FOURTH SUNDAY IN EASTER – 29 APRIL 2007

ST PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCH, ABQ NM – The Rev. P. L. Holman

Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

“From hope to HOPE: living with hearts broken open”

Listen to the echoes of that beautiful psalm we sang earlier, words of Psalm 23 set as a hymn.  We will sing those words again in the hymn that follows this message.  Listen – we need those words in these days: shepherd – the flock hears and follows, never perishing, no one will snatch them from the shepherd’s hand…  Lord, I believe, but the world’s evil – in Iraq, at VT, right here in ABQ – the world’s evil and our own conspire to lead me otherwise. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief….

It was my turn to lead chapel for the Calico Butterfly Preschool children this week.  The theme: God helps us. I’ve been thinking about the good shepherd, so I brought Lamb Chop to help me.  I spoke for a bit about the God who helps, who is like a shepherd who helps the sheep.  Lamb Chop spoke about how much she likes her shepherds, everybody who care for her.  So I asked, how does a shepherd care for the sheep?  After a bit of prompting one child said, He gives them grass to eat.  Good.  Another, she hugs them BUT NOT TOO HARD so they don’t get hurt.  Okay. What about danger – who would want to hurt the lambs?  WOLFS!!!  Yes, and the shepherd and her sheep dog help keep the wolves away.

These wonderful images of our God get somewhat buried beneath the cultural and contextual baggage of our creeds.  In the Easter season our liturgical tradition is to use the Nicene Creed.  The intent of Creeds is that they be memorized by people to use as a guide to the core tenets of the Christian faith. There are several ancient creeds, formulated in different times with different emphases depending on the conflict of that time.  The Nicene Creed, from the 4^th century, focused heavily on the Trinity and how even though we use three names for God Christianity is still a monotheistic religion; in particular, to refute the Arian contention that Jesus was not coequal forever with God but rather a separate, created being. The freight of theological battle and echoes of heresy it was designed to combat remain imbedded in the words, and often folks new to the faith get lost in the dust of that history.  Creeds from other more recent Christian traditions can be helpful models as we seek to hear again the shepherd’s voice in our context, and reclaim the center of our hope. 

The Apostle’s Creed, which we use in the First Light service, is a baptismal creed developed over several centuries of the early church.  It was crafted with a focus on refuting Gnosticism, the belief that Jesus was not truly human but only appeared to be so.

Western Christian missionaries for the Maasai, an indigenous African tribe of semi-nomadic people located primarily in Kenya and northern Tanzania composed the Maasai Creed in about 1960. The creed expresses the essentials of the Christian faith within the Maasai culture (Wikipedia).  As I read it, follow along and compare it to the Nicene Creed as printed on page 6 of the 10:30 bulletin for this Sunday.

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in the darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the Bible, that he would save the world and all nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from that grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love, and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

What a beautiful way to describe, in terms people know and to which their neighbors can relate, the love and compassion of the Shepherding God.  And what a contrast to the stories of fear and bloodshed, the evil blasting through a well-groomed campus, leaving bloodshed and silenced lambs in its wake, broken hearts and unanswered cries…

A gift from the time I spent at the forum on Women and Spirituality gives words of hope in response to that image.  A speaker on Spirituality and Political Change shared that she was transformed by her time of imprisonment served for her part in actions of civil disobedience while protesting the US Army School of the Americas.  Judy Bierbaum told the gathering that she engaged in those actions in the hope that she could change things to the way she thought they should be.  Now she lives in HOPE, praying daily to God for the voice to love God and others, trusting God to tend to the details.  Her heart was broken as she listened to the stories of her fellow inmates, and then it was broken open.  Now she lives, freed, empowered to shepherd others as the Spirit shepherds her.

I have never been to Virginia Tech, or spent much time at all in that area of our country.  Yet, judging from the accounts I’ve read of the campus and local communities, I have the image of those as shepherding communities.  Not perfect – no mortal shepherd is – simply caring, committed, hope-filled places.  VT – the maroon and orange and thousands of lit candles etched on the retinas of our hearts – the community responded in the aftermath with caring assemblies and public memorials to bring grief to hope; opportunities to congregate gave folks time and space to hug and stare, to sob and wail.  And also to turn….with open arms they welcomed those who returned to carry on and live. There is a gift in every life remembered: the 32 victims of senseless rage NOW, and one day, by God’s grace, the shooter’s story will lead to changes – even if only deeper awareness that leads from death to life, that moves us in all our relationships from apathy to connection, and in our response to injustice from retribution to restoration. God grant that we, as a society, might learn from this horrific event not to seek ways to get even, rather learn what we need to do to get well.

In our life together as a congregation we see the real evidence of the shepherding love of God incarnate.  Like Dorcas, whose acts of caring were like a glimpse of the living and risen Christ to her community, the St. Paul sewing group whose quilts dot the pews this morning give that shepherding warmth to the homeless of ABQ.  Like Catherine of Sienna, whose memory the church honors this day (see the weekly worship notes prepared by Terry Cole), compassion for those facing burdens in life are tended to by our Stephen Ministers, our Visitation (Eucharistic) Ministers and our covenanted Prayer Chain Ministers. 

We need the words of the Shepherd Psalm this day, and we need these words too: Christ has risen, and the Holy Spirit is moving in the lives of the people.  As you receive the Holy Meal this morning, receive Christ and be changed.  Let your brokenness be broken open; be broken open like this loaf of beautiful bread. Be fed, to feed the world – not as you ought but as you are able, use your gifts to feed the world with HOPE, with forgiveness, with Peace.