In this months "Pastor Page" in the Parish Newsletter, Pastor Fran wrote about the fact that Easter is not a single day, but a whole season. These fifty days are filled with the promise of the resurrection. It is a time of joy in the abundant new life we have received in Christ Jesus, but it has been hard to get that without the springtime to remind us. School is closed today because of a big blizzard. We are still under more than a foot of snow. It feels more like early December than early April these days. But still we are in the midst of the season of resurrection. We are still huddled in our houses awaiting the end to this short ice age, but it still is Easter and hope for new life abounds!

Easter 4 A 2008 "Good Shepherd Sunday"

When I was in the "in-between times" between college and seminary I had many wonderful work experiences one of which prepared me for ministry in ways that I never could have foreseen. I worked on a little organic vegetable farm for two seasons and that experience gave me insight into the parables and sayings of Jesus that are agrarian in nature. This Pastor actually has experience working with sheep. Now, I make no claims about knowing anything about first century Middle Eastern shepherding, but I do have the real life experience of taking care of a herd of about forty sheep.

Lambing time is happening right now on the farm. The sheep are not out in the pasture because the muddy and snowy ground is void of fodder. There is nothing out in the pasture for those poor sheep to eat. They are locked away in their sheepfold. They are gated off for their own protection from feral dogs and coyotes. They are 100 percent dependant upon the farmers for hay, grain, water, and minerals. The dried up nutrients of the earth from last summer’s growth are keeping them alive, but this is no abundant life. This is simple survival. The sheepfold is desolate, bare, and muddy. The gates are shut off because right now there are no green pastures and the still waters are even now frozen over. The vision of last summer’s growth and abundance is almost lost.

But when the time is right, when the fields are green and the ground is solid underfoot, then the gates are opened and the sheep are allowed to roam. When it comes time to move the sheep out of their sheepfold, often the lambs jump where the gate was. They have never known any other life than that of the sheepfold. This new world is a mystery and yet they leap right into it. Their mothers are a bit more skittish. They run nervously and anxiously through the gate, but they follow the voice that means food and water. They follow trusting the voice that provided hay, gain, and water through the winter months. They follow the voice that means life.

As the lambs leap into greener pastures and ewes nervously cross the threshold of the sheepfold, it is easy to understand their response, and both responses are correct. The ewes know the perils of the pasture. There are flesh eating enemies out there—there are dangers and dark valleys. There are thunder storms and no place to take refuge. No wonder they are nervous and a bit skittish. No wonder they are anxious. But they follow the voice of the shepherd, a voice they know and trust.

Now, as the lambs leap into the new world of the pasture their response is correct as well. They follow the voice too, but their response of leaping forth into new and uncharted territory is driven by the promise that the grass is so much greener, and richer, and abundant than it was in the sheepfold. They have just started to nibble at the tender shoots of spring—they have tasted it, and know that it is good. Beyond the sheepfold life is less certain, but it is more exciting and full of possibility. Abundant life is not possible in the sheepfold. Life in the sheepfold is based on predictable deprivation. In the sheepfold there is just enough fodder for survival. In the pasture the sheep grow fat on the abundance of forage.

The winter has been long and full of deprivations. Economic insecurity, social problems that result from forty years of decline, empty buildings, rampant alcohol and drug abuse, a community marked by high anxiety, bitter conflicts, steady decline, and the herd is not growing any younger. We have grown accustomed to the sheepfold and its dreary muddiness. We have developed a taste for what is dried up and hard to swallow. We have settled for our predictable rations that we have to stretch further and further as the storehouses and hay bails dwindle. But this life of deprivation is not the life that God in Jesus Christ has called you into. The voice of the Good Shepherd calls us out of the old life of the sheepfold into the new life of the pasture.

Abundant life is not found in here, it is somewhere out there. It is beyond the gate of our fears, and the sheepfold of our insecurity. It is beyond the winter of our discontent in the springtime of new and abundant life. This is where God is leading us. Jesus is calling us out of our upper rooms where we hide for fear of thieves and bandits, those who would steal us away from what God is doing in and among us. Spring is coming; it is almost here and when it is, the door will be flung wide. The gate will be opened and some will leap across the threshold while others will move with a bit more caution.

Abundant life is with the Good Shepherd who leads us out of the sheepfold and into new and uncharted territory. Abundant life is with Jesus Christ who leads us beside still waters and restores our souls. But abundant life is not without its challenges. There will be enemies, there will be dark valleys, there will be the shadow of death, but that shadow is just an illusion. When we are in the midst of the abundant life of the good shepherd who prepares a table before us, then death looses its sting—death becomes the gate to eternal life. When we are in the presence of the Good Shepherd, when we have come to follow him who has defeated death, then all things become possible including abundant life even in the face of death and decline. I repeat: abundant life even in the face of death and decline.

We follow Jesus because we trust Him. We follow him because he calls us by name. We follow him because he leads us into green pastures and besides still waters and protects us from death and destruction. Sometimes we follow him cautiously and other times we follow him with abandon, but we follow him because we know his voice.

Amen.

New Link

Thanks to Diana Garthwait for all her work on getting organized for the upcoming Relay for Life. Check out http://events.cancer.org/rflgogebiccomi to find out how you can get involved or give to this great effort. The link will be added to the blog in the right hand column.

This year there is an international theme for the Relay and our theme nation is Sweden. Check it out! Get involved! tack så mycket.

Kindness Eggs

"...what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?" The Life Together Church School and Confirmation Students worked this Lent to bring us a new Lenten discipline. In each egg was a slip of paper with a proposed act of kindness on it. Sometimes it took a few tries to get one that was right for you, but many acts of kindness were carried out as a result of these suggestions.

New Bibles at Church School

"The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever." Due to gracious gifts given in memory of our beloved former Superintendent Beth Forslund, the Life Together Church School is equipped with new Bibles. The picture is due to the courtesy of Bonnie Maki.