St
Luke’s,
“Feed my sheep.”
Today’s readings keep us focused on the
continuing theme of the post-Easter season, which revolves around the continual
revelation of Jesus raised from the dead and one point we should note right
from the start is that the disciples are amazed each and every time they meet
the risen Christ. It’s not like they’ve seen him twice in the upper room and
when he shows up later by the lake they’re all, ‘oh, hello, it’s you again.’ No,
they’re excited and so amazed that Peter even puts on his clothes and jumps
into the water, and let’s not get sidetracked by how back to front that sounds,
more important, I think, is the question that occurs to me – how excited do we
get when we encounter the risen Christ, or perhaps more accurately, what do we
do in response to those encounters?
The old saying tells us that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and it
seems much the same can be said about breakfast.
In today’s gospel reading Jesus appears to the
disciples while they’re fishing, just like he did when he first met them – note
John drawing these parallels all the way along – and also just like the first
time, he helps them catch lots of fish and then, in an episode deliberately
designed to remind us of both the last supper and the feeding of the five
thousand, he makes them breakfast.
There are a lot of things at play in this
reading and I don’t want to get sidetracked by most of them today, but I do want
us to note how ordinary this extraordinary scene is. Jesus has sat down and
eaten with these disciples countless times before. It’s incredible, actually,
how many of the gospel stories are set around a meal. So here Jesus is doing
what he has constantly done throughout the gospel, he’s gathering with his
friends, teaching them, encouraging them, feeding them, but this time it’s
different.
“When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to
Simon Peter, do you love me?” Jesus puts this question to Peter not once, not
twice, but three times and every time Peter answers, yes Lord, of course I
love, and every time Jesus responds, then feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. Just as
Jesus has fed him, now Jesus tells Peter to go out and feed others, and, by the
way, doing that won’t always be easy, and it will take you places where you
don’t wish to go.
This is a story that’s been written very
carefully to portray precisely what the writer wants to get across, and we
could spend hours exploring it all, but let’s just say for now that it’s an
important story and a powerful story and it’s also our story.
Feed my sheep.
We are at least partly here because we want and
need to be fed. It’s not the whole reason, first and foremost we’re here to
worship God, but it’s true we’re also here to receive encouragement and strength
and food for our own journeys. So like the disciples we are spiritually at
least, and sometimes even literally, fed by the risen Christ. But that’s not
the end of the story. ‘Go now to love and serve the Lord.’ Those are the words
we hear every week at the end of our services, and they’re words that remind us
that just as we’ve been fed by Christ, so now our job is to feed his sheep.
Let me be honest – I don’t know much about
feeding literal sheep. I’ve been here four years and I suspect that in that time
most of you have worked out I’m not a rural kind of guy. Most of what I know
about sheep feeding comes from television and from that vast experience there
are two different kinds of sheep feeding technique that immediately spring to
mind. On the one hand there are the scenes of people bottle feeding little
lambs, caring for and nurturing them one by one, and then there’s the other
way, which seems to involve looking after the pasture, making sure there’s
plenty of grass or something, and occasionally, when things get really rough,
chucking out huge bundles of feed from the back of a tractor. In both cases the
focus is on feeding sheep, the methods though are quite different and designed
to meet the particular needs of a specific sheep - which makes this an
excellent metaphor.
This is where we need to be very, very clear
that this is not a nice, fuzzy cuddly sheep story. This is hard and challenging
stuff. Two points I want to make: First, whether or not we feed the sheep isn’t
really an option. Jesus says, if you love me, this is what you’ll do. If we
want to call ourselves Christians, we have no choice but to be sheep feeders.
We have a choice, of course, as to whether we want to be Christians, but having
made that choice there’s no room in this gospel story for saying, well, my
political beliefs say everyone needs to take care of themselves. It’s a user
pays world and that’s that. That ideology isn’t an option for us. That’s the
first point.
The second point is that there are no
one-size-fits-all packages by which we can feed everyone. Every situation,
every person, every sheep that comes to us needing
food needs it provided slightly differently.
Feed my sheep.
Last week our vestry made a sheep feeding
decision. For three years, as most of us know, we have been supporting the new
ministry initiatives at Flaxmere. By providing half the costs of Erice’s
position as Missioner, through the people from here who work in the centre over
there, via the generous donations of the Mission Guild and others, and through
the food that you bring along each week, we have made a significant difference
to the work that’s happening. In July Erice’s three year appointment comes to
an end, but it’s clear to everyone involved that her work isn’t finished.
Things are only now beginning to take some sort of shape and it’s going to take
another couple of years at least to bed them down. So vestry, last Wednesday,
committed us to providing $16,000 a year for the next two years to help make
that happen.
This is all about sheep feeding, and that can be
a costly business, as many of the disciples went on to discover. We’re going to
need everyone’s efforts to keep the commitment we’ve made and to enable other
efforts designed to feed different sheep in different ways, and you can be sure
you will be invited to help out, because sheep feeding is a job for us all, and
it will change us.
I think we need to be honest and clear about
this. Jesus wasn’t saying to Peter and the others, ‘look, just put a few
talents in the plate to help out the poor and then carry on as normal.’ No,
Jesus was saying you need to get up close and personal and give of yourself to
make sure my sheep get fed, and living up to that because a life-changing
experience for the disciples. Last week I encouraged us to claim as our own
those word, ‘we are witnessed to these things’, but today I want to invite us
to recognise that we’re called not just to tell the story, but to live it.
Feed my sheep. A hundred and one sheep jokes
come to mind, but I’m deadly serious when I say I believe those words are meant
for each and every one of us, both individually and as a church – if you love
me, feed my sheep.
May God help us love, may God help us act. May we make it so. Amen.