Scriptures: Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56; Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16
I want to share several stories with you this morning -- a kind of quilt held together
by these words from the gospel of Mark: "As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd,
and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he
began to teach them many things."
A few years ago, my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary by renting a
beach house in South Carolina for a week and inviting their four children and our families
to join them.
Mark and I became fascinated by people standing knee deep in water and casting nets
into the tidal marshes to catch shrimp, crab and bait fish. My brother, Fred, said that he
had done this once and caught so many shrimp it was hard to eat them all. That was all my
resident redheaded fisherman needed to hear. The die was cast (or should I say "the
net?"). We were going to go shrimping.
We bought ourselves a shrimping net, cornmeal and grits. At the crack of dawn, 3 adults
and 3 children piled a minivan and went in search of shrimp. We found a promising spot,
practiced throwing the net, and made balls of cornmeal and grits (We'd been told that
shrimp in South Carolina liked cornmeal and grits!). Then all six of us waded into the
water to disperse the bait and take turns casting the net. I had never waded in a marsh
before, and don't plan to again for a long time. Concerned about what might be underfoot,
we kept our shoes on. The deeper we walked into the water, the deeper our feet sank into
the dark brown, slimy mud beneath us. Now I know where the idea of swamp creatures came
from!
Suddenly, even those who are six-feet-tall were shin deep in slimy muck. We discovered
that when you're walking in deep mud, there comes a point at which you cannot get your
feet loose without holding onto someone or something else. One by one we called out for
help. Then one of us would wade over, and holding onto one another, reach down into the
marshy water to pull the shoe and its foot out of the muck. Chris and Ken were ages 12 and
9, and after this had happened to them a couple times, we convinced them to put their
shoes on shore and go barefoot. But the grownups wanted to keep our shoes on. I tied my
sneakers tighter. The two men curled up their toes in their boat shoes and kept on going,
splashing and laughing hard enough to scare away every kind of creature except the dumb
humans. Our great adventure brought us one small crab, one tiny fish, no shrimp and very
messy feet. We ate leftovers for lunch.
The second set of stories comes from the every day life of the church. Each day, at
least one person comes to the church office seeking financial assistance. We help some and
refer others. Some have fallen on hard times and seem genuinely to want to pull out of it.
We try to do everything we can to help them. Others seem merely to want us to support a
habit or lifestyle that is self-destructive and turn away from the type of assistance we
offer.
"I need money for my rent," says one of the latter women who is able to work
but refuses to get a job. "Will you loan me money to pay my bills?" says another
man who refuses to take any job where he'd have to wear a tie.
These people all expect the church to give them a handout, no questions asked, no
accountability expected, no strings attached. Some of them even get angry when we ask
follow-up questions. After all, Christians are supposed to help people in need, supposed
to be compassionate as Jesus was, supposed to share what we have. When we don't help
everyone who asks, our guilt tapes begin to play and we wonder what kind of Christians we
are, anyway.
It is perplexing to know when to say "yes," when to say "no," and
how to help those who need our assistance whether the one asking is a transient at the
church office, a family member, or a friend. It is not only financial needs that are
brought to us in our daily lives, but relational and emotional needs as well. What kind of
help to give and when are difficult questions, and even asking "What would Jesus
do?" doesn't give an easy answer. But the day we stop being troubled by such
questions either because we say "yes" too easily or "no" too easily is
the day our soul is in trouble.
Jesus was not in the business of enabling people to continue in their dysfunctions,
their addictions, their destructive behavior. Jesus is in the business of changing lives
through love and compassion, judgement and responsibility, forgiveness and mutual
accountability. And just giving someone a quarter on the street, or money to pay off a
loan shark, or letting an adult child continue living at home rent-free, or allowing a
friend to walk over our own needs, or covering up a loved one's addiction doesn't help
them change their life. It does not help them discover the true love and power of God in
Jesus Christ. And helping people encounter the love and power of God is what Christian
love is about.
According to the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus and his disciples tried to go to a deserted
place to get away from the pressing needs and demands of the people, they could not
escape, but were followed by the crowd. Listen again to what the Bible says.
"As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them,
because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many
things."
It is difficult for us urban Christians to understand all that such a statement
communicates to a more agrarian culture. One the one hand, we have a beautiful, pastoral
image of sheep and shepherds, raised as we were with Mary's little lamb who followed her
to school. And in church school, we were programmed to think of Jesus the good shepherd
standing on a grassy slope, dressed in a clean robe, with a tidy beard and surrounded
well-behaved sheep. As adults, we know sheep are stupid, stubborn and smelly -- not
characteristics to which any of us want to admit.
But I am intrigued by this comment in the Gospel of Mark about Jesus having compassion
on the crowd for "they were like sheep without a shepherd," and I find there is
something here that rings true even for us.
Andre Dubus has written about spending a year in a New Hampshire farmhouse. It seemed
an idyllic setting and the rent was cheap, so he moved in and agreed to take care of the
landowner's eight sheep.
The sheep-keeping proved to be more of an ordeal than he could ever have imagined.
Dubus found himself chasing down sheep that found every possible way to get out of the
fence and that were impossible to lead back through the gate. After a few weeks he was
tackling them, sometimes not so gently, so that he could lug them back and hoist them over
the fence. The biblical analogy of humans to sheep and Christ as the shepherd takes on new
meaning in such a context.
We truly are like sheep without a shepherd wandering astray and lost, getting ourselves
in trouble and not realizing the danger or knowing how to get out of it. So stubborn that
we need an angel from God to wrestle us to the ground on occasion and throw us over the
fence back to safety. We are like sheep who won't come when you call them home, and won't
even walk through the open gate without being guided. We are like sheep who would stay on
the same hillside until every last blade of grass and seed for future food has been
consumed unless someone urged us along. Four-footed sheep may be gone from the Los Angeles
Basin, but there seem to be a lot of us two-footed variety left.
