Shepherds

It was Good Shepherd Sunday this last week at not just our church, but all the churches, and the thing is, you can't talk about one shepherd without talking about another.  That is, you can't talk properly about the Good Shepherd, and his attributes, without talking about some other shepherd, you know.  Jesus tells us what it means to be the Good Shepherd, and this is what he says:

I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  

For this reason, the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have authority to lay it down, and 

I have authority to take it up again.  This charge I have received from my Father.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, lays down his life for the sheep.  This is the core belief of the Christian faith, you know.  This is the core, essential crux of the Christian faith, that Jesus died for the sins of the world, rose again, and is coming again.  This is what the Christian faith is all about, you know.  The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Well and good, of course, but we need to contrast this with another shepherd from the Bible, and if you're looking for another shepherd, heck, if you're looking for another king, you're looking for King David.

King David, a man after God's own heart, king David, a man that God anointed as king over all of Israel, King David was the one that ended up famously in an affair with Bathsheba.  Now, if you know your scripture, you will know that David and Bathsheba conceived a son in their sin, a baby, and the arrival of this baby was the reason that Uriah, Bathsheba's late husband, had to die.  You can cover up an affair by sneaking around, but babies really reduce your stealth, and Uriah is a man of the world, and he can count to 9.  He's well aware of how long a baby takes to gestate in a human female, and he would be aware that if he wasn't around nine months ago, there are some shenanigans afoot.

   

So, because David conceived a baby with Bathsheba, and a baby seriously impedes stealth, then the only way out of this, according to David, was to kill Uriah off.  Uriah dies, David marries Bathsheba, they have their son in wedlock, and it's all nice and legal.  But the sin came to fruition, and as it does, brings forth death.  The death of Uriah, and also, the death that was foretold by the prophet Nathan, the death of the child.  The child was sick, the death was foretold, and David was fasting day and night, refusing to bathe, refusing to change clothes, and praying night and day that this child might be spared.

And the child was not spared.

This unnamed child perished.  And so did another child of David's though this guy had a name: Absalom.  I talk a bit about Absalom, because his story, and more than that, David's reaction to his story is important to what we are talking about with the Good Shepherd.  Absalom was leading a rebellion against his father David, and the rebellion started to fall apart. And as the rebellion fell apart, Absalom was fleeing the conflict, and got caught in a tree, presumably by his mop of hair, and was killed dangling from a tree.  When David heard of that news, he was in anguish, and called out in a loud voice "O Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, if only I had died instead of you!" 

But you didn't, did you David?  You didn't because you couldn't.  You couldn't because nobody asked you, the lives of your children weren't given, they were taken, and nobody asked you if it was okay.  Nobody cleared it with you, nobody checked if you wanted to give your life in exchange for either of those children.  Their lives were taken, and you didn't get a say.  You would have laid down your life for the sheep, but you didn't have the chance or the opportunity to do so.

And that's where the Good Shepherd kicks in.  The Good Shepherd, who is known by his attribute of laying down his life for the sheep.  When Jesus says that he is the Good Shepherd, he is separating himself from us, by showing us that he does what we cannot.  He comes into the equation when we do not, and he meets the standards that we are unable to.  Think about David again for a second, and his reaction to Absalom being killed.  David who cried out with a loud voice wishing that he would have been killed instead of his son, but he didn't get the choice, didn't get the option.  Nobody asked him if he wanted to exchange his life for Absalom's, it just happened.  And for us, as people who are living in the shadow of real world events, real deaths, real calamities, real moments in which we wish we could have helped, could have swapped our lives for those lost, we realize that we don't have the choice, don't get the choice, we don't have the option, and lives will be lost without anyone asking for our input.  You may want to do that swap, to exchange, but you won't be asked.  

This brings us, as things tend to do, to the calamities we see around us.  First and foremost in the minds of local Sask people right now is the bus crash in Humboldt.  The bus crash where lives were snuffed out in a moment, in an instant, and nobody asked the parents of those boys permission, nobody asked if the parents wanted to make an exchange, which they probably would have, given the choice.  But they didn't get the choice.  The parents of the boys on that bus would likely echo the words that David said, wanting to die instead of their sons, but nobody asked, and you don't get to make that exchange.  The only one who gets to is the Good Shepherd himself.

The Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.  The Good shepherd who has the authority to lay down his life, and the authority to take it back up again.  Parents don't have the authority to lay down their lives for their children; they can't get sick for them, they can't get into a crash instead of them . They cant undergo surgery for them, all that sort of thing.  They don't have that authority to lay down their lives, and they sure don't have the authority to take their lives back up again.  That's the province of Jesus of Nazareth, the Good Shepherd.  The only one who gets to voluntarily lay down his life for the sheep, and the only one who gets to voluntarily take it back up again.

