First Presbyterian Church
Take Heart
Sermon for May 3, 2009
by Pastor Susan Barnes

Our first reading is on page103 in your pew Bibles. In our gospel lesson, Jesus has already made a man who was blind see by putting mud on his eyes. Jesus made the mud by spitting into the dirt and mixing it. Because it was a Sabbath day and that mixing was considered work by some people, they brought the formerly blind man to the Pharisees for a ruling. Some of the Pharisees thought Jesus sinned because he did not observe the Sabbath by abstaining from work. Other Pharisees thought anyone who helps someone see is not a sinner.

This is how Jesus responds to the debate. Listen for the word of God as it is found in John 10:11-18.

11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 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. 13 The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.

14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 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.

17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18 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 from my Father."

This ends our gospel reading. Let's listen to the choir sing of our shepherd.

Anthem

Our epistle reading is about God's love making our love possible. This letter is written in the tradition of the fourth gospel, the gospel of John. Our reading is on page 240. Listen for the word of God as it is found in the first letter of John 3:16-24.

16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us-- and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17 How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

18 Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 19 And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20 whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

21 Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22 and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

This ends our reading of God's word.

The first letter of John tells us that we live in Christ when we obey his commandments. Our verses today say his commandment is that we should believe in Jesus and love one another.

But Jesus made other commanding statements. Here's the list of what Jesus commanded in the gospel of John: “Follow me. Come and see. Stop making my father's house a marketplace. Do not be astonished that I said to you, you must be born from above. Go, call your husband. Go, your son will live. Stand up, take your mat and walk. Make the people sit down. Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost. …do not be afraid. Do not complain among yourselves. Let anyone who is thirsty come to me. Go, wash in the pool of Siloam. Take away the stone. Lazarus, come out. Unbind him, and let him go. Leave her alone. Do quickly what you are going to do. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. Abide in my love. This is my commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete. Do not hold on to me. Receive the holy spirit. Cast the net to the right side of the boat. Bring some of the fish that you have just caught. Come and have breakfast. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. Follow me.”

All of these imperative statements are about compassion and care. The 23 rd psalm is a prayer about how God cares for us. The Hebrew Bible, the old testament, speaks of God's people as sheep and God as a shepherd in more places than just Psalm 23. Psalm 119 says, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek out your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.” 1Other ancient writings speak of kings caring for their people like shepherds. 2

Last month most of you read about the wolf that attacked sheep on the Jacobs ranch in Keating. Soon after that, I looked at the story of the 100 th sheep at a Bible study. Why would a shepherd leave 99 sheep and go after the 100 th one? It's true every sheep matters. But also, a lone sheep teaches the wolf where the prey is. A lone sheep endangers the rest of the flock. When a sheep goes astray, it is in danger. It is an invitation to predators that this place is “easy pickin's.”

A seminary student wrote about her experiences as a sheep rancher in Wyoming. She wrote, “The shepherd is always attentive to the needs of the flock. The work is continual, but little hurts can be healed if they are attended to. Healing and caring for the welfare of the flock was a big part of the work I did as a shepherdess. I spent some time looking for lost sheep, and you do have to leave the flock behind to go out in the far pasture and find the lost one. If you don't go out and find that one, there will be another sheep that follows and gets lost as well. And carrying a sheep across your shoulders is disgusting. You get really dirty. The image of God choosing to stoop down and carry us when we get lost is really quite humbling.” 3

Shepherds know their flock's lives depend on the shepherd being able-bodied as well as nearby. The flock can't live without someone to care for them. So, if a wolf comes, a shepherd has to weigh the risks to himself and the sheep. If he protects the sheep, but doesn't survive himself, do the sheep have a chance to go to safety until another shepherd can come? Jesus says, “ I lay down my life for the sheep.” Some things are worth dying for.

When I read John 10, verse 17 stopped me. It reads, in English “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.” That seemed to mean that God loved Jesus only because he was willing to sacrifice his life. I am pleased to tell you that is not what it means. It means that God's love is demonstrated through Jesus' willingness to stand up to the authorities, religious and political, even if it meant losing his life. It could also be translated “Through this, the Father loves me, and that love is demonstrated by my laying down my life in order to take it up again.”

And the letter of John tells us we ought to follow Jesus' example and lay down our lives for one another. And then he softens it a little by reminding us how to do that in a small way; not by sacrificing our lives, but in sharing some of the world's goods with a brother or sister in need.

For most of us who come to church regularly, who have thought about how to follow Jesus, how to live into God's realm, how to respond to God's extravagant grace, this commandment of Jesus to love one another does not come as a surprise.

But we all still need to hear it.

