The Good Shepherd

1990 (Year A), 6 May /
Easter 4

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

One of the enduring memories from my childhood is of singing in the church choir. We had to go at least twice on Sunday, or we didn’t get paid. The evening service in particular was mind bogglingly boring. The sermon lasted at least 20 minutes and seemed to be completely irrelevant to us.

To make time pass more quickly we used to make paper aeroplanes out of the sheet with the hymn numbers on and fire them up and down the choir stalls. Occasionally a supremely successful one would zoom out of the choir stalls altogether into the middle of the church and then it could be seen by the adult members of the choir sitting in the stalls behind us. At that point one of them would reach over and whack us on the back of the head with a leather glove. ‘You’re not here to enjoy yourselves’ they would hiss ‘Just sit still and behave.’

When we went back to that church earlier in this year the person who whacked me most of all collapsed in church. It was very difficult to dispel feelings that some kind of retribution had at last taken place. It was exceedingly difficult to sympathise totally with her illness.

‘You’re not here to enjoy yourselves’ – the words are still with me. Worship was a deadly serious business then. I was taught to fear God, not to enjoy him. The solemn hour with the divine, dare not be disturbed by anything unexpected or irregular. The sermons, as I remember them, were designed to defend dogmatic orthodoxy or demand that people be morally responsible. The worship was certainly not designed for enjoyment, for God doesn’t allow any fun with him.

Apart from some pieces of music the service was as good as dead for me and the reality was that if I hadn’t been paid to go I would probably never have gone at all.

I truly don’t know where all this death came from, for the heart of the Easter Feast and therefore the central notion of our faith is the knowledge and the experience that life has overcome death. Death has been finally and utterly banished. Every image of Jesus in the bible screams out that this is true. That life has gained the ultimate victory.

Why was it then and why is it sometimes now still the case that our religious celebrations seem to say precisely the opposite. That death really does reign.

Easter is the feast of life and there can be no more powerful symbol of life than that of the shepherd, for the shepherd is the protector of life, the enabler of life. On the hills during the cold it is the experience the wisdom and the presence of the shepherd which stands between life and death for the sheep. During the first few crucial hours of life for the lambs it is the shepherd who acts as the midwife as well as guardian of the flock.

And if Jesus came so that we might have life not death and what’s more, he came that we may have life more abundantly.

All that which shackles us and the things which deal in death no longer have the hold on us that they once had. Guilt need not cripple us for we stand forgiven. Isolation need not incapacitate us for God is with us. Despair cannot overwhelm us for we have the Easter hope. Hell cannot hold us for we are welcomed into heaven. We are no longer in chains for God has set us free, and if God has liberated us then we are free indeed.

With Easter, and so actually with every service, there begins the laughter of the redeemed, the dance of the liberated. Throughout the ages Easter hymns have celebrated the victory of life by laughing at death, ridiculing hell, and driving out the demons of anxiety and guilt. In the Middle Ages, Easter sermons are said to have begun with good jokes, for laughter disarms a threat by taking away its seriousness. It shows unassailable freedom where the enemy had counted on fear and anxiety.

I have a sense that people come to church here with a different set of expectations than those I had when young. People do come to celebrate the feast of life. They expect to. And it’s not just an hour of release from the cares which bind them during the rest of the week. The life which is shared here wakes hunger for life everywhere. This feast provides memories which we take with us into everyday life, and which cannot be forgotten.

So, I don’t care what I was told all those years ago, I am here, in part at least to enjoy myself and you are here for that same purpose. That is what God wants. And He wants us to enjoy Him. That is what the lover wants for the loved; and we are most certainly loved by God. AMEN