Author: churchgoodshepherd823

Sermon by Rev. Shearer
Christ the King • November 22, 2020
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 • Psalm 100 • Ephesians 1:15-23 • Matthew 25:31-46

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
“As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their
scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep.” God speaks this to
Ezekiel, the Prophet, and Ezekiel passes the Word on to us. This is
the work of a prophet—not so much to tell the future as to listen
for God to speak, and then to tell us what God has said.
So we are like sheep scattered on the hillside! This is not very
complementary description of us humans. But Ezekiel knew sheep
and he watched human behavior, and the similarity was
compelling.
I once had a parishioner who had a flock of sheep. She said they
were scatter-brained critters, subject to easy panic attacks, who
when frightened would run off in all directions. When they ran,
they might easily run off a cliff, or run so long that they contracted
pneumonia. They couldn’t even find water or pasture by
themselves, needing a shepherd and perhaps a sheepdog to lead
them to it.
Doesn’t this sound like a divided and confused America? We are
easily subject to panic and to division; we easily believe the
misinformation spread upon the Internet; we have trouble
following the leader, yet we yearn for a savior. We don’t do a very
good job of extending America’s extraordinary prosperity to all our
citizens, much less the rest of God’s world. We are like sheep
scattered on a hillside.

2
But the promise is what is important. “I will set over them one
shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them and be their
shepherd.” David, by the time of Ezekiel, was a synonym for king,
similar to Caesar becoming a synonym for emperor—a personal
name becoming a general word for a leader. This is a promise of a
David, of a Messiah, a Christ, one who will reign over the people
with justice and who would bring prosperity and peace.
In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus says, “When the Son of Man
comes in his glory….” Son of Man? Who is this? Jesus never calls
himself the Messiah, the new David. Rather he calls himself son of
man which, in his native tongue, Aramaic, is the equivalent of
human being. It could equally be daughter of woman. He did not object
when Peter called him Messiah, but he did not call himself by that
title.
It seems to me that I’ve given you too many titles and names to
cope with—too complex for any use. I apologize for confusing
things. It really is much simpler than I have made it.
The savior of the world has many names and titles in the Bible, but
they all point to one person. David the king, Messiah the savior,
Christ the anointed one—they all refer to the same person, and
that person is the one that Jesus called the Son of Man, the human
being.
I think Jesus meant something special by this term, son of man.
He meant the whole and complete human being, the authentic
human who is without fault or blemish. He meant the righteous
human who completely and fully loves and cares for his fellow
humans.
Who can measure up to this standard? Jesus, of course, who was
without sin. But who else in the fraught history of human beings,

3
who else? Not one that I could name, and certainly no one of my
acquaintance—including the man sitting in my chair.
Unless—unless by some miracle we could be made whole. Unless
we could be forgiven our faults and errors, our headstrong self-
centeredness. Unless we could be restored to our authentic
character as the children of God.
So it is a miracle that, whatever our fallen condition, we have been
made new beings, cleansed of the past and restored to full
membership in God’s family. Not once for all time, but again and
again as we stumble and are forgiven, as we fail and are restored.
And we then are allowed to reign with Jesus as fellow Messiahs,
brother and sister human beings who, when “I was hungry and
you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you
gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in
prison and you visited me.”
My brothers and sisters, I appeal to you to acknowledge your
brokenness and confess your sins. I invite you to accept the
forgiveness of God and your fellow human beings. And then you
can take your place with Christ the King as one who serves, saving
the world, one person at a time.
Amen.

