November 24, 2019, "The Good Shepherd" - El Monte Community Presbyterian Church

Jeremiah 23.1-6; Luke 1.68-79

“Are we there yet?” the child asks, for the umpteenth time. 

“Not yet!” says Mom … “we have a few more hours to go.”

And ten minutes later, “Are we there yet?”

And so it goes … on a journey.

And we’ve been on our own journey for 12 months … we’ve done this journey before, many times … a 12-month trip … a trip through time … it began last December, with the First Sunday of Advent … and the journey ends today … we’ve arrived … the last Sunday of the liturgical year … Christ the King Sunday.

Long live the King.

In many a hymn, we sing of Christ the King:

Crown him with many crowns,

the Lamb upon his throne.

Hark! how the heavenly anthem drowns

all music but its own.

Awake, my soul, and sing

of him who died for thee,

and hail him as thy matchless king

through all eternity.

The hymn goes on:

Crown him the LORD of life.

Then, 

Crown him the LORD of love.

Ending with:

Crown him the LORD of years.

When it comes to kings and queens as such, we’re not likely to think of Christ as King … and here in America, we fought a revolution to rid ourselves of King George. 

Kings mostly are known for their ruthless ways, power and dominance … and so are queens and dukes and baronesses … royalty doesn’t fare well in the annals of history.

Some of us may follow the British Royal Family, or for my wife and I, maybe the Netherlands Royal Family … my son did a three-year stint in the Peace Corps, working in Swaziland, a small nations governed by a king mostly obsessed with his wealth and many wives.

Much of the Old Testament is about kings and queens … and some of them were good, and most of them weren’t … all of them had blood on their hands … as is the wont of kings and queens, Caesars and Pharaohs … those who rule by the sword.

The Prophets promised us a king, a king never seen before on the face of the earth … a king of peace and hope … a king with clean hands, a king of love and justice … a king, not of territory, but of the whole world … a king for all of humankind … 

But a king of a very different kind: 

Jeremiah longs for the Good Shepherd …

The good shepherd who guides and guards the flock … the LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want … he maketh to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters, he restoreth my soul … 

When John the Baptist is born, his father sings of things to come … God’s mercy and God’s peace … a new day and a new age … and John would be the forerunner, the one to announce the new thing God is doing … it’s John who points to Jesus and calls him The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

The Lamb of God, the King of Glory … the King of Glory, the Good Shepherd …

The final word.

The ultimate reality.

The foundation of all that’s right and good, decent and honest.

The goal toward which every heart strives.

The goal of a righteous world.

A world created not by war, but with wisdom.

A world not of conquest, but a world of covenant.

Not of guns, but of grace.

Not of boundaries, but the boundless love of God.

Jeremiah redefines power as kindness … 

We see these images all over the Bible … complimenting one another … 

The first two chapters of the Bible, two different stories, from two different sources:

The first chapter of Genesis is very much the image of a King, high and lifted up, whose word is powerful and purposeful … who creates with ease and composure, who speaks a word, and so it is … morning and night, the heavens and the earth.

The second chapter of Genesis shows God as an artist, a God with gentle hand, who takes a handful of dirt, carefully shapes a creature; a leg and an arm, a rib here and some muscle there, the eye and the nose, the ear and the mouth … and then, breathing into it, God brings the little creature to life.

When ancient Israel compiled its sacred texts, the ancient editors understood that faith needed both stories … that power needed to be tempered by kindness, and kindness needed to be backed up by power.

We see this playing out in the Elijah story - the confrontation of the Prophet with the Priests of Baal - it’s dramatic, violent, bloody, fiery - the ultimate expression of power, raw and brutal … but it goes sour for Elijah, because that’s what happens with raw, brutal power - it goes sour … and Elijah runs for his life, into the wilderness … he’s fed by an angel, and finally Elijah makes his way to the cave … “What are you doing here,” God asks, and Elijah replies, “Well, I’ve been busy killing the priests of Baal, and I’m the only faithful guy you’ve got.”

God tells Elijah to stand on a mountain and pay attention … then came a great wind, strong enough to split the rocks … then an earthquake, and finally a great fire … and the Bible says: God wasn’t in any of it.

