RESPONSIVE READING FROM THE PSALMS (Psalm 23)
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 
2   He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;* 
3   he restores my soul.*
He leads me in right paths*
   for his name’s sake. 

4 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. 

5 You prepare a table before me
   in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
   my cup overflows. 
6 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.*

READING FROM THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES (John 10: 11-18)
11“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The 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. 13The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I 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. 17For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18No 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.”

SERMON
It’s good Shepherd Sunday. Did you all know that? That’s one of those things that comes up in the church every year that only the pastor really knows or pays attention to. Happy Good Shepherd Sunday. Basically what that means is that many Protestant churches around America have a minister getting into the pulpit right now to talk about all the sheep and shepherd metaphors for God and Jesus in the Bible. This happens every year. So we are singing a bunch of songs about the Good Shepherd and reading a bunch of shepherd-y Bible verses this morning. Many of my fellow clergy this morning are talking to a bunch of folks who don’t know much about sheep and trying to make sheep relevant to their experience of being Christian, which is hard enough as it is, but at least they can make stuff up about sheep because no one in their congregation knows anything about the subject anymore. But I happen to be a city girl in a farm town preaching about sheep to the entire Davis family. And that just seems unfair. 

There are many other reasons that I feel uncomfortable talking about people as sheep, and they are largely cultural. I was at a collegial meeting with the Massachusetts United Church of Christ clergy the other day—sitting around with a bunch of Christian pastors talking about their churches. And one of them said, “you know what? This denomination is always trying to get us to whip our people up about social justice. But as pastors, our first job is feeding the sheep. We need to feed the sheep.” He kept saying that. “The sheep need feeding.” 

My fellow Unitarian Universalist clergy never talk about people as sheep. They know their people would rebel. And to be honest, I got a little weirded out by these guys using that term over and over, too. I get WHY they use it. I know that Jesus said “feed my sheep.” I know it’s a totally Christian metaphor—we pastors are often referred to as shepherds, and our churches are referred to as our flocks. But I have never been comfortable with it. I think as an American fed on a steady diet of individualism and independence, referring to people as sheep feels…wrong.  

So I decided to explore what that was about for me, because I should probably fix this problem I have with sheep if I’m going to pastor well, particularly in Sterling where sheep are in abundance. 

A term that I have heard a lot on the internet in the past decade or so is the word “sheeple.” It’s basically the worst insult you can level at someone in an internet comment section right now. Sheeple. I googled it for this sermon, and pulled this definition from the online urban dictionary: Sheeple: People unable to think for themselves. Followers. Lemmings. Those with no cognitive ablilities of their own. 

So when I hear my colleagues say, “We need to feed the sheep!” I think I was hearing, “we need to feed the people who are unable to think for themselves; the followers; the lemmings. The sheeple.” 

The term “sheeple” is most often used on the internet and Fox News by Tea Partiers to refer to Obama supporters. The term sheeple is also used by a particular pernicious form of so-called “New Atheists”—people who are fans of Christopher Hitchens of blessed memory and Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett (my seminary professor calls them the four horsemen of the apocalypse)-- to refer to all religious people, but particularly Christians. The word “sheeple” is used by democrats to insult republicans, and academics to insult the uneducated. It is a BAD WORD, and anybody gets to it knows no partisan or religious bounds.

And so I think, “No wonder I’m uncomfortable! How does one preach on Good Shepherd Sunday that it is a good thing to be like sheep?” It is one thing to talk about Jesus as the Good Shepherd, but doesn’t that make us all SHEEPLE? No wonder Christianity is having a hard time surviving in this country! Here we are confirming everyone’s fear about Christianity—which is that we are all a bunch of lemmings blindly following our “dear leader.” We even have a Sunday to celebrate it!”

So I did a little bit of not very impressive research on sheep, and Doug and John Davis are going to (kindly) correct me if I’m wrong and try not to be too judge-y.