Sermon
24 Pentecost • November 15, 2020
Judges 4:1-7 • Psalm 123 • Thessalonians 5:1-11 • Matthew 25:14-30

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
The stories and parables of Jesus in the Gospels only have value if
we can relate to them personally. This means some deep diving
into ourselves, looking for what the message for us might be. As
always, the stories of Jesus are illustrations of the nature of the
kingdom of God. Not Paradise or life-after-death, but God’s
kingdom in the here and now. The stories of Jesus are about how
we can approach living our own lives, in our own circumstances,
with our own gifts and with our own challenges.
Today’s story of the Talents begins with a recognition that we are
not all equal when it comes to what we have been given. We
certainly are all equal under the law in America. We certainly are all
equally loved by our Father in heaven. But that’s about as far as
equality goes.
Each of us has been born into different stations in life, different
qualities of upbringing, different kinds of families, different
interests, different abilities. And each of us has a
lifetime—however long or short that may be—in which to make
use of what have been given.
Remember that Jesus is not a moralist, telling us how to be good.
No, Jesus is a truth-teller. He is one who announces that we can
enter into the joy of the kingdom. Jesus “tells it like it is,” showing
us how life really works, and how we can enter into joy in the
midst of this difficult and fraught world in which God has placed
us.

2
The first two successful slaves in the story took whatever they
were given and actively worked with it. They took risks with their
gifts, looking to make what they had been given even better. The
third slave, whom the master calls “wicked and lazy,” was afraid.
He was fearful of losing the one gift he had been given, fearful of
the anger of his master if he risked his gift and failed.
Fear of failure is a great lock on the gates to the kingdom of God.
Frequently in the Bible, whenever God shows up, or an angel
appears, the first words are “Fear not!” The wicked and lazy slave
was correct in knowing that he could fail. He was right in knowing
that failure carries punishments in the real world. His natural
reaction was fear; inherent in risk is the possibility of failure. But
his refusal to risk meant that his gifts were wasted. He buried
them.
So the clear message is that we would do well to take whatever we
have been given and take the risk of producing good out of them.
What have we been given at this point in our lives? Well, some of
us have been given great age. Some of us have been given
precarious health. all of us have been given a pandemic in which
out human herd is passing the virus around at a great rate, resulting
in increasing deaths—almost 250,000 at this point—and millions
upon millions of infected people. And we’ve been given a fragile
economy in which many of us are in trouble.
Of course, these are not our only gifts. Most of us here have a
great deal of wisdom, hard-earned over many years but
nonetheless a gift. Most of us have managed to be economically
stable. By the world’s standards, in which two dollars a day means
being out of poverty, most of us are in the one percent. And we
have been given skills, how-to knowledge of immense value.

3
And we have been given other resources. We have Zoom these
days! We have email and messages and phones and TV. These are
profoundly valuable gifts for making a difference when in-person
contact is denied us.
The bottom line in Jesus story of the Talents is this: “To all those
who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance;
but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be
taken away.” The challenge before us, you and I, is to not bury our
gifts for fear of losing what we have. The challenge before us is to
see what needs to be done for others, and to step out, knowing the
risks, and act on behalf of our Master, our Father in heaven.

Amen.

Sermon
20 Pentecost • October 18, 2020
Deuteronomy 34:1-12 • Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17 • 1 Thessalonians 21:1-8 • Matthew 22:34-46

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Matthew tells us about two distinct events in today’s Gospel
Lesson. The first is a test commonly asked of teachers in Jesus’
time. “Teacher,” they asked, “which commandment in the law is
the greatest?” This was a test for the rabbi’s knowledge of the
scripture, and there were a number of valid answers that rabbis
over the years had given.
The first half of Jesus’ answer is a quotation from the book of
Deuteronomy, chapter six, verses four through nine. The passage
begins with what is now known as the Shema, a prayer that is part
of every Jewish service: “Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the
Lord alone.” Then follows the passage that Jesus quotes: “You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your might.” These two verses were, and are,
known by every Jew, then as now, and are central to the faith,
theirs and ours.
What follows in Deuteronomy are instructions to keep this
command central: “Keep these words that God is commanding
you in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about
them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie
down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix
them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the
doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
You probably have seen a little box affixed to the door frame of
the houses of Jewish people. This is called a mezuzah, and it

