Get Out.

John 10:1-10

"Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers." 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. 7 So again Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

Ok, true confessions. I have a line item in my monthly budget just for coffee drinks. Yup. I am ashamed to admit that I set aside a little bit of money every month for those gloriously overpriced steamed-milked, cardboard sleeved, caffeinated cups of deliciousness. And I’ve become such a coffee snob that there are only a few places that I will risk venturing to purchase these java delights, - and another confession - Starbucks is one of those places. Oh, Starbucks. And I know all the evils - the corporate dominance, the globalization, the oppressed coffee workers in El Salvador and Kenya. But, I justify to myself, if I’m going to spend five dollars on a cup of coffee, it had better be just the way I like it, every time. I have risked the hard-earned Lincoln-note for disasters called coffee, and I have learned my lesson - if you want to be safe, go where you’ve always gone.

And don’t companies and corporations rely on this? Isn’t that why chicken nuggets are always the same shape and when I say I’d like a “triple-grande-nonfat-one-pump-vanilla-caramel-macchiato,” it always tastes the same? And don’t we like that? Don’t we like that when we order a Big Mac, it doesn’t really taste like beef, it tastes like, well, a Big Mac? Don’t we like it when we know what to expect, know what will happen, and can invest in things that have guaranteed outcomes? Put your money in a Prudential account, because they are “like a rock.” Or if you want to know the “way forward” send your money to JP Morgan Chase. Don’t we like going into the same grocery store and knowing that our Cheerios will be right on the second shelf in aisle four, waiting for us? Don’t we come to this place, this sanctuary, often not really wanting to hear a new word from God, but wanting to have our own opinions reinforced? We feel comfortable and safe in our predictable, fenced in sheep pens.

I went to college expecting a predictable outcome. I’d put in four years, take out some loans, and come out with a degree that would get me a decent job that was also emotionally and spiritually fulfilling, pay off the loans, pay the bills, get dental insurance, and three weeks vacation.

A friend of mine voted for Obama, expecting an end to all war, expecting fully funded schools, and the eradication of all racially motivated police brutality.

Well. I ate the Snicker’s bar that “really satisfies,” and guess what, I got hungry again. I “obeyed my thirst,” drank a Sprite, and got thirsty again. I went to college, and then to grad school, and then to some more grad school, and here I am, still paying full price for my dental cleanings. We invested our money in JP Morgan and Citibank and The Bank of America, and we all know how that turned out. My friend who voted for Obama is so disappointed that he claims he will never vote for a mainstream party ever again. We believed the slogans, but they were - some of them quite literally - thieves and bandits, or maybe just people and corporations as lost and as hopeful and as naive as we are.

In our lectionary reading today, Jesus has just come back from breaking all the rules. Jesus tells the story of the sheep and the Shepherd in the context of being in trouble, big trouble. He has healed a blind man on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees are scandalized. He has debunked one of the most important precepts of the Jewish faith at the time. And what is the result? A man can see. The pious leaders are shocked. And everything is turned upside down.

The poor beggar is the one teaching the teachers, and the One who breaks the rules on the Sabbath is called “Lord.” Everyone believes that Jesus has gone off the deep-end, strayed far outside the normal constraints of his societal definitions.

And, Jesus, the one in big trouble, has the gall to step even further beyond the boundaries by being tough - really tough - on these Pharisees. He says to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” Now, it’s important to emphasize that Jesus is hard on the leaders, the ones with power, the ones who have the resources to define for all the Jews who belongs to the fold and who doesn’t. They are the ones who create the slogans and enforce the rules. And Jesus’ conflict with these powerful authorities - the powerful men who construct and enforce societal boundaries - is central to the plot of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John focuses on the purposes of God, which include “the end of hierarchical and exploitative socioeconomic structures, which are replaced by communities of new power relations expressed in service and love.

This Gospel is about the end of all oppressive social structures secured by gender, ethnicity, cultural traditions and social status.” Jesus’ mission won’t fit into a slogan, can’t conform to a cookie cutter belief system, and demands a radical shift in our allegiance.

By Chapter 10, Jesus’ confrontations with the elite of his culture have reached a tipping point. “He attacks the Jerusalem leaders ... as “thieves and bandits” who steal resources from the people and threaten their well-being” “He challenges the leaders’ power and societal order secured in alliance with Rome”.

