A Fourth Church Sermon by Alice M. Trowbridge

April 22, 2007 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Tend My Sheep

Alice M. Trowbridge
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 30
John 21:1–19

We trust you, O Teacher, because we know you open your classroom
to the world. Your instruction comes in city streets;
it is written in corporate corridors and whispered in village corners.
Sometimes you speak, and sometimes you are silent, begging us to listen
to what the world is trying to tell us! You remind us that your revelation
comes in ordinary people, places, and problems. Let us hear
that one day in city and country, in homes and schools,
you might find us to be wise as serpents, yet as innocent as doves.

Everett Tilson and Phyllis Cole
Litanies and Other Prayers

Michelangelo wrote sonnets that offer a window into his creative genius. In them we can glimpse the mind of a master artist who would look upon a block of cold marble and see in it a living sculpture, waiting to emerge. Such was the case with his Pieta and David, both of which were completed before the artist turned thirty years old. One of Michelangelo’s contemporaries wrote about the Pieta: “It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.”

The gift of creativity, of transformation, of finding life in something that was once lifeless, of restoring life and possibilities is what Easter living is about, and it’s what our texts speak about today.

Often creativity takes the form of steady, reliable effort, day after day, toward an ultimate goal. An author will say about her methodology that she rises early in the morning, brews the coffee, goes to the keyboard, and aims to type one page. Day after day, the creative process requires one step at a time, whether we’re raising a family, working toward a degree, building a business, or leading a group—most things require long-term commitment to building and developing and creating over time. So our passion and purpose need to be fueled by a source that does not tire, a source whose strength is constant and whose love is there to catch us when we stumble or lose our footing.

In today’s psalm we read, “You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

There are many we know who have not seen the joy of the morning. The events in Blacksburg this week broke our hearts. It is impossible to comprehend how a massacre on this scale could happen. When every day people are going about their business, trying to live kind, decent lives, we cannot come to terms with events like this—no matter where it happens, no matter what the context may be.

Today the lectionary brings us to a story that took place after Jesus’ resurrection. It’s a story of Jesus greeting his disciples, who have returned to their work. Last they checked, they left their Lord in Jerusalem, nailed to a tree. And while they had once been filled with the mystery and promise of the living Lord, now that time had past, and they had returned to their routines. In their boats they sat in the crisp daybreak air. The water was still, and the only sound would have been the waves lapping upon the underside of the boat. Everything seemed the same as it had been before. What did this Jesus have to do with their lives now? Where did he go? they might be asking, and why did he leave them so suddenly? Surely, sitting there in the boat, they were feeling confused, grieved, angry, lonely, empty, asking themselves how they were going to carry on without him. Not unlike what the people of Virginia Tech and their families must be feeling this morning, like all those who have had a loved one taken from them suddenly for a reason they cannot comprehend.

And so we might ask the same thing: What does this Jesus have to do with our lives now? Where is God in all that has come to pass this week? Where is God in Blacksburg and all the places that have been diminished by gun violence and war and human strife? On the Virginia Tech campus this week, families of the dead made their way inside, past the yellow police tape, and a group of Amish men from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, sat quietly just outside the tape to pay their respects. “The world reached out to us during the killings in Nickel Mines,” one man said. “We thought we would come and show our support as an expression of Christ’s love.”

Christ’s love: Was it so long ago that we gathered in this place and heard the stirring hymn “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” And was it so long ago that we celebrated the stone rolled back and the triumph of the empty tomb? Have we stopped to fathom the extent of God’s love for us and for all creation? Have we noticed anything new going on in our lives, this side of Easter?

Just like the disciples in the boat, we too have returned to our familiar routines since Easter. We pick up where we left off. And Jesus invites us to look not far beyond where we are, in fact right in the midst of what we’re doing in the boat, and check the net again, because there is, in fact, something new there.

After the disciples see something new in their nets, Jesus invites them to breakfast on the beach. And in the breaking of the bread, they recognize Jesus there with them. And he goes on to charge Peter with a certain responsibility.