2
contains a scrap of paper on which this and a similar verse are
written. It is a visual reminder of this first and great
commandment. The house Jesus grew up in, and the houses he
visited certainly had such mezuzahs on their door posts. So it is no
surprise that Jesus replies to the question of which is the greatest
commandment with this quotation.
The second commandment is from the book of Leviticus, the
second half of chapter 19, verse 18: “… you shall love your
neighbor as yourself.” The full verse reads, “ You shall not take
vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you
shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So although the full verse
has to do with unforgiveness—holding a grudge and taking
vengeance—Jesus plucked the second half out of the verse and
made it a general principle.
Notice that the commandment refers to matters of the heart.
Grudges and unwillingness to forgive come from the heart, the
same place where love resides. Jesus is not alone is citing one or
both these passages from the Torah, the five books of origins and
laws in the Bible. Other rabbis of the time saw similar
interpretations. But Jesus sees them as central to his understanding
of the kingdom of God, to conforming oneself to the will of God
and to life in the kingdom.
The second part of Matthew’s lesson this morning is quite
different. Jesus sets up a controversy with the Pharisees that is not
very understandable to Twentieth-Century ears. So let’s walk
through it.
First, he asks the Pharisees who the Messiah is, “whose son is he.”
The answer was easy for them: a reading of the Prophets reveals
very clearly that the Messiah will be a descendant of David. The

3
writers of two of the Gospels (Matthew and Luke) agreed, working
hard to make it clear that Jesus is a descendant of David. They
wanted to prove that Jesus is Messiah by right of inheritance.
Secondly, they all agreed that Messiah was the coming king who
would save Israel. So David’s descendant, his son (as it were), will
be the great messianic ruler. But how can the son be greater than
his father? No traditional Jew could allow such an interpretation.
Jesus left his listeners speechless, entangled in their own
interpretations of Scripture. But Jesus’ intent seems to be to throw
doubt on Messiah, that he needed to be the son of David. Nothing
more is indicated in this passage.
Here is what I think: First, Jesus understood well his mission to be
Messiah. Second, Jesus did not think his Messiahship had anything
to do with being a physical descendant of David; he got his
marching orders not from inheritance but from the Father’s call.
And thirdly, Jesus seems to be moving toward an understanding of
Messiah that is larger than any one person. His promise elsewhere
to his disciples was that we would do greater things than he was
capable of.
I think that Jesus expected his disciples, you and me, to take on his
mantle of Messiahship and to turn our attention away from
ourselves and toward saving the people around us. I think that
Jesus wants us to be other Christs, other Messiahs, and I think this
is what it means to follow Jesus.
Amen.

Sermon
18 Pentecost • October 4, 2020
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 • Psalm 19, 37-45 • Philippians 3:4b-14 • Matthew 21:33-46

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This parable, called the “Parable of the Wicked Farmers,” is very problematic for the scholars. For example, in this form as Matthew presents it, it is an “allegory,” not a parable. In an allegory, each character stands for some particular thing or person—the owner of the vineyard is God, the workers in the vineyard are the people of the Jewish nation, the representatives of the owner who were treated badly were the prophets, and the son and heir is Jesus himself.

But Jesus rarely, if ever, used allegories. They were a popular teaching tool in the First Century, but not one Jesus normally used. His parables made one central point, telling in a short phrase or even a story, one abstract message.

You probably are aware that Matthew had a copy of the Gospel of Mark in front of him when he wrote his own version of Jesus’ ministry. Luke also quotes Mark. So Mark is the earliest of the Gospels, and is the source for much that Matthew and Luke were able to relate. This story of the Wicked Farmers is now found in all three Gospels.

In Mark and Luke, as it turns out, this story is a parable, not an allegory. It has a single point, one that engages one’s curiosity as to what Jesus means to convey. In this morning’s telling from Matthew, however, it is turned into an allegory. So the chances are that Matthew is embroidering quite a bit.

A second problem is this: In this allegory Jesus identifies himself as the Son of God—something Jesus never did. The Early Church, including Matthew who gave us this version, did call Jesus the Son of God. But Jesus? Speaking about himself? Never. To make such a claim for oneself would qualify one for the looney-bin, or brand one as a charlatan; I am told that insane asylums contain many self-proclaimed Messiahs!

The point in the other version of Mark and Luke is this: The hardness of heart of the established leadership, by refusing to listen to the prophets (and Jesus certainly considered himself a prophet)—such hardness of heart condemns them to live outside the kingdom of God.

