THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Year A
May 10, 2014
Psalm 23
John 10:1-10
Pastor David Tryggestad
Concordia Evangelical
Lutheran Church
Duluth, Minnesota
“Dorothy! Dorothy!” What image does that call conjure up for
you?
It’s Auntie Em calling Dorothy back to consciousness after
she was hit in the head during the tornado in Kansas. In the movie, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy comes to and begins to relay her
fantastic dream to those who love her. Several times throughout the movie, it
seems, Dorothy is calling for her Antie Em.
“Dorothy! Dorothy!” Dorothy hears the voice of Antie Em and
comes back to her. “There’s no place like home!”
One of the books I’m reading right now is called Thoughts While Tending Sheep, by W.G.
Ilefeldt, who moved after his retirement from the city to Carmel Valley, California,
where he and his wife, Louise, are raising between 20 and 30 sheep. The author
talks about Louise naming his rams and his sheep: “She gets names from
everywhere. She got the names Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy from the
Twenty-third Psalm because she said these three little lambs tended to ‘follow
me all the days of their life.’”[1]
One of the mother ewes is named Fudge. She had given birth
to twins, but one was still-born, while the other had evidently suffered some
brain damage, though it looked normal.
One time, walking along with the
rest of the flock near the edge of the pond, [the little lamb] fell, or was
crowded, off the embankment into the water. I heard it bleat in distress. It
began swimming around in circles, and every time it would baa it would get a
mouthful of water, which made its cry even more agonizing. It would try to swim
back to the embankment to come ashore, but when it could not find footing it
baaed and swam back out again.
From the shore I tried to scare it
across the pond, where it could touch ground and wade ashore where it was
shallower, but I stopped short of going in after it, it being January. I sent
Maxie [the dog] instead.
With Maxie swimming in pursuit, the
little guy finally got to the opposite shore, apparently unharmed. And once
ashore it ran to find solace from [its mother] Fudge, who, while all this was
going on, was making an even greater racket than the lamb.[2]
I am struck in this story about the bleating of Fudge, the
mother ewe. For as loudly as the little lamb was baaing, the mother was
bleating all the more loudly.
Many years ago, one of our members from Concordia almost
lost a daughter aged two-and-one-half in the Lester River.
She was playing with siblings and friends and wandered off. It was October and
it was cold. One of the neighbors heard one of the children running and crying,
“Carol’s drowned! Carol’s drowned!” The little girl had fallen and hit her head
on the slippery rocks in the river and was knocked unconscious. Her mother
found her and drove her daughter to her own mother’s house on Glenwood Street in Lakeside, and the fire department responded. Once at the
hospital, the child’s grandmother sat on her bed praying. Suddenly the child’s
eyes opened, and she saw her mother and cried, “Mommy!”
I can imagine both mother and grandmother calling out the
name of that little girl, if not out loud, in their hearts, pleading for her to
come back to them.
The sheep hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, and they
follow him, because they know his voice. If this little girl’s mother and
grandmother were not calling out her name, we know that the Good Shepherd was.
I preached at the St. Louis County Jail this past week. We
prayed Psalm 23 together, and I shared our Gospel for today with them. I spoke
of the many voices that will call out to them when they get out of jail. I
talked about the many voices of those who come to steal and to kill and to destroy.
I asked them how they might hear the voice of the Good Shepherd calling them in
the midst of the cacophony of voices that will clamor for their attention and
for them to follow. How do we distinguish the voice of the Good Shepherd from
all the other voices?
Parents and grandparents, how do we teach our children and
grandchildren to distinguish the voice of the Good Shepherd from all the other
voices that seek to steak and to kill and to destroy?
After the service at the jail, one of the inmates asked if I
could pray with her. Unfortunately, the jail was under lock-down and she had to
return to her cell immediately. I agreed to come again the next day for a
private prayer session, which I did.
She is a woman of middle age. Her oldest two sons are in
prison, and third is “on his way there.” She wants desperately to get her own
life back on track, to come back to the Lord, as she says, so that she can be
there for her youngest two children, who are currently under the care of their
father, with whom the woman is no longer in a relationship. She wants her
children to know which voices are trustworthy and true and which voices to
avoid. She wants her children to discern those voices who seek to steal, to
kill, and to destroy.
“The [Good Shepherd] calls his own
sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes
ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not
follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the
voice of strangers.” (John 10:3b-5)
I know there are mothers and grandmothers—and fathers and
grandfathers—here this morning who are calling—pleading—for their children and
grandchildren to be able to distinguish between the voices of those who seek to
steal, to kill, and to destroy, from the voice of the Good Shepherd.
Imagine the voices of the mothers calling for their children
in the aftermath of the devastating storms and tornados that ravaged the south
this past week. Imagine the voices of the mothers of Nigeria desperately calling for
their daughters stolen by terrorists. We remember the mothers of the children
of Bethlehem
killed by Herod’s soldiers in his attempt to eliminate the newborn King of the
Jews.
For as loudly as all the mothers and grandmothers—and
fathers and grandfathers—of the world call for their children and grandchildren,
our Lord the Good Shepherd calls for them even more earnestly, even more
urgently, to the end of the universe, to the end of time.
Our Good Shepherd not only calls them—and us—but our Good
Shepherd also gathers them—and us—and leads us.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of
my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:6b).
Thanks be to God!
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