Jesus asks Peter, of all people, Peter who denied he even knew Jesus when it mattered most, Peter he asks, “Do you love me?” And three times to this question Peter responds yes, and Jesus charges him to tend his sheep. Jesus is asking Peter, who before denied Christ and lied, this very same Peter, the rock upon whom his church will be built, to be a leader in the future life of the believing community.

Today is Earth Day, and everywhere there is an emphasis on caring for our living earth. As people of faith, we remember that God created the earth and called it good. And God has instructed us to care for all of creation. We have the responsibility not only to care for each other, but also to care for the earth, for all the creatures of the deep, for all that is above us and for all that is below us.

Thomas Friedman, in his extensive article in the New York Times Magazine last week, calls this stewardship, and what is stewardship but taking care of the gifts God has given us to enjoy: the sun and moon and all the shining stars; the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, the animals, the cattle, all the creeping things, the hills and the mountains and the sea. For God commanded and they all were created, and it is our responsibility to take care of all that God has given us to enjoy.

Nineteenth-century English poet William Wordsworth wrote these lines about the good earth in early spring: “I am a lover of the meadows and the woods, and mountains; and of all that we behold from this green earth; of all the mighty world of eye, and ear—both what they have created, and what perceive; well pleased to recognize in nature and the language of the sense, the anchor of my purest thoughts; the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart.” In these lines we remember with the poet the beauty of the earth and we remember that in Genesis God called creation good. We remember that God invites us to tend to creation, to care for it, and to live boldly in the knowledge that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.

When we begin to see the mandate to love what God loves, including all of nature, when that ecological ethic becomes as much a part of the interpretation of Christian love as love for neighbor, then perhaps we all will enter the new era of green, of caring for creation. But we need more people to shepherd this concept and carry forth this love for all creation. When Jesus says to Peter, “Tend my sheep,” he means take care of each other. Take care of what I have given you. Take care of the earth. Take care of family and friends and relationships. Take care of all that is precious and alive. Tend my sheep.

On the ceiling of the San Callisto catacombs from the mid-third century, there is a depiction of Jesus as the Good Shepherd—and throughout the history of art since the time of Christ, our mind readily identifies images of Jesus in a pastoral landscape, complete with verdant hills, green pastures, and still waters, and with sheep at his feet, and even one upon his shoulders.

Nelson Mandela once said that “a leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they were being directed from behind.”

But what kind of leaders do shepherds make? We know in our Lord that from the back of the line, when he spotted one of his flock wandering off, he left all ninety-nine others and went to the farthest ends until he had found the one lost and lifted him upon his shoulders and carried him until he returned to the others.

We know Jesus welcomed sinners and unclean people, people of other religions or no religion, the marginalized, outcast people, and he loved them as his friends. He ate with them, he enjoyed their company, he preferred their company to the company of the proper, morally pure religious leaders of his time. Tend my sheep; take care of one another; take care of the gifts I have given to you.

And we know God loves the world so much that God created it in freedom. And we know at the core of our Christian belief, we know that in Jesus Christ God lived our life, shared our humanity, and died our death so that we would always know in our suffering that we are never alone. Tend my sheep. Take care of one another; take care of the gifts I have given to you.

And we know Jesus described God’s love for us to be like a woman who lost a coin and who searched her house through and through and did not stop until she recovered it. And we know Jesus related God’s love for us to be like a father who paces back and forth on a porch and when he sees the figure of his son coming toward him on the road, he jumps up and descends the porch steps and runs to greet him and won’t let his son go from his embrace.

Tend my sheep. Love each other the way I have loved you. Take care of what I have given you. The gift of creativity, of transformation, of finding possibilities when before none existed—this is Easter living. Like the master artist who can find life in something that was once lifeless, like the good shepherd who would lay down his life for his friend, the resurrection offers us the chance to be something new; to be alive to new creative possibilities for ourselves and for our world, glimpsing something of God’s new creation in our midst. And if we listen, we might hear it too, just like Peter surely did. Tend my sheep. Take care of one another; take care of the gifts I have given to you. Our charge for Easter living. Amen.