And then comes the silence, the deep and unnerving silence of holiness … when all of creation holds its breath … quiet now … pay attention … listen … and in the quietness, God.

We see it in the Birth Story … the raw power of Herod out to kill, and Gentle Mary and her child, wrapped in simple cloth, in a manger, in a stable behind the inn.

We see it in the contrast between Pilate and Jesus … Pilate, a man full of power, and Jesus, filled with the Spirit … Pilate, a man of sword and soldier; Jesus, the man of love and mercy.

We see the same in the Book of Revelation - the angel asks, “Who’s worthy to open the scroll?”

“The Lion of Judah,” says the angel … and when John looks for the lion, what does he see? He’s see a Lamb, the Lamb of God.

We see this played out in the Apostles Creed, in the very words, I believe in God the Father almighty … 

In one breath, God … and in the next, Father … the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ … 

And in the LORD’s prayer, Our Father, who art in heaven …

God as our Father, and our Father in heaven as God - in God, the perfect union of absolute power and eternal love … and in Jesus Christ God’s Son, and in the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life.

For Jesus, the word Father speaks of goodness, wisdom and kindness: but for some of us, the word “father” is frightening and sad.

Some of us were reared by angry fathers … fathers so unsure of themselves, they could only respond to life with violence and abusive words … some fathers ran away and abandoned their families.

Too many fathers hit their children, and too many fathers hit their wives … yes, domestic abuse is real and it’s sad and it’s wrong.

I hope all of you can hear the goodness and gentleness of the word “Father” as Jesus gives to us “our Father in heaven,” by the Hand of the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life … that every father here will learn from the Father in Heaven, and every child here will come to know the Father of us all, through Jesus Christ our LORD.

On this good Sunday.

Christ the King Sunday.

All glory, laud and honor to the King of kings and the LORD of lords …

In the scheme of things, I love the fact that Christ the King Sunday lines up with a national holiday, Thanksgiving … for no word better characterizes our life as Christians: We are those who give thanks.

We give thanks for the love of God.

We give thanks for one another.

We give thanks for the gospel of our LORD Jesus Christ.

And in the room next door, right after worship, we give thanks for good food, family and friends.

And this coming Thursday, of course, of all the glories of a Thanksgiving Table, we give thanks for mashed potatoes.

To God be the glory. Hallelujah and Amen!

Evangelicalism's New Mantra

Evangelical preaching's new mantra: "if you're more disturbed by the sin out there than by the sin within, your faith needs some work."

The old stuff of the Olde South, or Moody Bible, "smokin', drinkin', and cussin', and card playin' and goin' to movies, too" - all bad, so let's preach about it, and preach about it like hell.

In the newer, more up-to-date, guise, the preacher as therapist and the church as couch-cult - inner peace, and better parenting, being a more loving spouse and a better worker, and getting ahead in life, fighting debit and growing rich, and then going to heaven, and so on.

In the Olde South, slavery and war, and then Jim Crow ... and through out the nation, in places like North Dakota and Wisconsin, the devils of racism, homophobia and Betsy DeVos and her schemes to further the interest of wealth at the expense of everyone else.

The "sins within" are seductive, stealing our time, and dominating our prayers, as we cascade into ourselves all the more, obsessing about every spiritual flaw and hiccup, every little blemish of the soul, and every wrinkle in our spirit.

Meanwhile, the world burns, and we go to church to forget the world, and what better way to forget the world (which is really forgetting God), is to focus on our "inner sins." There we go, now we got it - self, self, and more self ... in the quest for spiritual perfection, inner peace, health, wealth and happiness. The church becomes a dispenser of hair coloring and wrinkle cream, nostrums and snake oil.

Preach on preacher and tell me about myself ... but, preacher, please, whatever you do, don't talk about the environment, global warming, or children in cages, or the lies spewing out of the mouths of our leaders, or the greed of Wall Street and the madness of might and power.

Don't talk about the "sins our there," because then I have do something about them ... I have to resist and protest, get organized and get involved, and fight for justice and peace.

