Fourth Sunday of Easter – Good Shepherd Sunday – Online Service
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Our Gospel reading today is chock full of images and metaphors. We’ve got a sheepfold and a pasture, a shepherd and sheep, the gatekeeper and the gate, thieves and bandits and strangers. And, apparently Jesus is both the shepherd and the gate. This is a lot to comprehend – especially because pandemic brain is a real thing. Our brains are just not functioning quite the same in the midst of all of this. Yet, there is so much promise in this Gospel reading that we need to hear and remember. So, to help our pandemic brains, this week it seems good to use some alliteration.

Listen for lots of ‘P’ words today as we move through these metaphors.

First, Jesus provides us with passage, a way to move in and out. That language of Jesus as the gate can sound as if there is some fixed point we’re trying to reach. As if we can arrive and enter, then we’ll have it made. We’ll be saved. We’ll be secure. And, if we don’t feel particularly safe and secure, we wonder if we really have arrived. Maybe we don’t have enough faith. Maybe we aren’t really saved? Or, maybe there’s something better out there. Maybe we need to keep searching, keep striving, look elsewhere.

A closer look at the metaphor Jesus uses might be helpful. The point of a gate on a sheepfold is not to arrive at it, go inside it and stay there. If sheep just entered the sheepfold and stayed put, they wouldn’t last long. There isn’t enough grass or water inside. It’s too crowded. Sheep have to go out into the world to find green pastures and still waters. They have to go out in order to run and move and live.

Sheep are saved by passing into and out of the gate. They’re saved from danger each time they enter into the sheepfold at night. They’re saved from starvation each time they go out into pasture in the morning. The gate for the sheepfold provides the passage, the way into rest and the way out into pasture and the wider world. Their lives are saved, day after day, by going out and coming in through that gate.

We are saved, here and now, in the same way. We also need shelter and movement. We need to rest in God and we need to venture out. We need the rhythm of going in and coming out. When Jesus says he is the gate, he isn’t telling us that we have to arrive somewhere and enter and stay there. He is saying in him we are given passage into the way of life that saves us – the way of both resting in the shelter of God and moving out into the world.

Yet sheep don’t always go in and out of the gate on their own. They spook easily. They get stub- born. They get scattered. They need a shepherd who calls them by name and goes ahead of them.

They need a shepherd who leads them out into green pastures and back into rest.

And, that is why it is such good news that Jesus says he is both gate and shepherd. As the gate, he provides the way into rest and the way out into pasture and the wider world. He provides the passage. And, as the shepherd he leads us into what we need when we cannot get there ourselves. He goes ahead of us calling us into life, calling us into rest.

In Jesus the Gate and Shepherd we are given shelter and protection. This doesn’t mean that we will be safe from all harm. It does mean that we are given times of rest and reprieve, peace and well-being as we dwell with God. It does mean that we are sheltered in God and so saved from the power of despair and fear. It does mean that we can venture out into all the pastures of this world in trust and hope knowing our Shepherd goes before us.

Right now, these images are especially poignant when we have to spend so much time sheltered at home. We long to be out and about in the world. We long to gather in this place of rest, of sanctuary where we can see the other sheep in the flock.

As we discern when it is safe and wise to go out into the world, we need to take time to listen to our shepherd’s voice for guidance. And, our shepherd is at work to guide us through the words of scripture – calling us to love our neighbor as ourselves and be mindful of those who are most vulnerable, calling us to be thoughtful and wise and not governed by fear. Our shepherd is also at work through the wisdom of scientists, researchers and public health experts who are working for the protection and wellbeing of our world.

We also need to remember that even as we stay home, our shepherd still leads us into experiences of rest and shelter and experiences of engagement with the world. When we feel stuck at home and stuck mindlessly scrolling through social media, mindlessly staring at a screen …

Still Jesus gives us life-giving rhythms and patterns.
Still he leads us inward into times of worship and prayer.
Still he turns our focus outward into service for the world even when we remain at home.

Jesus is the Gate and the Good Shepherd.
He provides us with passage into protection, passage out into the pasture.
He is the way we experience the abundant life God longs for us all to know.

Third Sunday of Easter – Online Service
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of our risen Savior Jesus.

I love this story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus and their story feels a lot like ours right now.

Granted, there are some details that don’t fit. For one thing, the disciples are outside of their houses, traveling somewhere. Remember what that was like? My car now has amazing gas mileage – it gets 3 months to the gallon.

The disciples are also talking and discussing as they walk along. Which means there are two friends talking in-person – connecting without a phone or a screen! Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful.

Then a stranger comes up and they just walk and talk with him. Rather than lowering their mask covered faces and passing quickly, they have a conversation as they travel together. And then they share a meal. They sit at a table and break bread with people outside their immediate families.

