307 To Other Sheep

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “To Other Sheep” originally shared on April 17, 2024. It was the 307^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   How do we share Jesus without a culture? Is that even possible? Or desirable? Today, we’re going to find out.

   Not too many of us have any firsthand experience of caring for sheep. And few of us want to.

   Little lambs are cute, but little lambs grow up into big oafish sheep that need everything.

   So, what do we make of it when Jesus refers to himself as “the good shepherd”?

   Being a shepherd was somewhat romanticized at the time of Jesus because few people then did it anymore. Like some of us romanticize the days when we or our families were farmers. We only remember the good things. We forget about the hard, almost endless, work it takes, the isolation, and the almost total dependance upon things beyond our control.

   Even in Jesus’ day, being a shepherd was not necessarily desirable work. Sheperds were nomadic; they moved their flocks to wherever they could find food and water, so they had no fixed address most of the time.

   They were strangers. They were viewed with suspicion.

   When you heard that shepherds were coming, you hid your daughters and locked up anything valuable. They were not allowed within city limits. Their testimony was not acceptable in a court of law. They smelled bad.

   The word pastor comes from the word “shepherd” in many languages. 😊

   Pastors guide their “flocks”, though we don’t use the term “flocks” for “congregations” much anymore. It seems kind of old-fashioned, and almost none of us take being called “sheep” as a compliment.

   Most people think of sheep as being passive, as needing someone to take care of them, and as only doing what they are told, none of which are thought of as admirable qualities in our culture.

   So is our message, “Come and be a sheep”? No.

   And the message in the text from the Gospel reading that will be read all over the world this coming Sunday tells us why in its first verse, John 10:11,

11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

   The message is that we need a Savior and that we have one in Jesus Christ. That’s good news.

   Jesus is God, and God loves us. Jesus gave His life for us. No one took it away from Him. Jesus gave His life and then He took it back again, He rose from the dead! He died as a one-time sacrifice to restore the living relationship with God for which we were created at the beginning of time. And he is Risen from the dead! He is who he said he was. He is our Savior, the good shepherd.

   I once heard a story about a tourist who was riding a tour bus in Israel, looking at the geography. Suddenly, he saw a flock of sheep and a shepherd behind it. The shepherd was shouting at the sheep and hitting them with his staff to keep them moving forward.

   The tourist went to the guide and said, “I’ve always pictured shepherds   walking in front of their sheep and the sheep following the shepherd. “Why is that shepherd pushing and driving them from behind?”

   The guide replied, “That’s not the shepherd. That’s the butcher.”

   The message in this text is to follow the good shepherd to everlasting life and receive His love and care starting right now.

   The text concludes with John 10:12-18,

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.”

   Jesus says, in verse 16,

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.

   The “this fold” that Jesus referred to is the Jewish people. The “other sheep who do not belong to this fold” that Jesus brings in are the gentiles, everybody else. Us.

   Jesus says that he must reach us with the good news of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. New life, eternal life, is won on the cross by Jesus for all people who receive it.

   Almost all of my ancestors came from the country of Norway. My family there can trace our relatives back to the Viking Era in the 1,100’s. Some of our ancestors were farmers who worshiped many gods. Some may have been marauders. Some may have been slaves.

   But they came to Christ. They were saved by Jesus. They repented and received new life by the grace of God through the ministry of missionaries, Christians who shared their faith, just like us, as Christians have done for 2,000 years.

   Jesus’s last words to his followers in the Gospel of Matthew were instructions to carry the Gospel to the whole world. It is the Great Commission, in Matthew 28:18-20,

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

  The good news of Jesus Christ is not for one nation. It’s for all nations.

   It’s not for the Western World. It’s for the World.

   That’s why we can speak of the Jesus of faith and the Jesus of history. The Jesus of history was an olive-skinned Middle Eastern Jew. The Jesus of faith looks like me. He knows me. He understands me.

   That’s why Jesus looks African in African Christian art, why He looks European in European Christian art, and why he looks Chinese in Chinese Christian art. That’s the Jesus of faith.

