More Than You Could Ever Imagine (John 10:1-18)

The following is my manuscript for the sermon that I preached on Sunday, March 1 at The Bridge service. The sermon was originally titled “Sanctuary,” but I came up with that name really before I wrote anything. As always, this is not exactly what I said, but it’s the gist. It would also be helpful for you to know that the video below played before I preached.

We are going to start off in a remarkably nerdy place, but I promise that this is going somewhere. This past fall, an unprepared world was introduced to Baby Yoda. In the first episode of the new Star Wars TV show called The Mandalorian, the title character—a bounty hunter—is hired to go to some alien world and capture a 50 year old creature to bring back to some pretty shady individuals. After some classic Star Wars derring-do, we discover that the bounty is this impossibly adorable little guy.

No one saw this coming. Disney somehow kept Baby Yoda’s existence under wraps. They would also like to remind everyone that his name is not Baby Yoda because he is not Yoda as an infant and he is officially referred to as The Child. So whereas everyone thought The Mandalorian was going to be a show about a bounty hunter doing some bounty hunting, it turned out to be a show in which this lone wolf type of individual suddenly has to care for and protect this precious child from those who seek to do it harm.

As the video we just showed indicates, the internet has gone absolutely insane for Baby Yoda. Bootleg Baby Yoda merchandise began popping up everywhere. With each episode of The Mandalorian there was a slew of new adorable images of Baby Yoda that were instantly turned into memes or tweeted out a thousand times. My children will periodically ask to see a picture of Baby Yoda just so they can go “Awwwwwww…” He is an absolute marvel of storytelling and creature design. We all know that he is literally a puppet, but we are super invested in his wellbeing.

Because everything on the internet turns into a competition, someone asked who was cuter: Baby Yoda or a tree-like character that captured the internet’s heart a few years ago named Baby Groot. One person replied: “I would use Baby Groot as firewood to keep Baby Yoda warm.” And 362,000 people liked it. Everyone was like, “Yeah, I’d probably do that too.” There is a massive collective instinct of “We must protect Baby Yoda at all costs.” All of which works perfectly for the show because the premise of The Mandalorian is about this individual who discovers this child and turns his own life upside down to protect this precious little creature.

Today’s scripture passage is about a shepherd and his sheep; more particularly it is about Jesus and those who follow him. In our present day, many of us may not necessarily connect with the relationship between someone and their livestock. We know about shepherding because it is a metaphor used commonly in the Bible but most of us are not personally invested in it.

Yet I do think that each of us is familiar with this protective instinct in some shape or form, even if it is just a deep concern for the cutest Star Wars character ever. We know what it is like to care so much for something that we are willing—or like to believe that we are willing—to do whatever we can to keep that which we love safe. This idea—of a protective, self-sacrificial love—is what Jesus is sharing with us today. 

Shepherding was not for the faint of heart. I don’t know if it is because we often have children portray them at Christmas time, but we often think of shepherds as these mild and harmless individuals. Yet shepherds had to be on guard against thieves, outlaws, wolves, and other predators who may want to harm the sheep. They had to actively take care of their flock.

One of the ways in which shepherds would protect their sheep is to have fenced off areas that would be a kind of safe haven for them. These pens would be surrounded by stone and would have only one way in and out. The shepherd or someone else would stand at the entrance of the pen; guarding and protecting the sheep. Oftentimes, that person would be a human gate keeping out those who seek to harm the flock and opening up to lead the sheep out into the larger world to graze.

It is here that Jesus contrasts what these thieves and robbers intend versus what he desires for the sheep. The thief, he says, comes to steal, kill, and destroy. It is Star Wars-level dramatic statement and some of us might be thinking, “Hey, let’s dial it back a bit, Jesus.” Yet are there not entities we encounter in our everyday lives that seek to steal, kill, and destroy in ways both large and small? Sometimes we lose important parts of our life in earth-shatteringly difficult ways: we lose a loved one, a relationship may turn ugly, we get fired from a job, or suffer an illness. Yet other times, we may lose aspects of us in small, barely perciptible ways as if a thief sneaks over the wall in steals from us bit by bit. What are the ways in which hope gets snatched away from you? How might joy be killed in our lives? When are the moments in which love is incrementally destroyed? There are heartbreaks that happen in our lives both big and small.