David, upon hearing about the death of his son that he had with Bathsheba, got up, washed, ate, and worshiped the Lord. When his advisers asked him about it, he said 'when the child was still alive, I fasted, mourned, and hoped that his life would be spared.  But now that he is dead, what can I do?  I can't bring him back again, but I will go to him one day.'  David's faith is a good lesson to learn from, where he knew that he couldn't die in the place of his son, as he had no authority to lay down his life for his son.  He couldn't bring his son back from death, as he had no authority to take his life back up again.  This is why David, and the rest of us, absolutely need and require the Good Shepherd, the one who can do all those things that through a haze of tears and mourning, that we wish we could do.

Filet o fish

In the Gospel reading we had from Sunday, Jesus ate some fish.

This seems like a fairly straightforward thing to talk about, doesn't it? A little detail, Jesus ate some fish, no problem there.  But thinking about who the disciples thought Jesus was when he returned from the dead and who he actually is, well, it got me thinking about some famous movie ghosts who occupy different sides of the eating conundrum.  Here's a clip from Ghostbusters. You know, the good one.

Here's slimer, which is his colloquial name.  In the movie, he's never actually called slimer, and goes by either 'onionhead' or 'ugly little spud.'   Either way, he's a ghost, something from the ether, and unlike most ghosts, he loves to snack.  He loves to eat, loves to consume, and in the movie, if the little spud is in a scene, he's going to be eating.  Hot dogs, fries, whatever, and given that he's a ghost, he doesn't have to watch his weight.  He doesn't have to watch what he eats, given that he can't pile on the pounds, what with being a ghost and all.  But the funny thing about the movie Ghostbusters (aside from all the dialogue) is that the 'ghosts' don't really seem to be ghosts at all.  They are paranormal, but they have more in common with demons than they do with ghosts of people who died.  And onion head over here, he seems to bear that out, what with his drinking and smoking and choking down food, he doesn't seem to be too shy in the eating department.  But there's another famous movie ghost that I want to contrast this with, which is from Pirates of the Caribbean, which is a movie I didn't like much, but here it is.

That's captain Barbossa giving a much more realistic view of ghosts and food.  Not that you can eat whatever you want and never gain weight, but rather that you can't eat anymore, because you're insubstantial.  You don't have a body, flesh and blood, you're a ghost, and ghosts don't eat.  Ghosts lack things like tastebuds, tummies, and intestines with which to digest.  They're dead, they're all messed up..  

And this is why Jesus eating fish is as important as it is.  When the disciples see Jesus, they get concerned, they get perplexed, worried, and say 'it is a ghost!'  Sure, that's a realistic conclusion, based on every single fact that any of us have ever known, which is that dead people have no motivation, and they don't do anything.  They just lie there, and they sure don't come back into your house and ask for catering.  But Jesus did. Saying not only 'see my hands and my feet,' but also 'do you have anything to eat?'  So they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he ate it in their presence.


Now, you do need to think about what you believe in as a Christian, and what that actually means.  For an essential, core belief that we have as Christians, which comes up in the creed, is that we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Christian church, the commuion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.  Etc.  The resurrection of the body is key, it is absolutely key to all of this, and you know this from your daily life.  It's one thing to treat death in the way the average western human does, to say of your dearly departed individuals that they are always with you in your dreams, that they are ghosts or spirits, that they are memories and so on, but those things are ephemeral, and don't really say anything of any real value.  Nothing with the actual weight and importance, with the heft and stature of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. 

He isn't a ghost, he isn't a spectre or a spirit, he's not a wandering sheet, or anything insubstantial, he's a real human being.  He takes up space, he walks and talks, he eats and breathes, which he does in the presence of his disciples.  He's not a ghost, which is something that has all the form of a person but none of the substance.  He's both.  And if you think of your loved one who have died in the faith, do you want them to be a spectre or a ghost? Do you want them to be insubstantial and incorporeal? For the pirates in the first pirates of the Caribbean movie, they were torn between two existences, which was that one the one side, they would be everlasting, but as everlasting creatures, they could not enjoy anything on earth; food or drink, sunshine or relationships, the curse was a waking hell for it was forever yet all they wanted was for it to end.  If you have a loved one, or even you yourself, and you're thinking about life in the world to come, do you want to be insubstantial, or do you want to be substantial? Do you want to be corporeal, or do you want to be incorporeal? Do you want to be able to see and associate with, and to love your family, or do you want to be swatting at ghosts forever?

The resurrection of the body, as part of the creed, is actually one of the most important parts of it as far as what we are hoping for, and Jesus manifested that brilliantly in that room, and as usual, it comes down to an order of fish.