Imagine that you are blind. If you can, imagine that you have not seen a single thing since birth. You have never seen a sunset. You have never seen the eyes of your mother looking down upon you with love. You have never seen waves of wind blowing over fields of grain.
Imagine having none of those beautiful images embedded in your mind.
Now imagine that, instead, embedded in your mind are the voices of people, not too secretly, bemoaning the fact that you will never experienced all that they have and will, as if you were a hurt puppy to be pitied. You have heard them whispering of sins that must have been committed by you or your parents, leading to the existence your dark world. Imagine, not only being excluded from conversation because you cannot see what others see, but being excluded from entire groups of people because others refuse to even come near. They do not know how to relate with someone born blind. You are a sin to be pitied or an alien to be excluded.
Now imagine suddenly feeling the coolness of mud wiped across your eyes with careful, caring hands, and a loving voice telling you to go and wash the mud off in a pool. As the clumps of mud fall from your eyes, something new pierces into your world. It is light! You open your eyes and for the first time see the shimmering of water. You look up and see the blue of the sky. You look next to you and see the look of puzzlement on the face of someone standing beside you. You did not realize that you were shouting at the top of your lungs the entire time. You can see!
You can see because someone took the time to come and find you.
Days later, you see the face of the one who took the time to come and find you. He finds you again, after those who should have rejoiced with you, instead, turned on you and rejected you out of jealousy and hatred for the man who saved your sight. You have once again been made alone by people who are blind to love, but Jesus finds you once again and invites you to be one of his sheep.
Jesus is the type of shepherd who goes out of his way to find his sheep. Jesus is the type of shepherd who calls out his sheep’s names and his sheep hear his voice and follow him, trusting that he will lead them to green pastures and still waters. Jesus is the type of shepherd who will lie in the gate of the sheepfold at night, using his body to protect and save his sheep.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” I imagine the soul of the formerly blind man singing. “I shall not be in want” I imagine the soul of the formerly blind man musing as Jesus finds him a second time and provides him more than sight, but also a family and someone to follow. “My cup overflows,” I imagine the blind man praising as he rests close to the one who saved him and gave him gifts greater than anything he could have possibly imagined, sight and a heavenly family. Imagine the love now in that formerly blind man’s heart. He will follow that savior anywhere.
Now, imagine that you are blind in spirit. Imagine, like the religious leaders who threw out the formerly blind man from the community for trusting who they saw as a false prophet, imagine that your sense of right and wrong has made you blind to people and their suffering. Imagine that all you see when you look at these people are violators of right and wrong who need to be set in their place. They need to conform to the ways of everyone else. They need to be punished and pushed down before they spread their ways and their lies to everyone else.
Imagine that someone came and showered love on them instead, and that the act of love did nothing to help you to see, rather it increased your hatred.
Now, imagine that the one who showed loved, called you blind. Do you now understand why Jesus was given a cross?
After-all, if you could see, you would seek and find rather than exclude and expel.
Imagine Jesus trying to pry open your eyes so that you can see the world in a new way; so that you can see people in a new way. Imagine Jesus opening your eyes to the ways of the great shepherd.
To tell you the truth, I have been both. I have been the one who was excluded and mistreated, and who was found by Jesus and shown love and care. I have also been the one who looked on others with eyes of right and wrong, condemning those in the wrong rather than loving them into the sheepfold.
When I was the excluded one, the love felt like nothing but grace.
When I was the excluder, the love felt like weakness and fueled my burning rage even more.
It was the same love of Jesus Christ in both cases, but in one case it saved me, and in the other case it condemned me. But, notice how the saving and condemning had nothing to do with the lover, Jesus Christ. Jesus just showered his love. Everything had to do with me.
When I was the one loved, I embraced it. When the love was for someone else that I deemed unworthy, I disregarded it. As the Apostle Paul once said, I treated Christ’s love as “foolishness.” In the one case, I felt welcomed into Jesus’ sheepfold, and in the other I tried to sneak in and steal someone from Jesus’ care. But, at all times it was all about how I either accepted or did not accept the love shown a particular sort of sheep. It was all about me.
Do you know who it should have been about? Jesus, the shepherd!
Jesus teaches, “The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”
It is Jesus who decides who he will find. It is Jesus who decides who he will love and who he will call to follow. It is Jesus who is the gatekeeper, who lies in front of the gate and lets in and out.
Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”
As hard as it is to get it through this thick scull of mine, and my skull can be very, very thick, just ask my family, it is Jesus who is the gate. Jesus gets to decide. And, if I walk beside a sheep that I think stinks, it is of no concern to me because Jesus is the one who let them in and we both are followers. I am not the leader. I am not the shepherd. And besides, I probably stink to them as well!
Jesus is the shepherd! Jesus is the gate! Salvation comes through him! Salvation does not come through us. How easy it is to forget.
I do not know if you had the chance to see David at Sight and Sound Theatre, but if you know the life of David, you know that he was both outcast and transgressor. You see in the show how God provides for David, and how God corrects David. Throughout the show, whenever David is either in the darkness of life, or is the cause of the darkness, the echo of a song can be heard; like the voice of God calling out, reminding him who he is and whose he is. The echo sings his own words from Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd…”
These five words are so, so beautiful. They are a promise to us when we are the sheep finding ourselves in the dark valleys. And, they are a reminder when we are the ones causing the darkness in the valley.
“The Lord is my shepherd…”
So, I will sing those five words over and over again. They will be my hope. They will be my guide. They will be my truth. Because they remind us to look to the one who is the way, the truth, and the life: Jesus Christ. They remind us who it is that we need to follow, even though we may disagree and misunderstand: Jesus Christ. They remind us who it is that provides abundant life; and I will tell you right now, it is not me and it is not you. They remind us to look always to Jesus Christ who will not lead us by wrong pathways.
“The Lord is my shepherd.” (Praying) Jesus, find us, lead us, and save us. Amen.
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