And how does Jesus explain his actions and his purpose? Through a metaphor, a story. We have a cozy sheepfold, surrounded by a fence perhaps, or more likely walls of stones, and enclosed by a gate. There’s a gatekeeper and a shepherd and sheep, and those who try to sneak in to the sheepfold by jumping the fence.

To those listening, as soon as Jesus said, “Shepherd”, Ezekiel 34 might come to mind. They’d set up a dichotomy between the powers of those who rule their present reality, and the Power of the One God who rules all. They would compare those with the power to define and construct their reality as Jews and humans, to the One who made The Reality itself. And Jesus is directly accusing these people and these social structures who are abusing their power of being thieves and bandits - of promising one thing, but delivering another, of taking more than their fair share of resources, and leaving the sheep with nothing. Thieves and bandits are those who deceive, who defy, who slyly convince, and maybe, just maybe, are those who do it without the sheep even realizing it. If the sheep take a moment to hear and recognize their voices, the sheep aren’t deceived; they know the sound of the true shepherd’s voice when they hear it. But, are these thieves so sneaky, so deceptive, and have access to advertising budgets worth billions of dollars, so much so, that the sheep are tempted to accept what they claim to offer without even having to hear their voice? Are we so used to expecting regularity and sameness, predictability and assurance, that we don’t even realize who we’re following? Who are our bandits and thieves in our day?

Who should we consider to be false shepherds in our lives? What are the Powers of our day offering us, and what do we believe because of their influence?

Jesus uses harsh language here. He calls them as he sees them, thieves and bandits. These are serious accusations. But I want to encourage you not to put words into Jesus’ mouth. Jesus does not call them evil; only deceptive. He does not call the situation hopeless, only pointless. The Powers that try to define our identity are only as powerful and as harmful as we enable them to be. To see this, we need to look again at the analogy.

The thieves and bandits enter the sheepfold, but there is no mention of them exiting or leading the sheep anywhere. In order for the sheep to go anywhere, there’s only one way out - through the gate. So the thieves and the bandits are stuck inside the sheepfold, with the rest of the sheep. Going nowhere. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a sheepfold; as a city-kid, I can tell you that I never have. But I do remember the yearly field trip that my parents would take us to the State Fair when we were kids, where farmers from all over the state would come to show their livestock. My brothers and sisters and I were in awe of the pigs and ducks and cows and sheep, and we were presented with a challenge that we were not used to dealing with - a veritable maze and obstacle course of mounds of hay, piles of wool, and well, let’s just call them warm land mines that would mark our tennis shoes as “city kids” for weeks after. And imagine the smells and sounds of these temporary homes for the livestock.

I’d guess that is similar to what a sheepfold would be like. But the sheep would be gathered together in one place, trampling what little vegetation there would be into a slush of mud. The sheep would feel safe there, but they’d hardly be nourished.

And that’s why the shepherd would open the gate and let the sheep out to the pasture to graze, get a little fresh air, encounter new things.

The thieves of our day would be just as happy if we never went out that gate - if we just spent our days looking down, pawing at the mud, and consuming plenty of red dye number 40 and mono-sodium glutamate.

But. The pasture is Out There.

Jesus says that he came to offer us abundant life - but that life is not in the sheepfold with the thieves and the bandits. It’s out there. Out there with the wolves, and the hot sun and the occasional thunderstorm. Yes. But out there with the cool breeze, the clean water, the nourishment that will bring us life.

There is pasture OUT THERE. Abundant life is OUT THERE.

The faith community at Broadstreet Ministry in Philadelphia did a strange thing when they decided to refurbish an old church in the middle of downtown Philadelphia. They tore out all of the pews, and put in chairs. They turned the chairs in the opposite direction - away from the pulpit and the choir loft - facing out - out towards the city - the place where the homeless sleep, where children go hungry, where gun violence destroys the future of their teens. But also where they met Andre, a formerly homeless man who now works in a halfway house to help others get out of homelessness. Also where the sides of buildings covered in murals attest to the creativity of Philadelphia’s people. Where Jesus has said there is life. They turned their chairs to face Out There.

We want to stay in here - where there are familiar slogans and the food tastes the same and everything is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Where we don’t have to do the work of defining ourselves - because the Powers of corporations and political structures and cultural assumptions will do it for us.

