John 10:11-18

William F. Schnell

May 3, 2009

About seven years ago I learned the hard way why using the front brake on a motorcycle is not a good idea while traveling on gravel. With my son as a passenger I was heading up to Hillcrest Hospital via the back roads to make a visit on a parishioner. All of a sudden I had to blow my nose, which required a quick stop on the side of the road. I saw a convenient cutout and made my way toward it. What I did not notice was a patch of dirty gravel at its entrance. When I applied the front brake to stop the bike, the bike stopped a little more abruptly than planned.

Translation: the bike, my son and I were tossed to the ground with a loud crunch. It was one of those bone-jarring hits that kind of set you back for a moment. In the stillness that followed, my first thought was that Jim Bob was winding up to let out a hurt yell. What I heard from behind me was a calm, collected and thoughtful voice that asked, "Are you alright Dad?" I answered, "Yeah," even though I hadn’t yet felt for all my parts. I could already tell that he was okay, and so we slowly got up and began declining offers from passersby to help us pick up the bike, etc.

We rode on to the closest gas station to borrow some tools for a quick fix and then resumed the trip to Hillcrest. On the way, I could feel my son’s helmet bobbing on my back and thought, "Poor little guy. I guess the reality caught up with him and he’s crying." Wrong again. He was nodding off. So much for drama, although I will admit that it was a bonding experience of sorts and I was looking forward to recounting the story with my biker buds who seem to have a flair for the dramatic.

While offering a slow-mo, blow-by-blow description of our epic wreck each engaged listener offered the exact same response word-for-word. It was, and I quote, "So you had to lay it down, huh?" I loved the sound of that. I, the main actor on the stage of life, in a supreme act of willful volition, laid (action verb) the bike down. Unfortunately that is so not what happened. I did not do anything. The bike threw me down, along with my son, before we knew what had happened. Now when any biker dude is waxing poetic about his most dramatic crash, my response is: "So your bike had to lay you down, huh?"

The title of our message for this morning is, "Laying It Down." It is the second in a four-sermon series from the Gospel of John. It actually follows directly upon last Sunday’s text so the contextual details are the same. To review, the religious elite of Jesus’ day are increasingly threatened by Jesus’ spiritual authority with the people and his growing popularity as a religious leader. He heals a blind man and creates a lot of buzz, but the legalistic Pharisees are incensed because he did it on the Sabbath and thereby violated one of their 613 manmade religious rules and regulations governing such things as what a person could and could not do on the Sabbath.

In last week’s message, "Gateway to Life," Jesus explains why the sheep of God’s fold are drawn to him as their shepherd and not to the Pharisees. In a metaphor Jesus portrays the Pharisees as thieves and robbers who seek the sheep for self-serving purposes. Jesus represents the gateway through which the sheep go in the morning to find pasture and still waters, and through which they return at night to find rest in the safety of the sheep pen. Unlike the thieves who steal and kill, Jesus protects and provides. This is why the sheep are drawn to him.

In our text for today, Jesus continues this line of reasoning. He says, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (Verse 11). This is the first of three references Jesus makes in our text to laying down his life. Whenever something is repeated three times by the Bible in general or Jesus in particular, pay close attention because something important is being emphasized. The reason Jesus is the good shepherd is because he lays down his life for the sheep.

Contrast this relationship with that of the Pharisees who, in this metaphor, are depicted as a hired hand. "The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. The wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep" (Verses 12-13). The self-serving hired hand cares only for himself and getting paid for the least amount of work possible. Work that involves any personal risk is clearly above his pay grade. When a Big Bad Wolf shows up, he abandons the sheep because he is not getting paid enough for that kind of work. He doesn’t care about the sheep. He cares only for himself.

Jesus continues, "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" (Verses 14-15). Jesus knows that the Pharisees and other religious leaders are out to get him. Jesus knows that they are already plotting to kill him. And Jesus knows that they will eventually succeed with their plans. A self-serving person like your typical Pharisee would abandon the flock at a time like this to save his own skin. But not a Good Shepherd like Jesus. He has been given a job to do and he is going to complete it come what may. For now there is work yet to be done.

"I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd" (Verse 16). Jesus is thinking much bigger than his zealous followers who see him as a revolutionary liberator from Roman occupation. He is thinking much bigger than his religious detractors who view him as a threat to their parochial Jewish faith tradition. Jesus is thinking beyond his time and place to the whole world for all time, including you and me in this time and place.