Jesus says in our reading from John, “I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me.” And I think, from what I understand from my scholarly googling, Jesus is right about sheep. Apparently, sheep are not at all stupid as they are often portrayed. They are smart. They don’t follow each other like lemmings off a cliff one behind the other, they follow their shepherd. “My own know me,” Jesus says. Sheep won’t just follow any old person, as I understand it. They like to be led from the front by their shepherd, not pushed from behind and herded like cows. “My own know me,” Jesus says. Sheep are so smart that they know the voice of their shepherd, and can hear it in a crowd of other sheep and shepherds.  “My own know me,” Jesus says. They can discern the voice of the one they should follow, and follow. That’s pretty impressive. 

“My own know me,” Jesus says. Calling a group of people “sheep” connotes not that they are dumb, but that they are a group that knows who its leader is. When did this become a bad thing? To hear a leader’s voice, discern if the leader is your’s, and follow?

We live every day with the pervasive and dangerous myth that we are supposed to go it alone in this world, that we should follow nothing and no one but our own selfish desires, to heck with everyone. I don’t need a leader! I do what I want!

The truth is, following is what we are called to do. We belong to each other, and we are not meant to go it alone. We are called to be selfless. We are called even to lay down our lives for the Good. However, we must be able to know what’s good—to follow the right leaders. That’s not easy in a world in which a lot of different people and things who look a lot like shepherds would have us follow them instead. And so we need to be discerning like sheep are—to listen for the voice of God--amidst a deafening din of other voices asking us to follow them instead.

How do we know if we are hearing the voice of God—The Good Shepherd--over the voice of the many Bad Shepherds that want to lead us into a field of disconnection, mindless consumerism, the empty promises of the marketplace, the empty promises of addiction and false love? Are we smart enough to know our Shepherd’s voice? I contend we are.

Shepherd metaphors are used all the time in our scriptures because in Biblical times, the work of shepherding was vital and necessary to the economy. Poor people did this work, often teenaged boys. And it was hard, back-breaking work. It is the shepherds watching the flocks by night that first heard of the Christ child’s impending birth; were visited by an angel. Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd. His followers were referred to as his flock. So much art and stained glass, and particularly art from early Christianity, shows Jesus with a staff and a collection of sheep at his feet. And God as a shepherd was used as a metaphor in the Hebrew scriptures first. Perhaps the most beloved of all psalms, the 23rd psalm we heard this morning— 

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 
2   He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;* 
3   he restores my soul.*
He leads me in right paths*
   for his name’s sake. 

4 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. 

5 You prepare a table before me
   in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
   my cup overflows. 
6 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.*

We know this passage brings tremendous comfort to people when they are mourning a death, or in fear of their own death. It is comforting to follow—to be led beside still waters, to be led even through the darkest valley without fear. 

To be led is to be comforted, but it is also to be brave.  To follow is brave.

Sometimes it means being brave enough to listen to the still, small voice inside of you—to be led to love yourself the way God loves you.

I have a friend who hit rock bottom with his addiction to alcohol when he was arrested for DUI. And he finally agreed that he needed to surrender to a different leader other than the voices in his head telling him he was boring and anxious and not enough without alcohol. He had allowed himself to be led by a Bad Shepherd—one that told him over and over again that he needed alcohol in order to feel right or good or normal or at home. He didn’t listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd, the one telling him he was God’s own beloved, the voice telling him that he should follow to a place of peace beyond the numbness of inebriation. Somehow through the fog of addiction he heard a different voice—a voice that was there all along, offering to lead him back home. And he got sober, and it’s a struggle to listen to that voice every day, so he takes it one day at a time with the help of others, who are the hands and feet of God to him. He doesn’t go it alone. There’s no such thing.