I don't wanna bother with that - I want to deal with my inner peace and my nerves.

That my nerves and lack of inner peace might be connected to the "sins out there," I don't wanna hear it.

I wanna feel better; I don't want to be called by Christ to take up the cross of the world, the world's pain and sorrow, the injustice of the places where I work, the cruelty of racism which I mostly want to ignore, even as my neighbors buy their guns and hang confederate flags in their home, and I move to neighborhoods where everyone looks like me.

Nope, I don't wanna hear about any of that "sin out there stuff" ... I want to homeschool my children, or send them to private christian academies, so they don't have to deal with other religions and cultures, so they won't have to think about "the other America" and the children at the border, so they won't have read great literature and learn about science, and learn how to think for themselves. Thinking is painful, and we don't need any of it. We all just want inner peace, and a few charities we can support, so we can feel good about the "good" we're doing.

Ok preacher?

You got that? I hope you do.

Ten Thousand Graves

Ten thousand graves

Normandy

Ten thousand graves ... 

Tended with care ... lush grass precisely trimmed.

Crosses mostly ... and Stars of David ...

Young men and women cut down in the prime of life.

They were brave and they were afraid ...

Their pictures reveal that haunted look ...

Of soldiers too tired to be afraid, 

And too frightened to find sleep.

Seasick and wet, 

They hit the beach …

Under the cover of …

Steel and smoke.

Death and tears abound …

Ahead, my friends, ahead.

There’s no going back now.

No stopping for any of us.

A continent enslaved awaits the charge.

Nations, yes, and then some, to be unshackled …

And the years pass us by quickly …

Memories roll beyond the reach of words …

Silent tears still shed …

By those who made it home.

Slowly, now, they join their comrades,

As we all do … with the passage of time.

Hand-in-hand; arm-in-arm … a band of brothers …

A chorus of sisters …

Smoke and steel … 

And a victory in hand.

And may those 

Ten thousand graves remain ever well-tended!

© Tom Eggebeen, 2010

Strolling among those graves, on a bright, sunny, Normandy day, we each paused from time-to-time by a grave, for no other reason than our feet stopped moving … and we’d read the name, the dates … I set out to find the date of my birthday, July 7, 1944 … I found two graves - two soldiers who died, and who knows how, while a squalling baby Eggebeen entered this too often sordid world, in the early morning, it was, Sheboygan, WI, Memorial Hospital, on the north side of town, on the shores of Lake Michigan. I remember standing by those two graves in Normandy, and I kept saying “thank you.”

I didn’t have any choice to be born - that’s how it is for us - either by design, or by chance, we’re conceived, and if things work out, we make it nine months in our mother’s womb.

And those soldiers, too, they were born like most are, in the hopes and joys of a family … and they went to school and had big dreams, and played cops and robbers and then dated, and found love, and maybe lost it … and then a war … and however it was, those bright and eager lives were abruptly ended, too soon ended, and families received the news they all dreaded to receive, and they wept … the remains of a loved one, now, to remain in
Europe, where they fell … and life goes on, sort of, but something missing, always … death does that to a family, to towns all across America … the missing ones, buried across the sea … 

Do the buried ones have a voice?

Perhaps they do … a singular voice, a quiet voice, from the grave - “Why?” Their question, if they have one, to us … who yet live. “Why?”

The eleventh month, the eleventh day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, the Armistice was signed … to end the war that was so horrible and violent, folks thought it might be the “war to end all wars” … 

We do well today to honor the dead … and to hear their quiet voice, with their quiet question, “Why?”

We are a warring species … for good reasons, and for lousy reasons, we kill one another … if not with the tools of war, then with words … and a host of other devices so cleverly woven in our behavior - of how we treat one another, the things we say, the glance that says it all, the flipped eyebrow, and so on and so forth.

On this good day, to search our souls … and pay attention to the gospel of our LORD Jesus Christ … that by the Spirit of mercy, and kindness, to quiet within ourselves, the darker thoughts that breed the stuff of harm.

And to pray for our nation and its leaders, that the darker materials of violence and death would be better managed by faith, hope and love.

On this day, Nov. 11 … God’s Peace, and Amen!