What is being rejected is not so much Jesus, but what Jesus came to proclaim. They were rejecting the Word of God and thereby were denying themselves the kingdom.

We are enabled to enter the Kingdom of God by our willingness to listen newly, by opening ourselves to uncomfortable truths, by forgiving others as God has forgiven us, by feeding and clothing the poor, and the like.

Should we reject Matthew’s version of the Parable of the Wicked Farmers? I think not, even though it probably does not reflect Jesus’ teaching accurately. What it does give us is an insight into the faith and teaching of the Early Church. Jesus’ disciples certainly did see him as the Son of God, worthy of worship and example to be followed.

We promised, when we were baptized, to “follow and obey” Jesus as our Lord. Following Jesus means different things to different people, for each of us hears that promise differently. What matters is the intention to follow and obey, and then to actively search out what is the appropriate way for us to fulfill the promise.

What is appropriate to a twenty-year-old will not be the same as a sixty-year-old. What following Jesus means for a working person will not be the same as what it means for a retired person. So it take continual discernment, continual listening to the Word, continual openness to hear what each of our missions in life might be at any particular stage in our lives.

In this, Jesus promises to be with us unto the end of the earth, certainly the end of our earthly life. For we have taken him on as our Lord, our Leader, and our Savior.

Amen.

Sermon
16 Pentecost • September 20, 2020
Exodus 16:2-15 • Psalm 105:1- 6, 37-45 • Philippians 1:21-30 • Matthew 20:1-16

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A story and a koan we find in today’s Gospel Lesson. The koan is simple—“The last will be first, and the first will be last.” What could this possibly mean? Even though Matthew sticks it onto the end of a story, it is clear that it originally was a stand-alone koan spoken by Jesus to prompt some thinking, some investigation, some inquiry for those of us who are his disciples, something for us to chew on.  

So what does this mean, “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” The first time I really heard this koan when I was 14 or 15 years old, standing with other members of my church youth group—the YPF, the Young People’s Fellowship. We were pushing and shoving, jostling each other as we tried to get to the front of the line for dinner. It was all pretty good-natured. We were doing the natural thing—trying to be first. You probably have done this yourself, trying to get into a crowed subway or maybe pushing your cart a little faster to edge out another shopper in the grocery store.

Our rector came up behind us, said “The last will be first, and the first will be last,” and led the head of the line to the back, reversing the order we had made. It was a shock. It was unfair. It was incomprehensible that he should do such a thing! But … I never forgot what he said, what I later learned was a koan from Jesus.

What does it mean? Well, perhaps it has to do with our misperception of what it means to be first! Maybe we got it all wrong, our striving and jostling, competing with our fellow humans to be first, when we thought that bigger is better, more powerful is more desirable, and richer is best.

Perhaps this is another version of another koan from Jesus—“Except you become as a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Infants are charming and cute, but they certainly are not big and strong and smart. What they are good at is listening, but that is little valued in this world.

I leave it to you to sort out what this means for you—“The last will be first, and the first will be last.”

The story that Jesus told tells another story of unfair behavior on the part of the kingdom of heaven. remember that this is, as always, an attempt by Jesus to help us as we seek the kingdom.

The owner of the vineyard, at about three-hour intervals, hires day laborers to work in his garden. The first group works 15 hours in the hot sun. The last group works only three hours until the work-day is ended. They all then get off work and are paid their agreed-upon wages. And they all got the same pay. Unjust! Unfair! “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat!”

So perhaps the kingdom of heaven is not about getting fairness or equity or justice for ourselves—that would be just more self-centeredness, more about me-me-me.

Perhaps the kingdom of God is not about our hard work or being good. Perhaps entrance into the kingdom is not a matter of what we do. Perhaps it is only about what God does.

Perhaps entering the kingdom is a function of God’s generosity to us. Perhaps it is a free gift, a gift of grace, a gift that only has to be heard and chosen over what the world has to offer. No payment required.

As with the koan, this story is intended to hook us, to engage us in the inquiry. Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and everything else shall be given.” Perhaps both story and koan are intended to aid us on our journey, seeking together the kingdom of God.

Amen.