It is my practice, on the Saturday closest to Earth Day, to remove all the litter from the two ditches that border our suburban property. I take a large garbage bag with me, and go into the ditches, retrieving all the fast-food wrappers, beer cans, Tim’s cups, power drink cans, and plastic garbage cans that blew from nearby properties. It has struck me strange how my neighbour spend large sums to landscape the front lawns no one uses but leave their ditches full of garbage, year after year. I feel good about this, even a little righteous. But then I remember a colleague, from a previous church where I served, and his sobering words. “Kevin, you go around here turning off lights, turning down the temperature, wearing a sweater, riding a bus, but you know none of this is going to affect climate change. It’s air travel, car emissions, large scale fossil fuel extraction, clear cutting, those things make the difference, not your tiny acts of good stewardship.” Of course, he was/is right. And, that is also largely true when it comes to institutions like churches, what we do or don’t do, will not have a large impact on this issue of climate change. But, that does not mean our witness goes unnoticed, that our impact is invisible.
As someone who used to work in politics, I know how people imagine or vision their community, their world, impacts how they live their lives, prioritize their voting intentions. Yes, people vote their pocketbooks, but sometimes people also vote their values. People will support higher taxes, more spending for programs that do not directly benefit them, if they feel the cause is just, that the spending will aid the creation of a program or a reality they believe reflects their vision of “home”. And churches can play a part in planting those seeds; visible solar panels on roofs, messages on signs, community gardens around the building, green spaces all can see, outdoor church services with visible symbols of Creation’s care.
Today is Earth Sunday, the Sunday before Earth Day, when countless people across the country renew their commitment to restore the planet that we call home. Earth Sunday always falls in Easter season, and this year it lands on the Sunday we celebrate as Good Shepherd Sunday. Scripture gives us many different ways to imagine Jesus. In the Gospel of John, for instance, Jesus calls himself “the bread of life” (John 6:35), “the light of the world” (John 8:12) and “the true vine” (John 15:1) – images with their own resonance and meaning – but Jesus “the good shepherd” is the image that many of us treasure most.
As we take stock of the living world around us and consider the faltering health of our dear planet, we confess that the path that society has traveled for the last two centuries has led to an unprecedented human emergency: we are hurtling toward a climate catastrophe and we are watching the web of life unravel before our eyes. Great populations of creatures – even entire species – have vanished in less than 50 years. In what scientists call a “biological annihilation,” human beings have wiped out more than half the world’s creatures since 1970. Meanwhile, the relentless burning of coal, gas, and oil and the logging of forests are accelerating climate change, pushing our planet to break records of all kinds.
What I notice is that, as our good shepherd, Jesus holds everyone and everything together. A shepherd is the person charged with keeping the flock intact, united, and heading in the right direction. I find it reassuring to contemplate the image of God in Christ drawing us into something unified and whole. The tapestry of life that was once intact is being torn apart as greenhouse gas emissions disrupt the planet’s atmosphere. When we turn to the Good Shepherd, we touch the sacred unity within and beyond all things. We touch the Ground of our being. We meet the One in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:17) – everything within us, everything around us.
In the presence of the Good Shepherd, we remember that there is more that unites us than divides us. And the movement toward unity keeps getting larger. As Jesus says, “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” (John 10:16-17). And so – beneath all our differences of race, class, gender, beneath all the ways that humans try to separate ourselves from each other and from the rest of the natural world, presuming that we can dominate and destroy with impunity – Jesus reminds us that in fact we belong to one living, sacred whole.
It’s very interesting that the early church very, very frequently used depictions of Jesus as a shepherd in art. He is depicted in simple clothing (a white tunic, usually), with a staff, amidst some sheep. It was super common. Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire in the year 380 CE. Soon after, these shepherd images began to give way to depictions of Jesus as a teacher, or as a King, in a more royal setting. Christianity had become the religion of the Empire, and it was now on top. No longer did they need a humble, protective Savior who could identify with the meager and offer protection for the vulnerable, a caring shepherd over the religion of the oppressed. Instead, artists showed a Jesus who looked fit to be a king. Boniface Ramsey writes in the Harvard Theological Review, “…the early fifth-century mosaic of the Good Shepherd in the mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, which is the last of its kind, does not at all picture a Good Shepherd in the traditional sense. In his gold tunic, sewn with blue bands, and with a purple mantle draped over one shoulder, Christ has become a royal or imperial personage: he is the king of his sheep, rather than their shepherd.”
While we don’t particularly understand how the early church interpreted the image of Jesus as a shepherd, and it’s too simplistic to say it was ONLY due to the rise of the power of Christianity, it is telling that this representation fell out of fashion. Jesus wasn’t needed as a shepherd anymore. People weren’t being martyred or jailed or pushed to the margins for their faith. The Christian religion was on top, and it became beneficial to profess faith in Christ – you’d never gain traction politically if you didn’t swear allegiance to the church. This power motif bleeds into a lot of our faith.
God-like love lays down its life for others. It sees a part of God’s creation that is hurting or in need and it responds. This is what the force of love and life and light created us to do. Jesus said in today’s Gospel passage that he was the good shepherd and the gate for the sheep—and not just for our sheep but for all sheep, the universal flock. What we see in Jesus is the highest and purest evolution of God’s love in human form. Follow Christ, and we enter the gate of abundant life, and we in turn will lay down our lives to increase the abundance of life on earth.
The 23rd Psalm leaves no grounds for despair. The 23rd Psalm is all indicatives with no imperatives—it is all statement of fact and not something we have to earn. The God within and around us is our shepherd, the restorer of our souls, the guide of our feet, our comfort in the shadow of death, our source of courage and power. We have hope because we are children of that God.
Let’s say Psalm 23 together…
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Amen.