This is a place where I have never stood.
I have walked the perimeter of this church waving palm branches and singing Hosanna.
I have stood in the choir loft
I have trembled behind the tables of handbells…before I had to give that up due to stage fright,
and I have sat right over there, usually in the second row, right on the bend, but in all my years of coming to this church, I never dreamt that I would stand in this place.

It is good to be here.
It is good to be home.
It is good to be in this place – thank you for welcoming back one who has changed teams and who has (whisper) become a United Methodist.

11 For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 12 As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. 13 I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. 14 I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. 16 I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

22 I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. 23 I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. 24 And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken.

Do you remember what it is like to be on an elementary school playground at recess? At Oak View we hoped for days that were warm enough and nice enough that our teacher would let us go out and play after lunch. When the doors were opened and we were given the chance to break free from the walls of the school cafeteria, we ran and screamed and had a wonderful time.

Oak View had an amazing playground – a place so enticing to me as a young child, a place where I spent so many hours, that even now, years later, I can still recall vivid images of my time there. We had a long, curly sliding board, great for chasing friends down or even for attempting to climb back up. We had a wobbly bridge for jumping, and we had a maze of concrete and wooden structures perfect for hiding in.

I’ve been back to visit – most of those old structures have been ripped out – apparently deemed “unsafe” from a child safety standpoint, but as a young child, none of that mattered. If someone was being mean, if we fell off the slide or the gymnastic bars or got cut, or even if it was just our feelings that were hurt, every child knew that the teacher could fix anything.

I still remember many of my teachers from Oak View and I remember thinking that they could do anything, could solve any problem. At some time or another we have probably all been there. Talking with friends, running around, being a part of the chaos that constitutes the fun and freedom of recess and thinking that our teachers are all-knowing gods.

Teachers, however, view recess differently, and now I can say I’ve been on both sides. I’ve been that first grade teacher taking her class out to play. Playtime is when fights break out, when bones get broken, when feelings get hurt, and when an occasional first grader wanders away from the group – most likely simply chasing a butterfly or picking flowers. As a teacher, there is no worse feeling than shepherding the children into line at the end of the break, counting heads, and realizing that you are missing one child.

Your heart stops and panic begins to edge its way in. As you scan the playground, you ask yourself – did Ben go in to go to the bathroom? Was today the day that Lisa’s mother was picking her up to go to the doctor’s? First, you determine who is missing. Then, you ask yourself where they might have gone and you begin to search.

Out to the corners of the soccer field and among all of the other youngsters at play, you search until you find that one child and bring him or her safely in. Returning inside and explaining to the principal that you did pretty well – you brought all but one of the children back inside after recess - is NOT good enough.

This morning’s Old Testament text begins with Ezekiel telling us that God will search for his sheep and will seek them out. Ezekiel says that God seeking out his sheep is like shepherds seeking out their flocks when they are among scattered sheep. Not only is God going to find his flock, but God will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered.

God will be the teacher and God will fix everything. At first, God’s promise that he will gather his flock may seem strange, but it is offered as a message of hope for the people of Israel. This text was written after the fall of Jerusalem, when the Israelites are feeling like lost sheep and are hoping that the nation of Israel will be restored. The Israelites have become like sheep scattered over the lands, and they are searching for reassurance that God will bring them back under His care and protection.
PAUSE

As some of you may know already, I have just returned from a year serving 4 small churches in southwest England. It was a great experience in many ways, and one of the best parts of my time there was the opportunity I had to travel, both within the UK and in Europe. When my grandparents came to visit in February, Wales was on the top of the agenda. Anyway, there was one thing that distinguished that trip from all of the others I had taken – WE DROVE.
Now, that may not sound significant to you, but for me it was. Learning to drive a stick shift car…on the opposite side of the road…had been a bit of a battle…

As we left the house, my grandmother gave me a word of caution – “Just don’t hit any sheep!” Strange advice, but the sheep certainly were scattered over the lands, and the way of the shepherd was a strange one to my foreign eyes. Around here, if by chance you were to go far enough out 66 to possibly see sheep, the sheep would typically kept neatly in their fields by fences, right?

Well, once you get off the main roads in Wales, the common land is wide open, available to all the shepherds as grazing land for their sheep. All of the flocks roam freely together, and at first glance you would think that it would be difficult for a shepherd to gather his or her flock.

The color coding they have instituted is ingenious to me – I would have loved to have been around the day that some shepherd got tired of trying to figure out which sheep were his and got the bright idea of painting the backsides of his sheep blue. Another followed by painting his sheep red. Then green, and so on. Now you look out and see a rainbow of colored sheep.

Okay, I have to share that after mentioning this color coding explanation to one of my farming parishioners, he laughed and re-explained it as…ummm…more of a way of keeping track of mating patterns…but that doesn’t fit the sermon illustration very well, so I prefer the first explanation I was given. Color code the sheep so you know whose whose.

Now you do still have to watch out for sheep that for whatever reason have decided to graze in the middle of the road, but so long as the shepherd is not color blind, the shepherd can find his or her flock and can care for them and protect them.

While God does not have to color code His flock, God has appointed individuals to be shepherds of His flock and to feed and watch over them. In Ezekiel, God appoints his servant David, but in reality David is a long-dead former king of Israel who for this reason obviously cannot literally serve as the shepherd of God’s flock. David, then, refers to those people who tend God’s flock, and for the nation of Israel, the reference to David is a promise that there will be a future for the nation, and God along with his shepherds, will be there to gather and protect the flock.

In Matthew, Jesus is the shepherd. You all know the story - Jesus asks, “If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?” Jesus, like the teacher, would not dare return to God and admit to being one short in the flock.

