May 11, 2014 Fourth Sunday of Easter

John 10:1-10

“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” 6 Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.
   7 Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. 9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.[a] They will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

“The Shepherd Gives Life”

“The purpose of the shepherd is to give life to the sheep.”
This is why he exists!
He knows them by name. They know his voice.  The relationship leads to abundant life.

In the book, “The Little Prince”, the following conversion takes place between a boy and a fox:    The fox is speaking to the boy:

“I have no need for you, and you, on your part, have no need of me.  To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes.  But if you tame me, then we will need each other.  To me, you will be unique in all the world.  To you, Ishall be unique in all the world.”

That’s the key - to be unique to someone!

We are unique to God - who loves us with a unique love in Jesus,
calls us by name and gives us opportunity to live life all the way up!

God won’t live our lives for us; God will live our lives with us.

The purpose of the Church is also to give life, fill life, enrich life so that we are pregnant with potential and then turned loose on the world.


April 16, 1978  “Discovering Life -  Abundantly”

Thornton Wilder in his play “Our Town” has Emily, the young bride who had died in childbirth, ask, in a return to live over one day with her family,:  “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?”  The answer given is, “No, the Saints and poets maybe, they do some.”

It is so easy to live for yesterday or tomorrow and miss today.
We must realize that life is a spiritual journey and it’s abundance is to be discovered on the way.  It is discovered as it is shared with others and as we open ourselves to new possibilities.

Slowing down helps; so does a simpler life style; time to touch and be touched.
The abundant life in Christ is hidden in human form yet today; even as we are touched by His presence, we also must touch to live.

A story to spark the text

“Peter W Marty, in a short article titled “The Poetry of Sheep.” offers yet another ideal picture of the church:  ”Metaphorically speaking, it’s like a jumble of words coming together to form an unexplainable rich poem.“

His inspiration comes from a sheep farm in England in which a writer spray-painted a single word on each sheep in the flock and then set them loose.  As the sheep wandered around, the words took on constantly shifting poetic forms.

Marty says, “We the church would do well to think of God as writing poetry with our lives.  You can’t write a poem with one word.  It takes a whole flock...Always God is trying to figure out how to get us to be this unexplainably rich poem we’re capable of being.”

Nancy Claire Pittman, New Proclamation, Year A 2011 Easter through Christ the King
Peter W. Marty, “The Poetry of Sheep”. Christian Century. (Sept. 9, 2008), 10.