So if we are like sheep after all, and Jesus is our shepherd, what does that say about
who Jesus is for us, and what some of the characteristics of God might be? Centuries of
Christian artwork aside, a shepherd is not just a gentle, peaceful, pastoral sort of
person. A shepherd is also strong and wise, not afraid to make decisions the sheep won't
like and to carry them out if they are in the best interest of the flock. A shepherd is
brave enough to confront wolves and willing to wrestle with the own sheep if necessary,
much as Jacob and God wrestled so many centuries ago. A shepherd has a strong, tough love
for those who need her care and is willing to make the hard decisions that nurture life.
Jesus is that kind of shepherd for us, with a love that is tough and strong and
compassionate all at the same time. And Jesus calls us into that ministry with him. Like
those six slimy shrimpers in South Carolina who had to change our strategy for making our
way through the mud, there comes a time when the most faithful, caring, loving response to
one another is, "I'll help you put your shoes on shore or tie the laces tighter, but
I won't help you pull them out of the mud again." Someone has said that a definition
of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. There
comes time when only taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions leads us to
change.
As difficult as it may be to say or to hear, sometimes saying "no" is the
most loving thing to do; when the best helping hand is not another handout, but someone
who will talk straight, someone who will call a spade a spade, someone who will be honest
and forthright and refuse to be manipulated precisely because his compassion and love run
so deep.
There comes a time when just giving people what they think they want helps them stay
mired in the muck that has hold of them unless we also say, "I'll pick you up for
worship on Sunday;" "I'll bring you to Bible study and fellowship dinners, so
you can experience God's love and will for your life."
There comes a time when the best answer is, "I'll walk this path with you, if you
are willing to face its challenge, and with God's help, you can get your life on
track."
When changed lives, rather than short-term solutions, are the goal, then we act
accordingly. There are times when giving someone the help they ask for is the most
Christian thing to do. And there are times when giving someone the kind of help they ask
for is the least Christian thing to do.
There comes a time when the most Christian thing to do is to say "I won't give you
any more money, but I will give you a reference for a job." Or, "I ache for
what's going on in your life. I'll pick you Friday and go with you to a meeting of
Alcoholics Anonymous or Al-Anon."
There comes a time when Christian love is Tough Love that makes us vulnerable even as
it calls on the other to be responsible. What is hard about these answers is that they
call upon us to put ourselves on the line, and truly become instruments of God's
life-changing love, even as they demand mutual accountability from the other party.
We know in our own lives that Jesus gives us a shoulder to lean on as we pull loose
from the muck that has hold of us. Jesus also calls us to reach down in the muddy water
and get our own hands dirty pulling others' feet loose from the muck that has hold of
them. And just as shepherds lead sheep into new pastures they didn't know they wanted, and
those soggy shrimpers helped each other learn from our mistakes, followers of Christ are
called to speak a word of loving challenge to God's people who are like sheep without a
shepherd. We need each other in loving, mutual accountability.
Not long ago, the wife of a minister friend shared her story with me. I had known the
outline of her story from her husband. Hearing it first-hand made it even more powerful.
The father of her children had been a race car driver, heavily into drugs and alcohol. He
left her and ran away with another woman. At age 20 she was a single mother with two
children under the age of three. She went on welfare. She started attending church out of
desperation, trying to find enough hope and strength somewhere to help her get up each
morning and make it through another day.
Through the compassion and the loving challenge of the church, Sandy stopped blaming
God and everybody else for what had happened to her. She asked God to help her make a
future and she took responsibility for her life. When her children were in school she went
back to school herself and worked her heart out making a life for her children and
herself.
Eleven years ago, she and Bob fell in love. They are partners in ministry now, both of
them having come through some of the deepest muck in life anyone can be stuck in. Her
children are adults now, and to look at her, you would never know what she'd been through,
except that she shares her story as a way of giving strength and hope to other people. She
shares her story as a way of telling people about the challenging power of God and the
compassionate love of the church that can change a life.
Some might say Sandy pulled herself up by her own bootstraps. But Sandy would never say
that, nor would I. No one can really pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It's
contrary to the laws of nature. If you lean over to pull yourself up by your own
bootstraps, you fall on your face. You need someone else, just as we need someone to lean
on in the marsh.
Sandy found joy and love in life not by her own bootstraps, but by the love and
strength of God, and by the love, support, challenge and encouragement of a church that
welcomed her as a sister in Christ, nurtured her deepening faith in God, and lovingly held
her accountable for her decisions. The church gave her food and money on occasion, but
more that, they invited her into their lives so she could experience the changes God had
wrought in them.
Our personal discipleship and the church's ministry are not intended by God to enable
people to continue in their same old destructive behaviors. They are not about bootstrap
theology either. We are called to work with and be like Jesus, our toughly compassionate
shepherd, working to change lives with the love and power of God in Christ.
Jesus is not interested in charity that keeps the other at a safe arms' length. He
calls us to make the hard choices that take our time, our energy, and make us vulnerable,,
but change lives both the other and ourselves in the process. When we go beyond handouts
or quick advice, we embody God's love for the other, and in listening to each other's
stories, realize our own need for God and for others to give us a shoulder as well. When
we invite those whose feet are caught in mud into our lives and homes and church, we
discover that our feet are freed from the mud as well.
For as the Apostle Paul says in Hebrews, the stranger can be an angel of God for us
even as we ourselves may be an angel for them.
"As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them,
because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many
things."