Do we want to be satisfied? Eat a Snickers bar. Do we want to feel “worth it?” Try L’Oreal products. Do we want to “get more?” Get a T-mobile cell phone. Do we want to feel valued among our peers? Get a PhD and a 4.0 or drive a Mercedes and make a six-figure salary.

And these aren’t inherently evil things. They’re just things that are tools, sometimes useful tools - but if we let them, they can claim to define us, claim to offer us things that they can’t really give us, and can make us feel complacent, completely content pacing our hallways, staring at the floor, wearing out the ground below us. That’s not life; that’s just existing.

Following God is not easy. There will be stones that trip us up, thorns that will tear at our ankles, and a wilderness that will make us seem lost. We’ll encounter painful relationships, we’ll fail, we’ll lose some money and trust someone we shouldn’t. But, God promises abundant life - not a safe life, not a secure life, not a comfortable life - a life of joy and belly laughs and deep deep feeling. And God promises to be with us through it all.

But in order for us to experience this abundant life, we have to step out of that pen and get into the pasture. May we all choose to follow the voice of the One who can lead us to an adventurous and abundant life.

Let it be so.

Thanks be to God.

** Quotations taken from "John: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist" by Warren Carter

That's Worship Too

Isaiah 58:1-12

Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. ²Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.

³“Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. ⁴Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. ⁵Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? ⁶Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? ⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

⁸Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. ⁹Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, ¹⁰if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. ¹¹The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. ¹²Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

Andre is a short man with high cheekbones that seem to get even higher when he smiles. He is missing his two front teeth. And he doesn’t walk, he struts, as he gives us a personal tour of Philadelphia. But this isn’t just a tour of the “Rocky Steps” and the famous “LOVE” sculpture. This is a tour of his neighborhood – the park benches he used to sleep on, the grates where he’d sneak some free air conditioning in the summer, and the tree where he’d stash his trash bag full of all of his worldly possessions when he’d go out for the day in search of work, a hot meal, a cup of coffee. For three months, Andre was homeless. For three months, he slept on the ground next to an abandoned building and a full dumpster, both teeming with rats. Andre is not mentally ill. Andre is not a drug addict or an alcoholic. Andre is not lazy or stupid. Andre just came under some hard times and found himself without support, without a home, a wanderer through the streets of Philadelphia.

The National Coalition for the Homeless estimates that 3.5 million people are homeless in a given year. That is the entire population of the state of Oregon. That’s enough to fill Heinz Field 54 times. But you all don’t need to know that. All of you are tremendously generous when it comes to donations to organizations that fight the global, macro issues of poverty. But what I want to talk about today is about how it can, and does, touch us personally, on a micro level.

It is a fact that most of us are all just two steps away from homelessness. We lose our job. We get a serious illness. A relationship falls apart. Our child needs special care. The stock market tanks and the monthly checks from our retirement get smaller and smaller. A natural disaster destroys our home and we forgot to mail that month’s insurance check. Just two steps, and we could be taming the rats by an abandoned building like Andre. Or living under our porch steps like our recent visitors, who spent last summer roaming from place to place in Pittsburgh, and then camping on our front porch at night. These are people with names and faces and stories.

Just two steps.

The Israelites in our reading today were homeless, too. They were in exile, told where they could live, what they could eat, where they could work, and how they should worship. But for these later readings in Isaiah, what is often called “Third Isaiah” by scholars, the Israelites had made it out the other side. They had come back home. They’d survived their homelessness. And things were starting to get back to normal. They were worshipping God just like their ancestors had been taught before them. They were fasting and honoring holy days, and they were starting trade again, building small businesses, planting crops, settling down. They had made it out the other side of their troubles and were on the upswing.

But there were still some problems. They were following the letter of the law, crossing every T and dotting every I in their worship, but strangely, God felt further away from them than ever. They were sacrificing and fasting, calling out to God and worshipping in all the “right” ways, and yet, God seemed to not be listening. It says that they “delight to draw near to God.” God says that “they seek me and delight to know my ways.” In a sense, in our terms, you could say that they were coming to church every Sunday, wearing their ties and their sport coats and forcing their feet into their fanciest dress shoes. They were writing checks to all of the right organizations. They were following the lectionary, and singing the traditional hymns, accompanied by a talented choir and a beautiful organ, and never ever letting the service extend past an hour and fifteen minutes. In a sense, they were just like us, and like us, they were asking “Where is God?” They were saying, “Look, God, we’re doing all the right things here, we’re doing what we’re told, and yet, You’re not fulfilling your end of the bargain.” What’s the deal? They are calling out to God. They are good people who want a true relationship with God; they want to do the right thing; they long for the love of God. These are good people. But God seems so far away. What’s the deal?

