-->
“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own
know me.”[1] Jesus
says to us in John’s Gospel. Or, here’s another version of Psalm 23 as
interpreted by a five year old: “The Lord is my Shepherd, that’s all I want.”
Just for a moment here, let’s think about these
metaphors Jesus uses: those of shepherd and sheep. I find one of the challenges
of preaching is translating biblical metaphors into something we actually
encounter in our lives today. What used to be common metaphors in people’s
imaginations often don’t really make sense to us today.
Take sheep and shepherds, for instance. Would you
please raise your hand if you have ever herded sheep, owned a sheep, or sheared
a sheep? See what I mean. Not too many of us get up close and personal with
sheep.
Metaphors, though, and their next step, imagination,
are helpful when we can attach something to them that we know about. If you
can’t, a metaphor can be confusing and your imagination has no room to expand.
If you’ve never been near a sheep, you might not understand why knowing and
being known by his sheep would be something a shepherd would find important.
Finding a contemporary image that works might help those of you who aren’t
familiar with sheep. Perhaps it might be chickens since more people are raising
chickens, even in many urban areas. Or it might be bees. Because these
creatures also know their “shepherd” in a similar way that a sheep knows its
shepherd.
I once taught a class about the parables of Jesus.
In one session we spent nearly an hour imagining a contemporary version of the
story about the man who was tended by the Samaritan on the road from Jerusalem
to Jericho. The class, no thanks to me since I wasn’t a native of the area,
came up with several stunning alternate versions that made people think more
deeply about that particular story than they ever had before. None of us, you
see, knew much about the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. What people from
the area did know about was Interstate
35 that cuts down through Kansas. They did
know about a devastating flood that had washed away a family in a car on
Interstate 35. They knew about a tornado that had destroyed a small town near Interstate
35. So those dangerous events on that road were more familiar to them than the
dangerous events on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. By the time we were
finished identifying contemporary metaphors, we felt we knew more about Jesus,
even if we didn’t know about the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.
Right there is something important to think about.
We need to know Jesus even if we don’t know everything there is to know about
the metaphors, or the stories, or the places we hear about in Scripture. We
need to gett to know Jesus and make Him known.
So whether it’s Jesus the Good Shepherd, or Jesus
the Light of the World, or some other metaphor we might imagine for Jesus, he
longs for us to know Him and to follow Him.
Here’s the best illustration I know of what will
happen to us if we get to know Jesus. Other people will see Him in us and want
to know Jesus too. In Madeleine L’Engle’s book, Story as Truth: The Rock That is Higher. She writes,
There’s a
true story I love about a house party in one of the big English country houses.
Often after dinner at these parties people give recitations, sing, and use
whatever talent they have to entertain the company. One year a famous actor was
among the guests. When it came his turn to perform, he recited the twenty-third
psalm, perhaps the most beloved psalm in the Psalter. “The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want.” His rendition was magnificent, and there was much applause.
At the end of the evening someone noticed a little old great aunt dozing in the
corner. She was deaf as a post and had
missed most of what was going on, but she was urged to get up and recite
something. So she stood up, and in her quavery old voice she started, “The Lord
is my shepherd,” and went on to the end of the psalm. When she had finished
there were tears in many eyes. Later one of the guests approached the famous
actor. “You recited that psalm absolutely superbly. It was incomparable. So why
were we so moved by that funny little old lady?” He replied, “I know the psalm.
She knows the shepherd.”[2]
AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2018
[1]
John 14 (NRSV)
[2]
L’Engle, Madeleine. Story as Truth:
The Rock that is Higher. Harold Shaw Publishers. Wheaton:1993.
No comments:
Post a Comment