Hey, FAMILYRADIO.ORG! See you, next week!

Sunday, May 15, 2011, was Good Shepherd Sunday in the course of the Revised Common Lectionary.  We opened the service with a presentation of this video, a set of images prepared by Walter Trachim to accompany the gorgeous "23rd Psalm (dedicated to my mother)" by Bobby McFerrin.

This sermon then followed:



“The Polite Invitation”
(LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION OF THIS SERMON AT http://tinyurl.com/3ea49eg)

Signs up everywhere lately proclaim a false gospel, threatening people with the end of the world – with hell and destruction – unless they repent by this Saturday.

I am inclined to post a response in our signboard, tomorrow.  A tweet, which I will also post on our Twitter page and Facebook page:

HEY, FAMILYRADIO.ORG! C U NEXT WEEK! :-D @FIRSTCHURCHWG

I find it beyond tiresome to still have to address mistaken Christianity in this way, this late in the history of our religion. But some people continue to remain unenlightened, continue to propagate a message of salvation which is only focused on the afterlife, persist in representing a false gospel.

There is so much to do in this life!  So much abuse and cruelty that deserves to be confronted and prevented...

There is too much wrong-hearted religion passing itself off as Christianity nowadays.

How about a polite invitation, rather than a threat!

I will acknowledge that this may seem a little goofy, but I think I shall never be able to read the gospel text we read today in the same way again, now that I have seen the movie, Babe.

Now, maybe some of you haven’t seen it yet, or don’t know about it.  It’s not new; it came out in 1995, based on the 1983 novel, The Sheep Pig, by Dick King-Smith (which was retitled, Babe – The Gallant Pig, for U.S. publication).

By now, you can guess the concept of the film.  Those of you who are now looking forward to seeing the film without knowing it’s ending need to know now that I am about to tell it to you.  But this film is not exactly what one could call plot-driven.  It is predictable and espouses the customary democratic ideals of independence and self-determination over against heavy-handed authoritarianism.  You will watch it and say to yourself, “I’ve seen this story before.”  What is unique is not the plot, but the puppetry, trained animals, and special effects... which were some of the first really successful computer animation seeming to make real live animals talk.

So, those of you unable to forgive me beforehand for revealing the ending of a movie you haven’t seen, I will do something I rarely do.  I will encourage to tune out of the sermon now (work on your grocery list, whatever...), and join the rest of us somewhere around the words:  “Now I assure you there is plenty more to watch...” which I promise I will say loudly enough so that they jar you back into listening.

OK, so... First of all, Babe is about this pig, who since he is a pig is slated for the block, but who along the way discovers a certain gift he has for herding sheep.  His owner is a farmer named (of all things) Hoggett, who at first unknowingly encourages Babe’s herding behavior by bedding Babe with his border collies, but who later intentionally cultivates the gift.

Notable for the sake of the plot, Babe approaches herding from a different means than the border collies.  They nip and chase the sheep.  As a result, the sheep do not distinguish these protector dogs from any other long-toothed predators and therefore call them, “wolves.”  They hate the growling, snapping beasts, and act stupid simply to annoy them.

The pig in his touring about the farm meets an elderly ewe who befriends him and becomes something of a grandmotherly mentor figure, who gives him the clue that politeness and hospitable-ness are the ways to win friends and influence sheep.  He follows her advice.

One day, straying away from the barnyard into the sheepfold, Babe discovers that he has as much capacity for rounding up the livestock as any dog has, and with greater consistency and success than chasing and biting produce.

Eventually, and here’s where the scripture connects, Hoggett enrolls the pig in a sheepdog competition (how he does this I will leave to your viewing pleasure).  When Babe and the collies learn that the contest sheep only respond to dog-style herding techniques and treat Babe’s greetings as if they are deaf, one of the dogs runs back to their own sheepfold and (believe it or not!) speaks with the sheep there.  Then, swearing him to secrecy, the sheep tell him the muttonesque equivalent of a password which will get the contest sheep to do exactly what Babe asks.