And I have a friend who used to starve herself until she weighed 80 pounds because that was the one thing she could control—what went into her mouth. The Bad Shepherd she listened to was the one who told her that she was the one in control—and that she didn’t matter unless she was thin and beautiful; that being invisible was better than being seen for who she really was. She didn’t listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd telling her that she was God’s own beloved. That God knows her own. That she was worthy of taking up space in the world. Somehow through the fog of starvation she heard a different voice—a voice that was there all along, offering to lead her back home. And she gained weight and got healthy enough to live, and it’s a struggle to listen to that voice every day, and so she takes it one day at a time with the help of others, who are the hands and feet of God to her. She doesn’t go it alone. There’s no such thing.

Maybe you are having trouble hearing the voice of your shepherd over the din of other voices. I don’t blame you. It’s hard. But you are smart like a sheep, and you are God’s own, and if you really try you can hear God calling you home. I promise you that. You are brave enough to trust that voice, too. I promise you that, as well. I tell you all the time that there is a reason why “Do not be afraid” is one of the most commonly uttered phrases in our scriptures. 

Following is certainly not for the weak and the unthinking and the unoriginal. It is for the courageous. 

In our consumer culture that puts money far above people, where we are expected to live the greatest lie ever told—the American Dream--with its individualistic, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps ethic—in a culture that thrives on isolation and personal achievement and the acquisition of things—in a culture like that, being called “sheeple” is the greatest insult of all. 

But it should be our greatest compliment. 

Because we inhabit the kingdom of God. And we sheeple can discern the voice of our Good Shepherd. So I will bravely allow myself to be led; to be a proud and strong follower, to trust and know a different voice rises above the cacophony of voices that tell me I am not enough; that I need more; that I don’t matter; or that I matter more than anyone else. In God’s kingdom of heaven here on earth, allowing ourselves to be led actually means refusing to believe the lie that says that buying more stuff will make us more lovable. In God’s kingdom of heaven on earth, allowing ourselves to be led means loving our neighbor as ourselves. In God’s kingdom of heaven here on earth, allowing ourselves to be led means standing up against the destruction of the earth by those who are more concerned with profits than people, and taking care of the creation that was God’s from in the beginning. Allowing ourselves to be led means forgiving others—leaving the judging up to God and the loving up to us.

Be brave and strong enough to be led beside still waters and green pastures, on right paths for God’s name sake, and yeh, even through the valley of the shadow of the darkness. Can you hear it? Listen for the voice calling you home. Don’t you dare try to go it alone. There’s no such thing.

Amen.

RESPONSIVE READING FROM THE PSALMS   (Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24)
1O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!
2Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”
14The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.
15There are glad songs of victory in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of the Lord does valiantly;
16the right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does valiantly.”
17I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.
18The Lord has punished me severely, but he did not give me over to death.
19Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.
20This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.
21I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.
22The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
23This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
24This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

READING FROM THE GOSPELS (Luke 24: 1-12)
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

SERMON                      “Why Do You Look for the Living Among the Dead?”

Rob Barwise came over on Friday to buy Girl Scout cookies from me and asked me how my Easter sermon was coming. “This must be a hard sermon for a Unitarian to preach,” he said. “Good luck.” Which is a funny thing to say, but he’s actually right, my Unitarian colleagues are often deeply uncomfortable or ambivalent about Easter sermons at best; with the topic of resurrection. You see, Unitarianism has long been a religion in the United States—born out of the enlightenment--that prided itself on reason as the basis for religious truth claims.  The 19th century was the Unitarian hey-day—when the religious intellectuals were learning about science and other world religions, and trying to make God and Christianity cohere with all they knew. Resurrection was the first doctrine to go, I’m sure. Did you know Thomas Jefferson, who was sympathetic with the Unitarians, wrote his own Bible called the Jefferson Bible? He was truly a very faithful Christian to do this. I mean, imagine going to all of this effort to cross out all of the mysterious, magical and unlikely parts of the New Testament, only leaving the teachings of Jesus—not the miracles or the resurrection. I get why he did this, but I just hate it. Imagine taking a life and removing the mystery and miracle from it. Imagine trying to articulate something about God and removing the mystery and miracle from it. It didn’t seem like a believable story to Thomas Jefferson, the resurrection, and therefore all of those resurrection sightings were tossed out with the healings and the walking on water parts. Only the words were left, not the magic; not the wonder.

