I can’t tell you how many cell phones I have
gone through. Mary keeps a drawer of my dead phones. I kept canceling because I was paying fifty dollars a month and my most frequent comment was ‘Hello, hello, are you still there, can you hear me?’ Its like this video from
‘When Harry met Sally’, he wants a relationship, but she will not return any of his calls.
It all turned serious two months ago when my mother was in a nursing home without a phone and my father could not get messages back and forth. I called up TMobile and said, ‘I don’t want a sales promotion. We are in trouble and I want a phone that someone can use that is simple, one with large buttons and no extras, and a phone where you can hear someone. Please tell me if you can help me.’
If you are here to celebrate Mother’s Day, but also puzzling over the direction of life, it is a good morning to hear again the voice of one who calls as a shepherd and who promises that he will lead by the still waters.
Even Christians are having trouble with the line. Some conservatives proposed a division of the United Methodist Church this week because the church is fundamentally divided on the issue of gay marriage. To my mind, this is not the real issue. We are taking a subject that only gets a few verses of Scripture and making it as important as the doctrines of the atonement, or the Trinity, or the incarnation.
It is more that in the issues of our world, our church is struggling to hear the voice of God on the line. Our world is struggling to hear. And the good news of the scriptures this morning is that Jesus has not wandered away. If you come in the joy of success and blessing to celebrate Mother’s Day, God is here to receive praise. And to any who wander, Jesus the Shepherd never loses track of the thorns and thickets into which we strayed. It is a morning for each of us and for our world to be absolutely certain that nothing is more important in life than the commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord which connects us his voice of love
Jesus brings this message during the Feast of Dedication in the winter. The feast was a celebration of a Jewish military victory except that the Jews were now living under Roman occupation. In some ways, Hanukkah had become a cruel holiday, too beloved to drop and painful to celebrate.
One of the costs of occupation was that male youth and young men were grabbed as slaves for the Roman army. When I was in Cambodia in 1991, it was very similar. One day, we decided to leave the city and some teens wanted to go with us because they wanted to see Cambodia outside of Phnom Penh. At that time, we had our own flag, a flag for Church World Service which was placed in a holder on the back of the truck. The Army would not touch us or the people with us as long as we had the flag and were near the truck. In verse 28, Jesus refers to this problem when he promises that even people snatched as slaves cannot be separated from Jesus as Shepherd.
So the Jews came over to Jesus on this unpleasant holiday to get his advice. They want to know if he is the Messiah who will liberate them from the Romans. And Jesus offers a word of warning and a word of grace.
The word of warning is that his sheep know his voice. The implication is that the Jews who are asking are not under the protection of Jesus as shepherd or they would have known his voice from the beginning.
We have got to ask that about ourselves. The Jews were so certain that any word from God would include immediate liberation from the Romans that they could not imagine any other word as a genuine word from the Lord. In verse 31, it says that when Jesus answered them, they took up stones to stone him.
My friends, I do not want to preach this message. I almost never come to Sunday service feeling that God has given me a special message for that Sunday. Last week, I changed the sermon on Saturday because of the reports of the torture of prisoners. I felt that I had to preach last Sunday on peace to be faithful as a minister of the gospel.
I am coming with a similar sermon today and a similar sense that God requires me to lead you to this passage. In Mr. Rumsfeld’s testimony on Friday, he said that worse photos than anything we have seen will be released soon. On Friday night, I saw this news report, ‘Rumsfeld did not describe the photos, but U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” There will also be videotape of raping young boys.
This is not the isolated act of a few. 24 people are known to have been tortured to death so far. One of the commanders admitted yesterday that many innocent people have been imprisoned in sweeps. This is not even torture of the guilty.
Even the imagery of this chapter is the image of defenseless sheep, being protected by the Shepherd. Jesus says in verse 11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
I think that every one of us, no matter the politics, wants our nation to show Christian influence. Indeed, the Bible teaches that nations are accountable to the living God, regardless of the political or religious teachings they may have. My friends, it is a moment to call our nation as Christians to civil rights are universal and based on the image on God placed on every human being. Jesus loves the little children, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.
It is our Christian duty to speak in a democracy. And we must say to first United Methodists meeting now for business and arguing over lesser matters, are you crazy? There is a forest on fire and you people feel the luxury of lighting matches next to cans of gas.
And we must offer this text to a nation concerned about terror. Jesus says to all who fear that his answer is not to overthrow the Romans. It certainly makes sense to do so but Jesus says, my kingdom will be introduced another way.
If you don’t believe the gospel, this makes no sense and people tried to stone him in verses 31 and 39. And if you believe, then you sheep that hear his voice and who’s tones bring comfort and reassurance. In verse 42, many believed. And in verse 4, the sheep follow him because the sheep know his voice and they do not know the voice of strangers.
I was wrestling with all of this when I happened to read the proclamation of the first call for Mother’s Day in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe. You know her as the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
And I was stunned to learn that Mother’s Day was formed in response to the civil war. Howe and others called mothers to a day of planning and action each year to make certain that the USA was never in another war. Here are her words:
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage, For caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country Will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war. Let women now leave all that may be left of home For a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace, Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God.
Mothers, hear again this ancient call that the nation may return to the Jesus the Shepherd.
I placed the order with TMobile. And the phone was everything they promised. The numbers are large, the tone is clear and she used it so much at the nursing home that the first bill was $30 more than we expected.
Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. The words he spoke in occupied Jerusalem, were in more desperate times than even our own. The words of invitation, and guidance to paths of peace are still on his lips.
If you believe and act on these words, I am 100% certain that you will not be disappointed. I urge every person here to be a follower of and a witness for Jesus the Great Shepherd this week.