The dog returns just in time to get the secret code to the pig, and Babe wins the day, directing the six sheep around various barriers and into a circle drawn on the grass.  The last, and brilliant, coup which had me laughing until I cried, the first time I saw the film, was Babe’s cutting technique. 

The Sheep Pig



Babe
— MOVIECLIPS.com

Now, working on a ranch as a youth, I have used horses and dogs to “cut” sheep and horses, which is to say “separate a herd into one or more groups”.  Cutting can be a maddening exercise even the most experienced herder and dogs.  It’s nigh unto impossible unless you can exercise the utmost patience and calm.

In Babe’s routine, there are six ewes — three with collars and three without — inside a circle, and he says, and I quote, “Now, ladies, if those of you with the red collars would kindly step outside of the circle and into the pen, I would be most grateful.”  And, docilely, with true determination to make their porcine brother look good in the face of a thoroughly doubting crowd of humans, the three do exactly that!

Then, the three last are penned, Hoggett says, “To me, pig,” Babe comes to heel, and the crowd goes insane with applause and cheers.  Beneath the cheering, the farmer gazes admiringly down at his well-heeled porker and says, “That’ll do, pig,” which is of course about as thrilling a bit of praise as one is ever going to hear from an Anglo-Saxon farmer. It translates roughly to "Well done, thou good and faithful servant!"

Now, I assure you, that there is plenty more to watch and lots more conflict than I have presented to you in this digest of the movie, but this much is what I thought might help to illustrate the text of the gospel:

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. (John 10:2-4)

Do you see why I cannot help but think of that film, when I read this scripture?

I mean, if you think about it, being a follower of the Christ puts us in this curious reality, in which a bridge has been formed between us and the One who knows what we need.  In response, we do the will of the One.  Or at least so goes the scripture.

Look, it goes this way:  The gospels all demonstrate how when Jesus would speak to the disciples, they tried their level best to understand, but did not, no matter how hard they tried...  I mean, they caught much of the ethical meaning of Jesus’ teachings.  But most of the morals Jesus taught about were pretty obvious anyway, and all of them had been said before by other prophets.

It was not until that third day of Jesus’ death that, it is said, the disciples actually understood the impact of what he had been saying.  It took that key event — Jesus’ destruction and restoration, his death and resurrection — for it finally to occur to anyone exactly Who Jesus Was or Had been... or Is!

They had thought he was just another man, but he was not.  He was the shepherd and the gate of the sheep; by Christ we find our direction, through Christ we go to safety.  The word of God is spoken and we know the voice of the One who is our defender, our protector; that word we heed.  And when another voice comes on the air, or a thief comes over the fence, we know the voice of our shepherd; we will not be called away, lured away, or carried away.  Christ is there for us, inviting us politely, assuredly.

Mind you, for some, the invitation may not have seemed so polite.  But usually, that is because we have neglected to pay attention to the invitation, and we have as a result sent ourselves careening off in wrong directions – 

• of abuse and addiction, 
• of self-gratification at others’ expense, 
• of ignorance and disregard of the needs of others, 
• of insistence that we have all the answers when in fact what we specialize in is questions..!

For those, the call, the invitation to “repent and believe the good news that God is near and God’s realm is at your fingertips” has sounded harsh and uncivil.

It matters that we hear the Shepherd’s voice, it matters that we live as our Shepherd lived, take upon ourselves the word of God the way Jesus lived the word.  It matters what we do, how we are perceived, where we lead and where we follow.  It matters.

There is so much to do in this life, for the sake of saving the world!  There is so much abuse and cruelty that deserves to be confronted and prevented...

There is too much wrong-hearted religion passing itself off as Christianity nowadays, which only perpetuates those same cycles of cruelty, abuse, and violence..!

How about a polite invitation, rather than a threat!