And yet you know this story; this unbelievable story, with its mystery and miracle intact. This story about three women who walk to a tomb to bring spices to treat the body of Jesus’ lovingly, to give him a proper burial. You know this story. This story about a crucified man, who was hated by the Romans for his message of the upside down kingdom of God coming to fruition, where the poor would one day rule the earth; where the untouchables would be touched; where all laws of the book would be broken in favor of the law of love. You know this story; this story of a crucified man who wasn’t in the tomb when the stone was rolled away.  Where a pile of clothes and rags stayed in his place. Where an angel stood saying, “Do not be afraid. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen.” You know the story, of Jesus appearing first to the women as a gardener, dirt still beneath his fingernails where he shouldered the cross, marched to his death. You know the story, the story of the women and their disbelief; their delight; their running to tell the others. The stone is rolled away! He is risen! Christ is risen indeed! You know the story, the men not believing the women until they see it for themselves. Silly women! 

(Women are often the first to know, aren’t we?  And they never believe us. )

And truthfully, many of us are like the men in this story. We doubt this story really happened. We know from science that human beings can’t rise from the dead.  We know that dead people don’t come alive.

Well, I am here to tell you that they do. That’s the good news of our gospel; the dead do come alive.

Some of you know, or you have figured out if you are paying attention--since everyone in my family has different last names and the girls don’t look much like the boy, and the girls are often dining with a strange man who looks a lot like them at the Harvest Grille, where all secrets are revealed--that I am divorced and remarried to my Andy. 

I’m divorced. I’m sure that some of you even questioned that when I first came, and maybe even now, still. Isn’t our pastor supposed to be our moral exemplar for what a good, if not biblical, at least ethical, covenanted marriage is supposed to look like?

I am divorced. And here’s the thing: I’m willing to be your exemplar--not for my Godliness, but for my humanity. Here’s one thing I know: I am not God, and every experience that I have had further proving that fact has helped to humble me more and more as a servant of God. Jesus died to teach us that our God is a God of grace; who forgives and loves; that our covenant with God endures regardless of how many times we break it. I want you to know that, too. No matter what you have done or how many times you have done it, God has promised to love you. 

I’m divorced so my girls and I experienced death worse than any death we have mourned to this date. And I have been to the Garden of Gethsemane on Maundy Thursday where I said, “why me? And, where are my friends? Why do they keep falling asleep when all I need for them is to stay awake?” And I have said, “Why God, why? And Thy will be done.’ And I sat at the tomb of Holy Saturday waiting and watching, and asking God where God was.  I have experienced a world absent of God. And then I slowly watched the stone being tentatively and then forcefully rolled away from my tomb, by my teachers and my mentors and my pastor and my mom and my therapist and my kids and most of all by my patient and loving Andy. And I rejoiced on the day that my baby boy was born—proof that love wins; that life conquers death. I came back to life, wounds intact—scars left on my body that bind me closer to my sisters and brothers in their own journeys of suffering. Love wins, but it sometimes bangs you up a little first. Am I right?

I am divorced, and I’m preaching this on Easter Sunday because that experience is my proof of the resurrection; that you need not see someone walk on water to appreciate the miracle of the sun rising this morning. Love wins. Not sin, not death, not broken covenants—God has the last laugh. Resurrection is the Truth.

And you’ve lived through similar resurrections. And some of you are still sitting with the suffering of Good Friday. There are people here in this room right now who are shouldering their crosses, who are keeping vigil at the Holy Saturday tomb, asking where are you God—you are not there when I call. 

