The Good Shepherd
Scripture: John 10:11-18
Given on 04/26/15 at UPC of Amsterdam, NY
Psalm 23
YHWH, you are my shepherd— I want nothing more. 2 You let me lie down in green meadows; you lead me beside restful waters: 3 you refresh my soul. You guide me to lush pastures for the sake of your Name. 4 Even if i’m surrounded by shadows of Death, I fear no danger, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff— they give me courage. 5 You spread a table for me in the presence of my enemies, and you anoint my head with oil— my cup overflows! 6 Only goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in your house, YHWH, for days without end.
He managed to pry his eyes open as the 10:00 sun came blazing through the window. At some point in the middle of the night the thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning had been crossed and sounds of bells ringing all throughout the down town now filled his room and his ears. If it was possible for something to be both pleasant and annoying at the same time, those bells certainly fit the bill. From the La-Z-Boy in which he deposited himself somewhere in the darkest portion of the evening, he determined that there was no possible angle at which he could hold his head that did not remind him of the previous night’s activities. A dull throbbing reverberated in each part of his skull and with each new attempt to stop the pain he was becoming well aware that any such efforts were futile. As his eyes began a cursory look around the room in which he found himself, he noticed the presence of both the victim and the crime sitting just a little past his arms reach on the floor in front of his chair. An empty glass bottle formerly containing Gilbey’s gin sat along side a consumed six-pack of store brand tonic water and a crudely cut lime. The memories of the previous evening had finally begun to return to him as he looked at the ashtray on the table beside him containing a countless number of smushed out Parliament cigarettes. He had begun the evening playing his guitar at one of the open-mic nights that went on around town. Increasingly it was difficult to coax him out of his home to do anything but address the most basic needs of life but this was different. This was music. And music gave him the opportunity to experience something greater than himself, though, in all honesty, it was becoming more difficult to remember what exactly that was. Last night he had spent time strumming tunes at the late-night coffee shoppe that had opened just down the block from his apartment. Those places are primarily for hipsters and college students and he had felt particularly old while seated on a barstool singing old songs by Johnny Cash and The Band. But he enjoyed the chance to play. As the party at the coffee house began to wind down he excused himself from the younger-than-he crowd and walked his way back to his apartment. In the spring, the temperature moves back and forth from chilly in the morning to warm in the afternoon to chilly again in the evening making it nearly impossible to know how exactly to dress and on this particular night he was kicking himself for not bringing at least a long sleeve shirt with him. And as he walked, the evening air sent a chill straight through him and his raggedy Neil Young t-shirt that left him what the old-timers called, “bone cold.” Entering his apartment he decided to make himself a drink to “warm his soul” at least that is what he told himself, but an hour or so later the afterparty from his successful performance at the open-mic night was in full-swing. And two hours later he was peacefully snoring in his favorite chair.
The next day, as he finally managed to peel himself out of the recliner that had served as his final resting place for the evening, he made his way to his bedroom. It was Sunday morning after all and that meant he had no responsibilities whatsoever for the day and with this weekly experience of freedom he decided that a walk through the neighborhood and some fresh air might do him some good, maybe help get rid of the splitting headache that he was still carrying with him but as he looked in his closet, he was quickly reminded that he had not done any laundry in sometime and had nothing hanging up that was suitable for a walk. There are many advantages that living by oneself can afford you, not the least of which, on this morning, was the ability to walk over to the hamper and start fumbling through to find the cleanest dirty shirt in the basket, which he soon pulled on and began to make his way down the stairs to the street. Exiting his building and heading down a second set of stairs to the sidewalk stairs, he took a few seconds to inhale the cool, clean air of the morning. There is something in the Sunday air that both invigorates the body and reminds you just how minuscule you are in the grand scheme of things. He breathed in, he felt the air expand his lungs. He breathed out, he allowed the residue of the previous evening leave his body. He breathed in and noticed his mind begin to awaken from its slumber that had lasted a good part of the morning longer than his bodily slumber. He breathed out and felt something that resembled happiness. He lit a cigarette.
As he began to walk down the street to nowhere in particular, he saw one of the boys from the neighborhood playing with an empty Mountain Dew can that had managed to not find its way into a trashcan. In an instant he was transported back to his own childhood and he was that boy. Young, maybe 6 or 7, wondering down the street by himself, in a time before that would have been unsafe. He’s kicking that same can. In his mind, he can see his hair slicked back, the way his mother had always made him wear it when they were going to church. He was wearing Nubuck shoes and knee high socks and a Sunday shirt buttoned all the way up to the top. In the midst of his memory he had to laugh a little at the ridiculous image of himself dressed for Sunday morning worship. Trailing a few steps back was his mother. Dressed in a pale lime colored dress with a matching hat and white gloves carrying her handbag in one hand and her well-worn Bible in the other. She never missed a week and so he never missed a week either. They would sit in the same place each Sunday. The third pew back on the right hand side. As his mind drifted back to the present time, his revelry was soon replaced by a biting sadness as he remembered her on her deathbed a few years ago, that same Bible in one hand, and his clasped to her other. As she breathed her last breath, her spirit seemed to vanish as much as her physical presence. The funeral was the last time he had been in church.