   Some people have been bridges between cultures toward this end, like the distinguished, and internationally respected artist James He Qi, who combines Chinese folk art and technique with the structure of Western religious art of the Middle Ages. (https://www.heqiart.com)

   Missionaries have been used by every nation to be their instruments, to impose their culture, and to enforce their economics, and their politics. Sometimes we have failed to resist these efforts or have contributed to them without knowing it.

   But most missionaries have sought only to Name the Name. To proclaim Jesus by finding how to best communicate the good news of Jesus Christ in ways that reflect the cultures they serve in ways that are clear and appropriate. They have sought to serve cultures by contributing schools, hospitals, social services and institutions. Some have brought a written language to the people for the first time. Often with great sacrifices.

   One of my professors in college was born in Hankou, China, in 1914, the son of Norwegian-American missionary parents. His family was scheduled to leave on one of the last sailing ships to leave China after foreign missionaries had been expelled from China, accused of being a foreign influence, during the Anti-Imperialist Movement.

   But, one of his brothers broke a leg just before the ship sailed, and it left without his family.

   He said that he remembered riding his bicycle with his other siblings to see the demonstrations against Westerners, seeing the anti-Western signs and banners, and seeing many people who he knew who were marching in the demonstrations. But, when they saw him, they were not angry or threatening to him or to his family. They were concerned for them. They asked how his brother was doing and how long it would be before his family was able to travel.

   Isn’t it true that people are sometimes angry with each other as groups, but loving toward each other as individuals?

   One of my nieces was a teacher in the United Arab Emirates. She said that one day, when she was holding Parent-Teacher conferences, a couple of parents came in and, as they sat down, the husband said to her, “I hate America. But I’ve never met an American I didn’t like.”

   I think that that holds a clue to sharing our faith with all nations.

   When we share the gospel, we share Jesus, not our culture. It takes effort to separate what we say from what our culture is, but if we listen to God alone and act with humility, it can be done.

   And we are helped by the fact that Christianity is able to adapt to cultures, not like some other religions that are locked into one culture at one time in their history.

   We believe that what defines us is at the core of our faith, revealed to us through the Bible, and expressed primarily in two ancient creeds: The Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed. They represent the faith that was handed down from Jesus to the apostles, and now to us. And, as Church reformer Martin Luther said, as long as the Gospel is rightly preached and the Sacraments are rightly administered, everything else is secondary. It may be important, but it is not something that cannot be adapted.

   Christianity came from the Middle East and it spread throughout the world. Today, missionaries come from countries all over the world and go to countries all over the world, including to the United States.

   Finding reliable numbers is difficult but, among the top 10 missionary-sending countries in the world are the United States, Brazil, South Korea, and China!

   The Church in China, by many accounts, is booming! But the numbers of Christians who are members of independent underground churches are hard to estimate, unlike those of the country’s official 3 Self Movement churches that submit to the control of the government.

   Nations and cultures rise and fall while Jesus, the Good Shepherd, will be present forever.

   How do people find Jesus? Jesus finds them, often through missionaries, through people who teach people how to recognize what is already inside of them by knowing how to hear the shepherd’s voice. Jesus is already present in every culture, and calls people of every nation to follow Him. Lives that have been changed are lived in love for God and in the service of others, with our whole selves.

   And we bring our whole selves to God in worship.

   Worship is for those in Jesus’ flock. Worship is for those who have been brought into the fold by Jesus to live among God’s faithful people, whatever their nation or culture.

   We respond to his voice by worshiping Him in a way that is not directed toward ourselves, but toward the one true living God.

   That’s why, when worship is finished, the question we ask is not, “What did I get out of that?” but, “How did I do?”

   There are many church groups in the world, but there is only one Church.

   It is composed of all the baptized believing Christians who know the voice of the Good Shepherd, Jesus, and follow Him in daily life. And worship Him with the other members of the Body of Christ.

   The Church is now and it will be brought to perfection only in the life to come, as Jesus said in the second half of verse 16:

16b So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

   That one flock is the Body of Christ, the Church, and it is composed of people. People of every race and place and language and culture. People of every nation. Even of people of every time! A community of people who love God, love others, and hear the voice of Jesus.

   That voice is calling all people to follow Him. The Good Shepherd.

   Because Christianity doesn’t come from the West.

   It comes from above.