Those of us who have lived through this dark night of the soul are holding that little glimmer of light for you because we know that you can’t quite see it yet. We are keeping vigil for you with a candle and some soup, we are holding space for you outside the tomb. We are reminding you that the darkness will end, that the light will come. We will help you roll away the stone when it’s time.

Because we know that the Good News is that death doesn’t win, that life does. That God gets the last laugh. You are sitting here in front of me, survivors all. You’ve survived cancer and death of spouses and deaths of children and divorce and friendships ending and job losses and addiction and recovery and coming out and identity losses and strokes and heart attacks and heartbreaks. You aren’t lying in your bed with the shades drawn and the lights out; we won’t find you there. Why would you look for the living among the dead? We have risen.

This resurrection story is not a story about an implausible event at all. This resurrection story is a story about God—the God that is now let loose in the world, our God who gets the last laugh: death is a comma, not a period. Why would you look for the living among the dead? We have risen.

This resurrection story is not a story about an implausible event at all. It’s a story about God—our God who has been let loose in the world, our God who gets the last laugh—empire doesn’t win, love does. This may have been Caesar’s week, but it is God’s world. Why would you look for the living among the dead? We have risen.

This resurrection story is a story about a God who can’t be contained, and who can’t be killed. God gets the last laugh, our God has been let loose in the world—religion—church buildings, practices, books, sacraments—those trappings don’t--can’t--contain God. People do. Jesus got up on a cross and died to tell us this--that the living, risen God resides in us. You can see the living Christ in the living, breathing person sitting next to you. Why would you look for the living among the dead? He is risen.

Nadia Bolz-Weber says:

“The thing that really cooked people's noodles wasn't the question "Is Jesus like God?" It was, "What if God is like Jesus?" What if God is not who we thought? What if the most reliable way to know God is not through religion, not through a sin and punishment program, but through a person. What if the most reliable way to know God is to look at how God chose to reveal God's self in Jesus?

Because that changes everything. If what we see in Jesus is God's own self, revealed, then what we are dealing with here is a God who is ridiculously indiscriminate about choosing friends. A God who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business anymore. A God who would not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him, but went to the depths of Hell rather than be apart even from his betrayers. A God unafraid to get God's hands dirty for the ones God loves. This is the God who rises to new life with dirt still under God's nails.” 

This is a God who is on the loose, who can’t be contained in a time period, or in a specific community, or in one religion, or in one book. This is the God who rises to new life ridiculously indiscriminately—in all of us. This is a God who threatens to make us new, again and again. Who can’t be contained, who will not die.

I’m going to close with a poem by my friend and colleague The Rev. Dr. Victoria Weinstein, another Unitarian who has managed to figure out the resurrection. 

Being the Resurrection By Victoria Weinstein

The stone has got to be rolled back from the tomb again and again every year.
Roll up your sleeves.

He is not coming back, you know.
He is not coming back unless it is we who rise for him
We who lay healing hands on the reviled and rejected like he did 
on his behalf -- 
We who rage for righteousness in his insistent voice
We who love the sinner, even knowing that "the sinner" is no farther off than our own heartbeat

He will not be back to join us at the table
To share God's extravagant banquet
God's love feast, all are invited, come as you are
And so it is you and I who must feast for him
Must say the grace and break the bread and pass it to the left 
and dish up the broiled fish (or pour the wine) and pass it to the right.
And treat each one so tenderly
as though just this morning she or he made the personal effort
to make it back from heaven, or from hell
but certainly from death
to be by our side.

Because if by some miracle (and why not a miracle?)
He did come back
Wouldn't he want to see us like this?
Wouldn't it be a miracle to live for just one day
So that if he did, by some amazing feat
come riding into town
He could take a look around and say
"This is what I meant!"

And we could say
it took us a long time...
but we finally figured it out.

Oh, let us live to make it so. 

You are the resurrection and the life.

Amen.