Wants and Needs

"I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep” [John 10:14-15].

In some portions of the church, this upcoming Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, is known as “Shepherd Sunday.” Because of that designation, the Psalter reading in all three years of the Revised Common Lectionary cycle is the beloved Twenty-third. And while the New Testament readings do change in each year of the triennial cycle, the Gospel lesson for the Fourth Sunday of Easter is always one of John’s “shepherd” passages. This year (Year B), for example, it’s John 10:11-18. It contains one of Jesus’ special “I am” pronouncements. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus tells us. What’s more, “The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep” [John 10:11].

A curmudgeon at heart, I have, for many years, enjoyed how this week’s Psalter and Gospel lessons are so out of step with what “the public” wants. A little Internet searching last night confirmed what so many preachers already know—that, as for sermons, the number one concern voiced by both seekers and Christians is this: “Tell me clearly how I can apply this to my life today, this week.”

You see, notwithstanding the fact that we’ve been barred from the pews for more than a year now, for so many professing Christians, church on Sunday isn’t so much about “glorifying God and enjoying Him forever” [the answer to the first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, to-wit; “What is the chief end or purpose of humanity?]. Instead, all too many think that Sunday at church should be about me. “For Heaven’s sake,” so many cry out, “I want the Gospel to be relevant to my life.” Heaven forbid, of course, that such a statement be turned on its head so as to demand that our lives be judged according to their relevance to the Gospel.

So many of us want an assignment for the upcoming week. We want marching orders. Our culture wants to get things done. We want to make sure we’re part of the action. Many a pastor is ready to accommodate.

Years ago, one of my friends who had recently graduated from Duke Div School and who, just a few weeks later, had been appointed by his bishop to a rural Methodist church, passed out pencils and pads to the congregation, so that they could “take notes.” On seeing that one little woman never scribbled a word on her pad, the young, new pastor presumptuously asked her, “Didn’t you get any pointers out of my sermon?”

She said, “Well, I was kinda hoping that I’d hear God’s word proclaimed—not yours.”

“Ouch.” Will Willimon has aptly observed, “It’s not a sermon until God shows up” [Willimon, Preachers Dare: Speaking For God, Abingdon Press, 2020, p. xi].

Indeed, for many of us curmudgeons, the marvelous thing about this week’s readings is that it is impossible to turn them into a “to-do” list. Unless one thinks that the core lesson of the 23rd Psalm is that we should go find a field somewhere within which we can lie down, all the real activity in the Psalm—the “making,” “leading,” “restoring,” “preparing,” and “anointing” is accomplished solely through the action of Yahweh, not you or me. One must patiently sit and watch all the activity be performed by the Divine.

And the John passage is quite consistent with the Psalm. Jesus doesn’t say, “I am the good teacher.” Nor does he say, “I am the good community organizer. Go out there and get busy.”

As my friend, Luke Bell, noted during a shared lunch a week or so ago, Jesus didn’t say, “I’m the CEO.” Instead, he explicitly stresses the core of our relationship with Him. There is a clear pecking order. He is the good shepherd; we are sheep. How dare he speak Truth to power!

If we wade through a few more chapters of the Fourth Gospel, we’ll see Him also proclaim, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” [John 14:6]. While there may be some scriptural basis elsewhere for the notion that we are Yahweh’s hands and feet, you won’t find that in the Gospel of John. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is clear about it: He is the loving shepherd; we are the wayward, lost, docile, domesticated sheep. And, thanks be to God, that the cosmos is so arranged.

The young mother looks down at her four-month-old daughter and her heart almost stops. Is it her imagination, or does her child’s head seem larger than it was just a few days ago? She and her husband scoop up the child and head to the doctor. Two days later, after batteries of tests, her husband’s and her own worst fears are confirmed. A tumor is growing inside their young daughter’s skull. The mother doesn’t need a to-do list; she needs a shepherd.

The retired man senses the bad news even before his physician utters it. The cancer has returned. His dangerous adversary plots its destructive path within the man’s body. Through the skills of those who have been treating him, he has been able to fight it off before, but now, there are no more miracle drugs, no more arrows to be pulled from the quiver. He had hoped—prayed—for additional time, time to heal relationships, time to tell those around him how much they mean to him, time to share with his beloved wife. He doesn’t need marching orders from a relevant, well-meaning church. He needs a shepherd.

For a Rock Hill couple, the phone call comes at supper time. It’s from totally out of the blue. The unspeakable has happened. A young man, perhaps angry at the world around him, has carried two pistols to the home of the couple’s close friends who live just across town. “The young man did what?”

Six senseless deaths—the woman, thinking prayerfully of her own grandchildren, remembers the Easter egg hunt, just a few days earlier, in which her friends’ two tender, young grandchildren, now among the deceased, had taken their own Easter eggs and hid them in plain sight so that another little one, a number of years younger than themselves, would be sure to find some colorful trophies. The woman is unable to fight back the tears.

The woman’s husband ponders the loss of his best friend, the man with whom he had shared so much over so many years. Her husband is almost whispering, “How can this be? I spoke with Robert just two days ago.” This Rock Hill couple, as well as the surviving friends and family spread out over the Southeast, don’t need a sermon with three points and a poem. They need a shepherd.

And thanks be to God, each of these beloved children of God—the young parents with the gravely sick daughter, the retired friend facing cancer, the friends and family of those senselessly slain in Rock Hill, and dare I say it, you and me—not only have a shepherd, we have much more, for we have the promises of the Good Shepherd. His name is Jesus. He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God!

He spreads out his arms for us, not so much to embrace us, but rather to embrace the cross upon which He will die. Indeed, he walks onward, beckoning us to follow, as he heads toward a hill called Golgotha. He knows the pain that lies ahead. But there is something else on His mind. He knows our pain, our fear, our loneliness, our sorrow. He tells us that only the good shepherd will lay down his life for us. And then, He does just that. He says that He lays it down in order that he might take it up again [John 10:17].

Our good shepherd knows what we want. My Dad, perhaps like your own, often used to say, “You’re big enough for your wants not to hurt you.” But, thanks be to God, our Risen Lord instead supplies not what we want, but what we need.

“Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.”