Jesus answers his own question when he says that if the shepherd finds the lost sheep, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray. Like God the Father in the Ezekiel passage, Jesus the son, the shepherd, will seek out the one lost sheep until it is found.

God is the shepherd over God’s flock. God sends his son Jesus Christ to tend his flock, and Jesus’ care for his flock eventually leads to his own suffering and death. The shepherd was willing to die for the flock.
PAUSE

When we think about our church today, who are our shepherds? Henry? Carrie? The session? The deacons? The elders? Who is the one who sorts the red sheep from the green sheep, the one who seeks out the lost, who brings back the strayed, and who feeds them?

If even for a moment we believe that Henry or Carrie or any other single individual can accomplish all that is required of the shepherd, we’ve missed Ezekiel (and Jesus’) point. The responsibility lies not only on our ministers but on each one of us to be shepherds and to help tend the flock. We need to try to see ourselves as shepherds and to begin to go beyond the question of “who?” to ask the question of “how?”

If I am going to search out the fields, maybe you can be the shepherd who looks for the lost child on the playground. Ezekiel tells us that God is the shepherd, which is the good news, but the flip side is that Ezekiel also points out that God cannot do it alone. We must be ready to rescue and gather the sheep.

Okay, having grown up in this area, you can probably figure out that I can’t profess to be an expert in rural living or in the ways of the sheep, but there is one thing I will bet on. I would guess that it takes more than a summons from the shepherd to bring the sheep running. A sign on the fence announcing that at 6:30 the whole flock is to report for shearing won’t cut it. The shepherd can’t simply open the door and be sure that the sheep will come. He (or she) must be willing to go out among them.

We have to approach church the same. There may be some people who respond to the traditional signs and techniques, but there are countless others who will not.
Okay, now I’m going to do it. I’m going to say the dreaded “E” word. Now, I know it puts the fear of God into many of us or we simply don’t even know how to begin, but…EVANGELISM… is a crucial task of the church. I think a simple way of thinking about evangelism is to think about being yourself and meeting people where they are at. Don’t think about attending church as the final goal. Don’t get me wrong, we would love to have a packed house every Sunday, but we need to think bigger.

Evangelism is about bringing Jesus to people where they are. Evangelism is about teaching the love of Christ by sharing the love of Christ. Any of us can do that. It doesn’t even have to require words.

I have a friend who volunteers regularly with handicapped people and has been doing so for years. Now, much of the population she works with will never go to church. Some of them have even told her outright that they don’t believe. But she keeps going. She goes not for the privilege of feeding adults who can no longer feed themselves, or for the gift of getting to take those same adults to the bathroom, but she goes because that is what Christ calls us to do.

You know what other tasks she does? She brings written prayers and scripture verses and accounts of her own experiences in worship to share. She retells Sunday’s sermon to those who would like to but can no longer go to church. She brings God to them where they are - she brings the message of Christ because her faith was so evident through her care and compassion that her relationship with many of the individuals has evolved to the point that her faith is contagious. She brings it because she can’t hide it.

That’s evangelism. Not one of those men or women will ever set foot in the door of a church again if they ever even did in the first place. But they know God because they have experienced God. They know the love of Christ because they have felt the love of Christ being showered upon them. They know the presence of the Holy Spirit, because they have experienced it working in their midst.

Our gathering as a Christian community is a crucial aspect of our faith, but it is not all. It is not enough. Our faith is about being servants of Christ working in the world. Our discipleship is about being disciples, seeking out the lost.

It is not an easy challenge.
It is not an easy challenge if you are naturally a quiet, reserved sort of person.
It is not an easy challenge if you still have questions and you still seek answers.
It is not an easy challenge if you have a hard time hearing…or a hard time listening.
It is not an easy challenge if faith is one of those subjects you struggle to avoid discussing.
It is not an easy challenge, but it is not impossible either.

It is about being real, being genuine, being so aware of your own love of God that you want others to know and experience the same love. It is about being so aware of every single person as a child of God that you have no thought but to treat each one of them as such.

It is about accepting the challenge of the shepherd to care for the sheep. Who are the sheep, you ask? Step outside. Look around you. Take a walk and say to yourself the words that our shepherd once said to us: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out…I will be their shepherd. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Let us pray.

God of the lost, God of the wanderers, we pray today for the courage to be your shepherds in our world. We pray for the courage to say the words and to live the life of faith. We remember the story of our Savior and we remember that we do indeed have a reason to celebrate, a message of love and joy to share, a task of proclamation before us.

We pray for all of the lost and wandering that we pass on the streets or see out our windows each day. We pray that somehow we may help them to experience the love and light of your son, Jesus Christ.

We pray for all of those in our own inner circles, our own family members and friends who live without the comfort and joy of life lived through you.

We pray for those persons who once knew of you, who once loved you, but who have lost their way. Help us to shepherd them back into your fold and to remind them of a God who will seek out every last sheep in his flock.

We pray for those who know and live with the comfort of your love and caring touch but who are not able to worship with us. Open up ways for us to minister to them and to help them to remember that they are still counted among your flock.

We ask all of these things in the name of the one who came to teach us how to care, to show us how to love, and to give us life, your son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray together, saying, “Our Father…”

Link to Sermon Index page

FPC Home | Welcome | Worship | Christian Ed | Preschool |Music | Mission
Fellowship | Inside FPC | Spiritual Spa | Youth | Committees |Site Map

Fairfax Presbyterian Church - Fairfax, Virginia, 22030-6985
(703) 273-5300 - FAX (703) 591-4246
fpc@fairfaxpresby.com
Contact Web Team with comments and updates.