Good Shepherds

Each week, our youth Sunday School class explores a topic through scriptural reflection. We review the context for each of the passages and then read them in more than one translation. Then we "wonder" (a word from our Godly Play curriculum that implies free exploration rather than rigid instruction) about the topic and the passages using some pre-selected "wondering questions" (like: "how do these passages remind us of something in our world today?). Or class members can just make their own comments. The idea is to see connections between the passages and with our own lives, to hear scripture as a conversation across the ages to today. Here are some notes composed by our clergy that our adult leaders will work from this week. All youth in grades 6-12 are welcome to join us from 9:20-10:15 in the Gray Building youth room. We often have donuts (because nothing helps us wonder about the Bible better than donuts!).

Youth Sunday School April 29, 2012

Topic: Leadership

Passages: John 10:7-16   Ezekiel 34:1-16  Psalm 23  Matthew 20:25-28

St. Luke's Vestry: "good shepherds" and servant leaders of our parish

The 4^th Sunday after Easter is often called “Good Shepherd Sunday,” because there are so many references to shepherds. The most famous is Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd. In the ancient near East, the lands and times of the Biblical writers, the image of the shepherd was connected with the image of political rulers. Good rulers/leaders took care of their people the way a good shepherd cared for the sheep. In the Gospel lesson for this morning, Jesus refers to himself as “the good shepherd.” He is making reference to some Old Testament passages, including the passage from Ezekiel 34, in which the prophets preach against the rulers of Israel as bad shepherds. Ezekiel, in particular, was a prophet as well as a priest during the time of the Babylonian exile (middle of the 500’s BCE). The “shepherds” he was preaching against were likely the political rulers of the exiles who were prospering while most of the people were suffering. Even though the Babylonians had conquered, they relied on the Israelite leaders to keep order among the exiles, and these leaders used what little power they had for their own benefit. In the Gospel according to John, Jesus is also making reference to some bad shepherds. In his case, he is likely talking about the Jewish leaders who care more for their own reputation than they do for their people. The Gospel of John was written about 50-60 years after Jesus. The Romans had destroyed the Temple, the center of Jewish worship, in Jerusalem in 70 CE. The Jewish Christians were excluded from worship in the synagogues (the center of worship after the Temple fell), and so John’s inclusion of this speech by Jesus about being the good shepherd is probably also a comment against the Jewish leaders after Jesus’ time as well. The Gospel passage from Matthew is a famous text about the importance of “servant leadership.” A good leader serves others. When we serve others they are also more likely to be loyal followers. Jesus is speaking to his disciples who are upset, because some of their number are already trying to figure out who will be in charge if Jesus leaves (as he keeps warning them that he will). Jesus reminds them what kind of leadership he has come to show us: leadership that loves.

How do these passages remind of leaders today? Who are good shepherds in our world? Think about the leaders you encounter at home, school, or work. Think about the leaders of our community, the state, the nation, the world. Who are the leaders who take care of and serve others? Who are the leaders who seem to care more for their own welfare? Where do each of us have opportunities in our own lives to be “servant leaders?”

Here's an excerpt from Sunday's Earth Day sermon by the Rev. Joe Hensley. To see the whole sermon, go to our webpage: http://stlukesdurham.org/worship/sermons.html



St. Luke's youth connecting with creation.

What did the resurrection do for us? In this morning's Gospel, Jesus appears to his disciples and they can't get their minds around the fact that he's back in flesh and blood. They think they're seeing a ghost, and Jesus shows them his body, he eats in their presence. He's trying to do everything he can to prove it to them, but they still don't quite believe, they can't get their minds around it. And then Jesus does something unprecedented in scripture. He opens their minds. Luke tells us that he opened their minds to understand everything that was written about him in the scriptures. Jesus opens their minds to see this conversation that's been happening from Moses to the prophets to the poems of the Psalmists, these voices speaking across millennia in a interconnected web of conversation about a savior, about a change coming to the world, about something new. Jesus doesn't just give those disciples a new thought about him. He doesn't just plant a new thought, he changes their whole way of thinking.

When Jesus opens their minds, he changes the way they think altogether. So then Jesus tells his disciples to go and proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins. And that word "repentance" literally it means a turning of the mind. We think of repentance like "I'm sorry, God." It's something much deeper and more profound. It's about a revolutionary changing of the mind. Not just, "Well, I changed my mind," not just, "I shifted my position or my opinion on such-and-such issue or concern," but a true transformation in the way we think. So when the risen Christ invites his followers to repent of sin, he's not just inviting them to say I'm sorry to God, he's inviting them into a whole new way of thinking about sin. No longer must we make our daily, weekly, yearly confession in order to be reconciled to God, to bring about peace between us and God. Through the risen Christ, that has already happened. We have been reconciled to God. Our sins have been wiped away and forgiven. Any confession we make after Easter is not to bring about reconciliation, but to remind us of the reconciliation and the peace that already has been made for us...

...But going back to Earth Day, going back to how we are stuck in our ecological messes that we've made, I think part of our being stuck is that we're waiting for an opening of the mind. We keep trying to change our thoughts without changing our thinking. We keep coming up with lots of ideas and thoughts about how to do things better. We can change from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescents, we can go from internal combustion engines to electric cars, we can go from coal energy to solar energy and we can take our own bags to the grocery store and those are all great things to do and we need to do them, but those are just the thoughts. When our way of thinking is changed, when are minds are opened, then we will begin to see that interconnected web of relationships, those voices speaking to one another across the eons, from the smallest particles to the greatest galaxies, from the tiniest microbes to our bodies. Changing of the mind, seeing the relationships of all creatures, that we are not in conflict with one another, we are actually in harmony with one another, but our minds are closed to see how those relationships work.

So on this Earth Day, in this season of Easter, we pray for an Easter mind, an open mind, a mind changed through the risen Christ.

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