Yet Jesus is here so that we may have life abundantly or life to the fullest. Now there are days that I believe that with my entire heart. There are days in which following God fills me to the brim with life; in which hope, peace, joy, love, and all that makes this life show up in brilliant technicolor are in abundance. And there are days in which I wonder why God does not make the stone walls higher because it seems like the thief sometimes still gets in despite this promise of abundant life. I have had to reconcile myself with the reality that what Jesus means as life to the full does not equal a life without hurt. So what does it mean for Christ to bring us abundant life?

One of the best answers to that question is appropriately another passage about a shepherd. I am certain when Jesus called himself the good shepherd that Psalm 23 had to be in his mind.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes lie down in free pastures; he leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in high paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil; for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff—they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, even though I face evil, even though I will still have enemies and encounter thieves and outlaws that seek to steal, kill, and destroy, I fear no evil because You are always with me. There may be pain for a night, there may be pain for scores of nights, but joy will eventually come with the morning. The Lord is my shepherd and your shepherd and therefore goodness and mercy shall follow us and we will always find sanctuary in the midst of a world of hurt. It is abundant life in spite of the ways in which this world may seek to steal, kill, and destroy.

In that mold, Jesus is our shepherd. He states that he is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. This past Wednesday, we entered into the season of Lent: forty days in which Christians stop, reflect, and prepare themselves for Easter. And a central part of the Easter narrative is that Christ died for us. We discussed in staff meeting this past week about what role the death of Jesus played in our salvation. Was crucifixion always the endgame of Jesus’ life on earth? Or was it the inevitable conclusion of Jesus’ message about the reign of God clashing with the powers of this world? What is the nature and function of that death in the process of saving humanity and the world?

It was an invigorating discussion and I definitely have some thoughts about those questions. There is also part of me that thinks we are only going to be able grasp an infinitesimally small part of the picture concerning how the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus actually saves us. Yet this one thing I do believe: Jesus willingly laid down his life out of love for us.

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.” This sacrificial act is not one borne out of duty. He knows us just as he knows God the Creator. That relationship is not one of casual acquaintance. It is one of deep love. So if Jesus knows us just as he knows God the Creator then he loves us more than we could possibly imagine and love is the thing that can stand up in the face of everything that seeks to steal, kill, and destroy. It is how we can make it through the darkest valley and eat in the presence of that which may seek us harm. The fifth century bishop Peter Chrysologus once wrote:

The force of love makes a person brave because genuine love counts nothing as hard, or bitter, or serious or deadly. What sword, what wounds what penalty, what deaths can avail to overcome perfect love? Love is an impenetrable breastplate. It wards off missiles, sheds the blows of swords, taunts dangers, laughs at death. If love is present, it conquers everything.

One of the things that means so much to me about the resurrection that we celebrate on Easter Sunday is that it sends the message that love does truly conquer everything, even death. The Good Shepherd lays down his life out of love for each of us and though seemingly everything was stolen from him, though he was killed, though he was thought to be destroyed, he was not conquered. Instead his love conquered death.

As I mentioned, Lent began this past week with Ash Wednesday and I am a weird person who loves Ash Wednesday. But I also—as one of the those who administers ashes—agonize over what I am going to say. I really want to sit down and tell each person everything. You are dust and to dust you will return. Repent and believe the gospel. You are earth and wind, which has a larger contextual background behind it. But I can’t because there’s a line and what I say has to be quick.

And then there is the additional question of what to do when a child comes up to me. Because the main idea of telling someone that they are dust is the reminder that we are all going to die and leaning over and telling an eight year old that they are going to die feels like handing them a lot of church-related baggage and multiple sessions of therapy on down the road.

So I tell children—and I try to include this with the dust talk with adults too—“You are more loved by God than you can ever imagine.” Because at the end of the day that is what I want each of us to understand. That even though we are finite, even though we sometimes mess up, even though there are these things that steal, kill, and destroy, and even though we might do things to others that steal, kill, and destroy, God loves us more than we can imagine. Jesus was willing to lay down his life for us out of that love and that love was so great that not even death could stop it.

There is abundant life possible for all of us in this great, epic, all-consuming love that God has for us. And that should change us. If we know our shepherd’s voice, if we even begin to understand that love and what it means for the world, it changes everything. The Lord is our shepherd and God loves you more than you could ever imagine.