unfortunately, yes, I will. How about your spouse or your best friend? Will they let you down, the people who are supposed to pick you up and encourage you when you become depressed with the difficult situations in life that you face, or maybe even make you start to doubt whether God is really there, whether He s really going to take care of you? Yeah. Even the best of friends let us down from time to time. But our Good Shepherd never, ever lets us down! Especially 3
when life gets to be the worst it can get, even in death itself, our Good Shepherd is the only One who can get us out of that spot! The only One who can pry your corpse out of that box is the Good Shepherd; He can do that, He can bring it out and make it live and breathe again. The One who laid down His life so that He could pick it back up again is the One who can pick up your life when you lay it down. Pretty incredible stuff! And certainly something that we need to be holding on to! These things are the promises that God gives us. They are ours. And He wants us to share them with others. There is an endless supply of God s grace and forgiveness for everyone in the world. His love has no boundaries. His promises are for all people, whether we choose to believe them or not. And most Christians know, I think, at least in their heads, that we re supposed to share the love of Christ with everyone around us. I m certainly not encouraging you to have the hoarding, the mine mine mine mentality when it comes to God s Word and His goodness to you and the love of Jesus. But I want you to think about this as we look a little closer at our text for this morning, verses seventeen through nineteen that you heard me read earlier. Full disclosure: I don t know much about sheep. In fact, if I were a betting man, I would wager that there are some of you here who know loads more about sheep than I do. But this I do know this about sheep: they re not the smartest animals. They re somewhere right above lemmings in the animal kingdom of the most silly animals on the planet. Do you know what I m talking about? Lemmings? They re these little furry creatures that follow each other off the cliff to their deaths in huge droves? Yeah, sheep aren t much smarter. They re about as smart as a bag of hammers, if the truth be told. Now hold on to that for a second: silly sheep, dumb animals. What Ezekiel is talking about in these few verses, seventeen through nineteen, is those who are strong in the faith making it difficult for those who are weak to be reach solid spiritual sustenance, to be fed by God s Word. Those of us who are in church all the time, who embrace opportunities to gather together and talk about Jesus, who earnestly desire to live our lives faithfully according to that Word, those of us who consider ourselves strong in the faith, still often make it difficult for other people to see Jesus. So when Ezekiel talks about the strong sheep trampling on the grass and muddying the waters, I wonder if he s not so much reprimanding or condemning those who purposely try to keep the weaker sheep from that sustenance, as much he is reprimanding us for accidentally doing so by not being careful enough to preserve the spiritual sustenance for those who need it. As I said, it wouldn t surprise me to see a group of sheep at a watering hole doing a bunch of pushing I want it. You can t have it, the mine mine mine mentality. And what happens? The water turns muddy. And who gets a drink? Nobody. Especially not the weak sheep, the weaker ones that are pushed to the back, the ones who desperately need to hear a good word from God. 4
My dear brothers and sisters, shame on us. We should know better. We need to mind our walk carefully. Not just because it pleases God, because it does. And not because we could ever find a way through that righteous walking to please Him that s impossible, we can t do it. Our Good Shepherd certainly continually takes care of us in that most important of departments. He picks us up every time we fall down and lie moaning and bleating at His feet on the ground, desperate for comfort and help. He picks us up, He binds our wounds, and He carries us on His shoulders until we can begin to be strong enough to start walking again. We need to mind our walk more carefully because other people need to hear about Jesus, and our walk is a reflection on our Shepherd. The Good News of the Gospel is that Jesus gave His life freely to all, even to the point of death, and a pretty horrible one at that. The good news of the gospel is Jesus on the cross, His willingness, His free giving of Himself, willing to give up even the things that we desperately hold on to and hoard and protect carefully. Why? So that other people may know the Good Shepherd in the way that we do. Who is our Shepherd? What does He do? How does He care for us? I d like you to find a pew Bible and take it out and open it to Psalm 23. We sang that song that paraphrases Psalm 23. It s a treasured possession of the Church, Psalm 23. Let s read this together: The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. 5
That s our Shepherd the Shepherd who loves us, the Shepherd who will lead us home, a Shepherd who is calling you to help Him gather many more sheep into the fold of His love. Please pray with me: Jesus, our Good Shepherd, You care deeply for Your sheep. You feed us. You give us drink. You provide an endless supply of spiritual sustenance for Your sheep. In the power of Your Holy Spirit, please keep us mindful of how we live so that we do not muddy the waters that You want others to be able to drink from, too. In Your Name we pray, dear Shepherd. Amen. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Psalm 23 taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, 1973, 1978, 1984 by The International Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 6