As he continued on in his walk he neared the park in the middle of his neighborhood and so he crossed the street so that he could walk through it on his way to wherever he was heading. As he drew closer to the gate at the entrance to the park he noticed his mouth begin to water as the smell of fresh fried chicken invaded every one of his senses. Instantly he was transported to another time in his life. He was maybe 10 or 11 now. And his whole family was gathered around the family table. His grandfather was at the head and his grandmother was flittering around the attached kitchen with an apron and potholders on both hands. There was no one in all the world who could cook chicken like she could and as he gathered at the table with his aunts, uncles, and cousins, there was little doubt that there would be anything left of that bird when it was all said and done. He had been blessed with an exceedingly close family who used any, even the most minor of holidays as a chance to get together and eat his grandmother’s fried chicken. In the dog days of summer, between the 4th of July and Labor day, they would often use the holiday of “Saturday” to enjoy one another’s company. The memory of the day advanced and he saw himself standing in a circle with his hand clasped on each side to a cousin. On the one hand was his cousin William, well, Billy. He and Billy had been best friends growing up. They played stickball in the streets and when they were a bit older, they would cruise the town in Billy’s car. In his mind he smiled a bit when he thought of the minor trouble that the two of them had gotten into growing up. On his other hand was Alice. She was a couple years older than he and had served as a wiser older sister when he needed advice on life and girls. It was Alice who had introduced him to his high school sweetheart and later wife, Mary Beth. As his mind made its way back to the present, he was again saddened at the thought that he hadn't seen any of those people in years. It wasn’t their fault, really. After the collapse of his marriage, he had begun to turn inward. Not wanting to face the reality of his loneliness, he lived alone. Neither had he really desired to make their friends choose sides so he made the choice for them and stopped returning phone calls and going to his old haunts. It was in the shadow of his wife leaving him that he had started to feel that sense of hollowness that can infect anyone who worries sufficiently that neither their life nor the world has any real meaning. So into that dearth of meaning, he began to place anything that would fit (guitars, work, booze) but nothing seemed to satisfy that longing for something more. In the distance he heard a single bell ringing. Sunday School would soon be starting somewhere. He lit another cigarette.
As he entered the park he saw in the distance a father and daughter playing on the swing. She was giggling and demanding that he push her higher and higher. There are a pair of moments on the trajectory of the swing in which the ground or the air cannot hold you. You simply are suspended in mid-air neither going up or going down. It is a magical place in which for that brief moment you feel like you have left the earthly confines of gravity and your body. As he watched them he thought back to growing up in this same park. While his friends always pushed the edges of safety by trying to jump further and further out from the swing while looking like Christopher Reeve he preferred the recreation of the twin points of unbounded weightlessness over and over again. Later on in life, it would be the place that he and Mary Beth would share their first kiss as he was trying to explain the twin moments of freedom experienced on the swings. What had happened? Had he become that difficult to live with? Had he gone so far into his head trying to figure out some way to recreate that sensation on the swing over and over again? In his mind, that swing, him on it, began to traverse in pendulumic journey back and forth faster and faster, never staying in those twin moments long enough to be experienced much less appreciated. Back and forth and back and forth he saw himself as a teenager. Back and forth and back and forth he saw himself as a young adult. Back and forth and back and forth an older man, now alone, the weight of his life resting on his soul until he could hardly breathe the cool morning air. Back and forth and back and forth until he snapped back into the present and found himself seated on a swing on the far side of the swing-set from the father and his daughter, slowly swinging, moving maybe 5 feet in total. By now, he was, of course, beginning to tear up. He was lost in a world in which he knew exactly where he was. Somewhere in between those first few breaths and reaching the park he had become completely unmoored from whatever it was that had been holding back the emotions of the years, his mother’s death, his lost marriage, his lost friends, the cigarettes, the booze, the little boy kicking the can, his mother carrying her bible, his grandmother’s fried chicken, his cousin’s car, the swing rushing back and forth. In that moment he was a ship that had broken the ropes tying it to the dock and was drifting aimlessly through the water and just as he sat on the precipice of screaming out all the pent up emotions that he had been holding into himself for all those years and confirming to every parent and child in the park on that morning that he was, in fact, crazy. He heard, from across the lightyears and across the park, a choir from the church that sits on the corner next to the park, singing, “And he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own and the joy we share as we tarry there none other has ever known.” In an instant, he was every age, every place, every memory all at the same time and like a paperclip being pulled towards a magnet, he felt his soul being drawn into that place. He hadn’t talked to God in so long. Hadn’t even thought of the Jesus of his childhood and yet there he was as if being controlled by another force, putting one foot in front of the next until he made his way towards the open sanctuary door. In the back of his mind, as if from another realm he heard, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” He paused only briefly to drop a crumpled up soft pack of Parliaments in the trashcan on his way in, his contribution to the offering plate on this morning. After that he didn’t even need to think about where he was walking. His soul already knew the way. The third pew on the right. Amen.
John 10:11-18
Jesus said: I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd would die for the sheep. The hired hand, who is neither shepherd nor owner of the sheep, catches sight of the wolf coming and runs away, leaving the sheep to be scattered or snatched by the wolf. That’s because the hired hand works only for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me, In the same way Abba God knows me and I know God—and for these sheep I will lay down my life. I have other sheep that don’t belong to this fold—I must lead them too, and they will hear my voice. And then there will be One flock, One shepherd. This is why Abba God loves me—because I lay down my life, only to take it up again. No one takes my life from me; I lay it down freely. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again. This command I received from my Abba.”
Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace amongst all God’s peoples. Alleluia. Amen.