22 April 2012

“Drenched … to snuggle”
Good Shepherd Sunday
1 John 3:16-24
29 April 2012


You have seen the fliers and heard about it … perhaps from me, perhaps from others … that we’re in the midst of a class on Spiritual Gifts here at Nativity. It’s called “Discovering God’s Vision for Your Life,” and about 20 of us have been gathering the past two Sunday nights – we have two more sessions to go – to discover, develop, and, we pray, deploy those gifts through service into, through and beyond Nativity congregation.
The class is based on the Scripture passages in Paul’s letter which highlight the different gifts of the Holy Spirit ... and, as you might guess, many of these gifts have been seen, and felt, and received here, long before we had a class to “discover” them. Gifts like encouragement, teaching the faith, evangelism and proclamation … we’ve seen, we’ve heard, we’ve felt and received those, most certainly.
Some of the other gifts on the self-inventory, though, have sounded a little outside the typical Lutheran “comfort zone.” We know that Paul writes about miraculous healings, about speaking in tongues and interpreting tongues, but there just aren’t many Lutherans who have shared, seen, felt, or received those gifts of the Spirit. They are most certainly real, but just not here. Christians with those particular gifts tend to cluster, to congregate, in other faith communities.
We Lutherans have our own strengths … we tend to gather as a like-minded group who appreciate, for example, “good order,” an educated faith, structure and organization. We don’t tend to be what most people would call a “warm fuzzy” or “snuggly” faith heritage, we’re more likely head over heart than heart over head …
… a point which always makes the Fourth Sunday after Easter an interesting one for we Lutherans to read, and mark, and meditate on, as it comes around every year … “Good Shepherd Sunday,” the texts, the hymns and songs, the prayers and liturgy, all focused on that long-beloved image of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. In our seasonal baptismal focus, it can indeed be a day in which we explore what it means to be “drenched … to snuggle” in those reassuring, comforting words of the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd.”
Perhaps, as we read and sang the words of the psalm earlier, other voices came into your mind, from other times in your life when the words of this psalm and the voices which spoke them have been burned into your memory, for whatever reason. A fragment from childhood, a parent or grandparent reading them to you, or learning them in Sunday School. Searching in a new Bible translation, to see how the scholars behind that edition versified these words which so many of us have memorized in the King James Version. Times, at the death of a loved one, when these words provided a handhold for comfort, hope, and peace.
“The Lord is my shepherd.” We love the words of the 23rd Psalm because through them we hear the voice of our Lord, meeting us in whatever place or condition of life we are in, meeting us and telling us that he is with us.
It is his voice that we hear through those well-loved words … his voice which comforts us and teaches us and holds us close, keeps us in hope, keeps us drenched in the words of his promise to us … forgiven, beloved, children of God.
Drenched … to snuggle.
Ah, but is this all that Good Shepherd Sunday is about? Certainly it’s well and good to think, to meditate, to sing and pray about, being held close, held well, by Jesus. But is there something here to feed our minds, to challenge us in our thinking and praying and worshipping as well?
Yes, there is.
It’s the Cross.
The cross. It’s not explicitly displayed in these songs and texts on this Good Shepherd Sunday, but it’s clearly there, most certainly, in the three other Scripture readings which we have before us today.
Peter’s words in Acts show the cross-form clearly:

This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’

In 1 John 3:16 – the “other” 3.16 associated with John … it’s clear:

We know love by this, that Jesus laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

And in the Gospel reading, Jesus makes clear this sacrificial nature of being The Good Shepherd:

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Perhaps it’s the part of Good Shepherd Sunday which we forgot, drenched to snuggle as we are in the comfy-cozy love of our Lord … but the whole reason we can be so relaxed, so easily snuggled into the arms of the Good Shepherd is that he is the One who lays it all aside for us, lays down his own life for us, so that we might have that comfy, snuggly place with him, forever.
And more.
It’s the very fact of that act of Jesus that calls forth the same from us … drenched to snuggle, we are called in Jesus’ name and through his love to do the same for one another.
John … the disciple, the Biblical writer who seems to know the most about Jesus-love, he paints the picture of what life is to be like for us because of Jesus:

We ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

I can’t improve on those words. They stand strong, and right, and true, all on their own … not just head language, but head to heart to hands active in love language … you can’t separate the theology of love from its active practice …
… and so, and so, for us, our call, being snuggled in the arms of our Good Shepherd, is to go forth and provide that snuggly space … that giving space … food provided … shelter given … comfort shared … with, for, others, who through our works, our arms … our truth, our action … will also be drenched to snuggle … drenched in the same love our Savior shares with us and calls us to share with our brothers and sisters in need, snuggled in the same, loving arms of our Good Shepherd.
Amen.