Psalm 23

John 10:11-18

NUCC

May 7, 2006

Good Shepherd/Rural Life Sunday

Easter 4

            Yesterday I had to privilege of getting up at 3:30 a.m. to drive our friend Lukas to the Twin Cities airport.  On the way home in the afternoon I decided to take the nostalgic scenic route on two lane roads, like the ones my family traveled when we made the trip from St. Paul to Sheboygan, usually with a picnic stop in Neillsville.

            On this beautiful afternoon I passed many farms and could see that some of the fields were prepared for planting.  In a few places I also noticed sheep.  All of this helped me to do a bit of reflecting on our twin, complimentary themes for today:

Good Shepherd Sunday and Rural Life Sunday

            We could get sentimental and nostalgic about either the Good Shepherd or Rural Life.  We could look back to the good old days of farming when this town was a dairy dynamo and things were hopping on weekend nights when farmers came to town.   We could look at all the pictures of Jesus as the shepherd and think how nice a sweet that is.  Jesus holding a sweet little lamb surrounded by peaceful sheep.  But there are problems.

            For one thing the lives of sheep and shepherds aren’t always so sweet.  Last week we watched a video of Brokeback Mountain, the movie that was supposed to take the Academy Awards this year.  We watched some beautiful mountain scenery, and it was quite a sight seeing hundreds of sheep making their way up the mountain.  There was even a scene of a lamb being carried over the stream around a shepherd’s neck.  The movie has been tabbed the “gay cowboy movie” but one reviewer has pointed out this movie is basically about loneliness ---- which is common to all of us.

            I also thought back to some westerns I viewed as a child.  I believe they starred Glenn Ford and they dealt with the conflict between cowmen and sheepherders and the so-called “range wars” over grazing rights.

            No, we can’t get too sentimental about sheep and shepherds.  And frankly, even though we live in a very rural area, most of us don’t have that much to do with sheep.  More of us have been to a shopping mall than tended sheep, right?  Can any of you remember being dragged through a shopping mall?  I can.  That’s why this little poem by James Taylor (Not the American singer, but rather then Canadian minister.) struck a resonant cord with me.  The poem gives us some new images of God and ways of seeing God’s grace.

God’s Cool Café

Blessed relief

God keeps a cool café. What more could I ask?

She provides a comfortable chair to take the weight off my weary feet;

she puts up an umbrella to shade me from the sun;

she serves me iced tea.

Though I have battled with the crowds at the bargain counters,

though I have suffered the scent of too many sweaty bodies,

I don’t care.

I know what’s waiting for me at the end of the day.

An ice cream cone. It drips over the edges, and I lick it up gratefully.

I close my eyes;

the sound system plays the gentle chuckles of waves lapping on a shore.

I am content.

I would love to sit here forever.

In God’s cool café.

God the “Good Shepherd”.  God the proprietor of a “Cool Café”.  Take your pick.  For that matter I suppose you could also sentimentalize and romanticize the waitress and the lunch counter diner.  How about those commercials about an upset stomach?

            Whatever image we find most helpful to describe God or picture Jesus, we know that our God is not merely some sentimental figure.  Both shepherds and waitresses have challenges in their lives.  Certainly the one whom we call the “Good Shepherd” had his share of challenges.

            What we do know is that in the midst of our challenges -----

as farmers in a world where the agricultural system seems permanently confused

and as rural people who know that this land and the people who work it must be cared for ------ God is also there as one intimately involved with us.

            One of God’s great shepherds,  Henri Nouwen once pointed out that we are not love by God because we are precious, but we are precious because we are loved by God.  Precious because we are loved by God.  Each one of us.  In turn each one of us views the one next to us as a person who is precious because that person is loved by God.  Therefore we reach out to one another and care for one another.  We gather at a table in a “cool café” called the church.  Here we eat and drink with one another.  Here we form a bond with one another and we love one another, in spite of our flaws, in spite of the stupid things we do, in spite of our differences ---- be we white sheep or black sheep or speckled sheep.  All of us in this flock called Neillsville United Church of Christ.

            In this spirit I invite you to sit down and enjoy “God’s Cool Café”.