In the 1960's, a researcher named Stanly Milgram conducted psychology experiments. Men and women, old and young, volunteered to participate in what they were told was an experiment in learning. Each time the learner gave a wrong answer, the volunteers had to push a button to give him an electric shock, worse than the last shock. The learner was really one of the scientists, and wasn't actually receiving any shocks at all. He acted as if he were in pain, and asked the volunteers to stop. They could hear him screaming through the wall.

93% of the volunteers did not stop, even when they administered shocks they had been told were permanently damaging. The volunteers did what the researcher told them to do. Milgram's experiment showed that “people's moral sense capitulates in the face of authority.” New experiments revealed similar results. 4 Only 7% of the volunteers stopped.

Now some researchers are looking more closely at that 7%, those people who refused to push the button, who stopped participating in the experiment. One of the volunteers who did stop is Joseph Dimow. Why did Dimow say, “I refuse to go any further?” He attributed his refusal to torture his unseen partner in the Milgram experiment to “being brought up in a family that was [he said] ‘steeped in a class-struggle view of society, [which] taught me that authorities would often have a different view of right and wrong than mine,' and to his Army training, when ‘we were told that soldiers had a right to refuse illegal orders.'” 5

Researchers are now studying what makes people compassionate. Christian Smith of Notre Dame university “has studied what motivates people to give. [G]enerosity …reflect[s] less who you are than what you see. The greatest barrier to greater generosity, at least in the wealthy West, is that ‘people think they're in a world of scarcity and living on the edge…Consumer capitalism makes people feel they don't have enough, so they feel they don't have enough to give away.' But obviously some people do give very generously. That may reflect something very basic. ‘Being taught that it's important to give and, even more, having that behavior modeled for you makes a big difference,' says Smith. Observing compassion and forgiveness can spur those virtues, too.” 6

When we know that God loves us, we are free to love others. When we love, even when it is risky, we demonstrate God's love.

Researchers Shaver and Mikulincer have observed, “People who are emotionally secure, who view life's problems as manageable and who feel safe and protected tend to show the greatest empathy for strangers and to act altruistically and compassionately …people who are anxious about their own worth and competence… tend to be less altruistic and less generous….Such people are less likely to care for the elderly, for instance, or to donate blood.”

Shaver wondered if it would be possible to “induce feelings of security and self-worth,” in order to strengthen the part of the brain that promotes compassion and altruism. “If only people could feel safer and less threatened, they would have more psychological resources to devote to noticing other people's suffering and doing something to alleviate it. So they had volunteers watch a young woman perform a series of unpleasant tasks. ‘Liat' looked at gory photographs of people who had been severely injured. She pet a rat. She immersed a hand in ice water. And then she faced the prospect of petting a tarantula. After making a valiant attempt, she whimpered that she couldn't, begging that ‘maybe the other person can do it.' Explaining that the experiment had to continue, the scientists asked a volunteer if he would trade places with Liat (who was actually [one of the researchers]). The responses confirmed Shaver's hunch. Volunteers who were trusting and secure in their own skin were four times more likely to swap places as those who were anxious and insecure. Even inducing this sense of trust and security made people more likely to help Liat. ‘Making a person feel more secure had this beneficial effect,' says Shaver. ‘It worked on everyone.' It was an intriguing hint that virtue could be boosted by altering people's emotions.” 7

It is as if compassion is a muscle that can be strengthened by exercising it. Brain research has shown that people can be trained to increase compassion.

Sometimes acting out of love means we must stand up to authority figures, or we must sacrifice some time, wealth, or energy in order to help someone. We don't always do that. The first Christians didn't either.

The letter of John speaks about “our hearts condemning us.” In ancient times, your heart was the place where your moral decisions came from. It's almost equal to our word for conscience. So John was telling that young Christian community that when their consciences condemned them as guilty, God, who is greater than their hearts and consciences, did not. They were free to try again to obey the commandment of love.

When we know we are loved and saved, it's easy to do the right and loving action. We practice loving, so even when it is dangerous, our compassion muscle is strong enough to see it through. So take heart, and exercise your compassion muscle. The only way we can succeed at loving is by practicing love in truth and action, as did our savior Jesus Christ who commands us to love one another.

1 Psalm 119:176.
2Plato's Republic, 1.343a+.
3 Sue McCoul, Mosaic, Louisville Seminary, Fall 2003.
4 Burger, Jerry M. “Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey Today?” American Psychologist, January 09. www.apa.org/journals/releases/amp641-1.pdf
5 Begley, Sharon , “Adventures In Good and Evil,” Newsweek, May 4, 2009.
6 Begley, Sharon , “Adventures In Good and Evil,” Newsweek, May 4, 2009.
7 Begley, Sharon , “Adventures In Good and Evil,” Newsweek, May 4, 2009.