Jesus believes in one God and Father of us all—Jew and Gentile alike. We are all God’s children. We are all the sheep of his flock. We may differ in the color of our wool or the breed from which we have descended, but we have all descended from one creator God who loves us with a perfect love and who wants us to love one another. Jesus is going to demonstrate what it means to love God by loving all the sheep of his flock without exception and without counting the cost.

"The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father" (Verses 17-18). Quite unlike my motorcycle mishap which laid me down in the dust, Jesus is ready to lay his own life down for the sheep of God’s fold. He is not going to run away and lay low to save his own skin. He is not going to go along to get along with his detractors. He is not going to compromise his values or beliefs. He is going to remain true to himself and to God even if it means getting crucified in the process.

Why would anyone do that unless he trusted completely in God’s resurrecting power? Jesus was able to lay down his life because he knew that he would take it up again in glory. He believed that for himself and he believed that for all who followed his loving example in laying down their lives for their brothers and sisters a.k.a. God’s other children. As the apostle John is quoted at the top of our bulletin: This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers (I John 3:16).

What does it mean for us to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters? It means being willing to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of others. I do not think that we are naturally inclined to do that. I think that we are naturally inclined to get for ourselves, especially when it comes to money. Money is power, and influence. Money can influence elections, which is why candidates raise as much of it as they can. Once they win their elections they are beholden to their big hitters, especially if they want to count on their donations when the next election rolls around.

Those who are elected to public office write the laws--they write the rules of the game by which all must abide. If the elected are beholden to their donors, they write the rules to favor their donors. That is one reason why, as the saying goes, it takes money to make money. That is also why, as another saying goes, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is why the disparity of wealth between the haves and the have-nots tends to increase as it has for the past several decades.

By the way, these tendencies are not unique to capitalist societies or socialist societies or communist societies or societies of just about any economic system you can imagine. This is simply the way human beings relate to money, including human beings like you and me. Greed and excess are part of the equation, indeed, a necessary part. Without a certain measure of self-interest the system does not work. But it must be enlightened self-interest or the system gets out of balance and eventually ceases to function, which is about where we are right now in the world.

For example, the percentage of Americans without any health insurance has been steadily climbing for years. Those Americans still require health care, and so providers must raise prices to cover their losses. This results in health insurance premiums that far outpace inflation, resulting in more Americans who cannot afford to pay them and more businesses which cannot afford to offer health care benefits. As the percentage of Americans without any health coverage or with substandard health coverage or living in fear of losing health coverage increases, so increases the percentage of Americans who believe the system is broken.

Those of us with health insurance may not believe the system is broken, but I guarantee you that those without health insurance believe it is broken. And that is just health insurance. Add the bursting of the housing bubble (among other bubbles), the crisis in the banking industry, the tanking of the markets and the steady rise in unemployment and you get an increasing number of people who believe the system is broken. That is because the system cannot run on greed and excess alone.

Greed and excess must be balanced by a willingness to make personal sacrifices for the common good, a.k.a. laying down our lives for our brothers and sisters. The good news is that laying down our lives for our brothers and sisters does not have to mean the destruction of our lives. Quite the contrary, it can mean the salvation of our lives as we cease being part of the problem that got us into the mess we are in and start being part of the solution that brings a brand new day. However the solution, whatever it is, is always going to require laying something down first.

I’ve got a dead tree on my property that is going to come down one way or another. I can do nothing and let it fall when and where it will, which I can already tell you will be a disaster because it is leaning toward several perfectly good younger trees that will be crushed by its fall. Or I can proactively bring it down myself with a chainsaw so as to avoid damaging the other trees. Actually, I am pretty good at laying a tree down where I want it to go and then processing it into fuel for our wood burning stove come winter time. Laying it down transforms a problem into a solution.

The problems faced by the world today are many and serious. But all of them can be transformed into solutions by moving away from the greed and excess that got us into this mess, and moving toward a willingness to lay down our lives for the common good. By laying down our lives with Jesus, God will be able to raise us up with Jesus to something new and better and ever more glorious and surpassing and exalted. Let us rise with him even now, as we come to his table in remembrance of his sacrifice and his victory.