God's Own
Psalm 23 and John 10:11-18
Sermon delivered Sunday, May 3, 2009
by Rev. Patricia Pearce
I'll be reading from the tenth chapter of John, beginning with the eleventh verse.
"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason, the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command."
{prayer}
I really felt like after Ginny read the Psalm we could have just called that the message. I have really nothing more to add. I think that the emotion with which she read that says everything that we need to know. It speaks to this common need that we have as human beings to know that we are not alone, to know that we are accompanied and cared for. So often, we are encouraged not to reveal that part of ourselves, not to reveal the fact that we have those needs. We're supposed to be tough. Pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and take care of ourselves. But deep down inside, we know that one of the things we fear most deeply is to be alone in this world that can be so harsh. I also noted that last week in Malika's sermon she talked about getting the Bible in Creole, her mother tongue, and that the first passage that she read and that came so alive to her was the 23rd Psalm.
We don't, in Philadelphia, have a lot of experience with sheep. Or being shepherds. But the people that this was written for did. They knew what sheep were like. Sheep don't do well on their own. I've had just a little experience. When I was in Ecuador, I would watch the little Quichua children take the sheep out every day to the fields, where they would watch over them and then bring them back at night. Sheep need a shepherd. I mean, they need that, they're not very shrewd. They're very vulnerable. They're out there – they're at the mercy of just about anything that comes along. The psalmist in his wisdom understood that, when we get down to it, we're very much like that: vulnerable creatures.
So we may not have a lot of experience with sheep or with shepherds or what that relationship is like, or what it feels like to be a shepherd, to be out in the storm, out in the wilderness where there are wolves around, and to feel that responsibility for these lives that are in your care.
It was just a few days after I knew that we'd be looking at this text on this particular day that I heard an interesting interview on NPR, that I would like to share with you because I think it speaks in an interesting way to this text. This is on "All Things Considered." It talks about how Washington is addressing the problem of "coyotes". Coyotes are those who smuggle people across the border from Mexico, those who are trying to get to this country to find work to sustain themselves, and usually to sustain their families back home as well.
Washington is addressing the problem of coyotes — human smugglers who are largely responsible for illegal immigration across the Southwest border — with a huge buildup of manpower and equipment to make the border less permeable.
One of those coyotes is "Paula" — 29 years old, divorced, pretty, petite, with a gold-rimmed incisor and penciled eyebrows. She sits after church in the border city of Piedras Negras, across from Eagle Pass, Texas. You wouldn't think that what she does for a living is to guide people through rattlesnake-infested thorn brush country, evading U.S. federal agents.
Paula was described by a reputable source as a "good coyote" — one who takes care of her clients. Most coyotes you hear about in the news are ruthless opportunists who would just as soon leave thirsty, lame immigrants in the desert to die. Paula says she doesn't operate that way...
"I feel like I'm helping them. Things are rough here," she says. "They can earn a lot better living there, and then send money back to their families in Mexico."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports that apprehensions of illegal immigrants are down 24 percent this year across the Southwest border because of more agents, better technology, tougher prosecutions and fewer immigrants trying to cross.
When asked about this trend, Paula says, laughing, "No, we move them across the way we've always crossed them. This work never ends; there's always demand."
Her group walks through the night. After doing this for a dozen years, she knows the trails, the fences to jump, the stock tanks where they can refill their water bottles and the cell phone towers to use as directional guides. But inevitably, some clients get tired and start complaining.
"When they get tired and say they don't want to walk anymore, there are the bad coyotes who say, 'I'm not going to argue with you. You stay here. We're leaving.' They don't want to stop the trip because of one or two people. I won't leave my clients. If they're tired, I wait, let them rest a little, let the pain go away. Then we keep walking," she says.
When they have finished the nine-hour hike beyond the Border Patrol checkpoint on Highway 57, she calls her patron on her cell phone and he sends vehicles to pick them up and take them to San Antonio or Houston.
When all the money has been collected and all the immigrants have left, the smugglers go out for a celebratory meal — to a Mexican restaurant with rounds of beer and tequila shots. The next day, Paula takes a bus back to Piedras Negras, walks into her house, blows out the candle next to the saint to whom she prayed for safe passage, and waits for her next trip. [NPR All Things Considered March 31, 2009]
I bet you there are lots of folks in Latin America who read about this Good Shepherd, and this is what comes to their minds: a guide who can be with them, a coyote who can get them through the dangers, so that they can find the green pastures that they so long for.
I wonder what it feels like to us to recognize that that is the way God relates to us. That there is this fierce and tenacious quality in God that will not leave us, regardless of how tired, how despairing we are, how exhausted we are. I am the Good Shepherd.
During our silent meditation, I would ask that we hold this reality in our hearts, and to ponder what it feels like to us to be led beside the still waters. Let us be in prayer.
© 2009 by Patricia Pearce (except for quoted material from NPR)