So, some of the details in this story feel out of reach. Yet so much of it speaks to where we are living right now. The disciples are experiencing terrifying times. They’re trying to make sense of it all. They’ve just seen Jesus crucified. The one they hoped would save their nation is dead and buried. They’re hearing stories from the women that he is alive, but they can’t wrap their heads around that.

As they walk away from Jerusalem, where Jesus was killed, they talk about all these things that have happened in much the same way that we’re talking now about all these things – the out- breaks, the shortages, the press conferences, the orders from governors. They talk and try to understand but nothing makes sense. The path forward feels so uncertain, the road so long.

Then Jesus himself comes and walks alongside them, but they don’t recognize him. In their grief and fear and confusion, they can’t see Jesus for who he is. He asks, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” This stops them in their tracks. How can you not know what’s been going on during these days? They tell this stranger all these things that have happened and then they speak one of the most heartbreaking lines in all of scripture, “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel”. They’d had such bold hopes for themselves, their nation, their world, and it looks now as if those hopes will never be realized.

But we had hoped. This is where the disciples’ story resonates so deeply with our own. We had hoped. We are living these days with so many unfulfilled hopes.

We had hoped to celebrate Easter with family.
We had hoped to go to prom and to graduation parties.
We had hoped to hold the new baby, to go on vacation, to lead a conference.
We had hoped for track season, for soccer season, for more time with the grandchildren, for the sixth grade musical.

This weekend at Good Shepherd we had hoped to remember Ben Blair with a night of music and song and to share in a memorial service for Grace Erickson. We had hoped for a baptism this weekend and for three of our youth to affirm their baptisms on Confirmation Sunday. We had hoped that the youth could lead another fun babysitting night for our young families next weekend and for St. Grubby’s Day next Sunday. We had hoped to celebrate our graduating seniors in worship.

We had hoped.

As we carry these dashed hopes, Jesus walks alongside us as he walked with the disciples. Yet we, like them, don’t always recognize Jesus, especially now. When we can’t gather with the body of Christ, when we can’t share in holy communion, it can be so hard to see that Jesus walks with us. As we live in this time of collective trauma and grief and fear, we struggle to see Jesus. We wonder – where is God in all these things that are happening?

This road to Emmaus story reveals that God is where God always is – in the midst of the suffering walking with us. God enters into our suffering and works new life from within it. This is what God does. This is why it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer. It’s the pattern we see in all the scriptures. God brings life out of chaos in the beginning, God births a new nation formed from a time of slavery in Egypt, God makes a way in the wilderness to bring the people out of exile.

All the scriptures point to God bringing life out of suffering. All the scriptures point to Jesus – a Messiah who suffers to bring new life. It’s hard to wrap our minds around this – a God who suffers.

It’s hard for the disciples on the road to Emmaus to understand this, even as Jesus walks with them, even as he interprets scripture for them.

Yet Jesus stays with the disciples, walking with them, teaching them, opening the scriptures to them. Then, finally they come to a house and sit down together for a meal. Jesus takes some bread and breaks it. “And in the moment of the breaking [the disciples] eyes are opened; and they see Jesus anew. In the moment of the breaking their eyes are opened and they realize it was Jesus who was with them all along.” My friend Bishop Regina Hassanally preached those words on Good Friday and they have stayed with me ever since.

It is in the moment of the breaking that we can see Jesus – for Jesus is present in what is broken and Jesus is close to the brokenhearted. In his earthly ministry, Jesus spent his time with those who suffered deeply because of the brokenness of this world. He said, “Blessed are you who are poor and hungry, weeping and reviled.” He fed those same people by taking a small amount of bread, blessing it and breaking it. Five thousand people were fed with that broken bread.

Before his death, he promised that we too would know him in broken bread. He took bread, broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, “Take and eat, this is my body, broken for you.” In his life and death, Jesus was broken open – his heart, his life, his body broken open in love for this whole hurting world. And by his death and resurrection, Jesus has broken the power of sin, suffering and death. Those things can no longer separate us from God for Jesus has entered into them and broken their hold over us. Jesus is present in every broken moment. Jesus works in broken things to feed and bless and heal and bring new life.

In the breaking, Jesus helps us to see him anew. So, let’s pay attention to what we are seeing now in this moment of global breaking. How is Jesus being made known to us in this broken moment? In the breaking, Jesus opens our eyes to see that he has been with us on our long road all along. So, following where he leads, may our hearts also break open for this world God so loves. For it is from the depths of that breaking, at the very heart of our sorrow and fear, that Jesus comes alongside us. He uses our broken hearts to bless the world with good news – a healing message expressed in word and deed that God works to bring new life from broken hearts and broken dreams. 

Dear People of God,

On this long road with the Coronavirus, when the way ahead looks uncertain, as you try to make sense of all these things that are happening, this world’s Risen Savior is with you. He’s been with you all along.

Amen.