And God responds to them through the Prophet. God says, “Look, you’ve got this all backwards. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.” You’re forgetting the whole point of these rituals. These rituals are meant to remind you of where you came from. Rituals are a way to retell and reconnect to your story. Your rituals of fasting are supposed to remind you that you, too, were once homeless, you too, were once in bondage, and you, too, were poor and needy. We worship to reconnect to our story, and to reconnect to the God who brought us through the desert, brought us out of Egypt, out of exile, out of our homelessness, out of an abusive relationship or a bad job or an addiction - and out of our own personal and communal poverty. If you don’t remember your own story, then your rituals are meaningless. And when we remember our own stories, when we remember our own neediness, we will act in justice by serving the poor, feeding the hungry, loosing the yoke from the necks of those who pick our tomatoes, sew our clothes, dig out our coal. God tells the Israelites: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” Remember what Jesus tells us in Matthew 25, in the parable of the sheep and the goats. Remember that he tells us that when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, and visit the sick and the imprisoned, we do it to Christ himself. He says, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.” Worship and Justice go hand in hand. They both lead us to the presence of God.

God doesn’t want us to just “throw money” at a problem, although money is sometimes necessary to solve problems. God wants us to remember where we’ve come from. God wants us to remember our story. Every person in this church has struggled in some way. We’ve all experienced loss. Maybe we’ve lost a job, or we’ve been disappointed by a friend. Maybe we’ve been unable to pay a bill on time, or we’ve had to ask a relative for help. God wants us to remember that like the Israelites, we are not that far from our own homelessness, either literal or figurative. Just two steps. And we must bring these memories into our worship. We must worship with the stories of God’s Grace in the Bible in one hand and the stories of God’s Grace in our own lives in the other.

Andre finally got out of homelessness, and he tells this story of when things started to turn around for him:

He was down to his last fifty cents. He says that he was so hungry that it felt like his stomach was gnawing at his spine. So he went to a corner drug store and bought some chips, and he sat down in Love Park to eat them. As he opened the bag, the pigeons and finches swarmed him. And he said to himself, “Heck no, I’m not giving you anything.” But one bird was insistent. Even after all the others had scattered, it looked up at him, pleading for a scrap. And finally, Andre relented. He gave the bird his last potato chip. And he watched as the bird took it into its mouth, and hopped over to a nest, where three tiny chicks were stretching their necks toward their mother. And just then, a hand came upon his shoulder, and he met the kind eyes of a woman who said, “I don’t mean to bother you, but I know where you can get a hot meal, if you’re hungry.” And she took him to a shelter where he ate, got cleaned up, and was given services that would eventually help him find a job and afford a permanent place to live. Now, he works to help others in transition out of homelessness. And when he is overwhelmed with the task, when he fears that he won’t be able to help one more person, when he is tired and worried about his own situation, he remembers his story. He remembers what his grandmother used to always say, “Feed the birds, and you will eat.”

God tells us this today, through the Prophet Isaiah. It’s just a simple gesture of a potato chip to a sparrow, or a hand on a shoulder. God tells us that true worship is remembering our story and then being present to others, offering them a chance to share their story. True worship is responding to God’s grace through greeting the homeless on our porch steps and in our neighborhoods, remembering their names, asking them if there is anything we can do for them, giving them a cup of coffee and sitting with them while they talk, or while they stay silent. When we worship, we should remember that the hungry have faces, have stories. We worship God when we listen to Andre’s story about feeding the birds. It is worship when we share our own stories of trouble and heartache and immense grace. God tells us that when we participate in the lives of the poor, the hungry, the naked and the homeless, God will be there, in our midst. When we serve the needy, “Then we shall call, and the LORD will answer; we shall cry for help, and God will say Here I Am.” God wants relationship, not posturing. And when we share in each other’s stories, we invite each other into the family of God, one where we are connected to each other in intimate ways, a family that will do anything it takes to help each other. May this New Year be filled with names and faces, worship and stories. Thanks be to God.