JOHN 10:11-18

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

[12] He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

[13] He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing 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] And I have other sheep that are not of 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 that I may take it up again.

[18] No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

Deep within the human spirit there is a tremendous reservoir of courage That courage was on display almost 100 years ago when an unusual ad appeared in a London newspaper.  It was a help wanted ad and it read as follows, “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful.”  Would you respond to an ad like that? Do you know who the person was who wrote the ad?  The author of the ad was Sir Ernest Shackleton.  He wrote the ad while he was preparing for his famous expedition to Antarctica.  The response to the ad surprised Shackleton who later said, “It seemed as though all the men in Great Britain were determined to accompany us.”

People can be very courageous.  Of course it doesn’t matter who you are.  There will be times when fear will get the best of you.  There will be times when you’ll feel the same way a little boy felt when a violent clap of thunder woke him up in the middle of the night.  The thunder sent him running to his parents’ bedroom. “Mommy, mommy,” he whimpered. “I’m scared.”  The mother who was half awake did her best to reassure him.  “There’s no reason to be afraid,” she said.  “Go back to bed.  God will be right there with you.”    The little boy stood there in the dark from a moment.  “Mommy,” he finally said.  “I have a better idea. Why don’t I sleep in here with daddy and you can go in there and sleep with God.”

There are times when fear will get the best of you.  Even Jesus was afraid in the Garden of Gethsemane.  That fear was there when he said, “Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me.”  Jesus may have been afraid but he still a man of great courage and his courage won the day when he went on to say, “Nevertheless, not my will but your will be done.”  Jesus was the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep.  You’ll find the image of the Good Shepherd in John’s Gospel.  In John’s Gospel Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.   He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd…sees the wolf coming…and flees.  He flees because he…cares nothing for the sheep.”

Jesus was a man of great courage.  He was ridiculed and reviled and then he was tormented and tortured before those who hated him crucified him.  Jesus faced down the wolves of his day and refused to let their hatred and greed and lust for power win the day.

Now lets fast forward the clock to today and what do you see?  You see a world that is still a scary place in which to live.   We live in a world of drug dealers and drive by shootings, terrorism and economic uncertainty, cancer and pedophiles.  In addition to all of that each of us have our own personal fears that we have to conquer like the fear of flying or the fear of heights or the fear of dying.

Darrick Strezelecki came face to face with one of those fears last fall. Darrick is a high school senior who plays on the football team for a high school down in Gravette, Arkansas.  One day during practice he noticed that his helmet didn’t seem to fit quite right.  He thought that a lock of his hair might have gotten tangled up in the helmet.   He wasn’t about to let it stop him though. He later told the local newspaper, “I kept hitting, and it just kept bothering me.”  It wasn’t until the team took a break and Darrick took his helmet off that he discovered the problem wasn’t a tangled lock of hair.  The problem was a foot long snake that was wiggling around in his helmet.  That’s when he dropped the helmet and ran. 

When you come face to face with a scary situation the choice is really simple.  Are you going to run or are you going to muster up the courage that you need to face the scary situation?  You may be facing a situation right now that demands a little courage.  Before you decide to tackle that scary situation though there’s another question that you need to ask yourself.   What kind of courage am you going to use to face that scary situation?  After all there are many different kinds of courage. It’s true.

For example there’s the courage that is born out of stupidity.  A husband displayed a little of that courage one day when his wife asked him to take her somewhere expensive for her birthday.  So, while the husband went to work to think about it the wife went out and got her hair done.  She bought a new dress and put on her most expensive jewelry and when her husband came home she got into the care and he took her to a gas station.  Well, she did say that she wanted to go someplace expensive.

There are lots of different kinds of courage. There’s the courage that comes from your convictions.   That’s the courage that Rosa Parks displayed when she refused to move to the back of that bus down in Montgomery, Alabama.  In her autobiography Quiet Strength Rose Parks writes: “I did not feel any fear sitting there.  I felt the Lord would give me the strength to endure whatever I had to face.  It was time for someone to stand up – or in my case sit down.  So I refused to move.”

The courage that flows from your convictions is a wonderful thing but it can also be dangerous and deadly. Just look at the terrorists who flew those planes into the towers of the World Trade Center on September 11^th.  They had convictions and they showed a lot of courage.  Like Jesus they did what they did knowing they were going to die but theirs was a twisted kind of courage.  It was an evil kind of courage.  It was a unholy kind of courage that came straight from the depths of hell.

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd…I lay down my life for the sheep.”   Now that’s the courage that you want.  It’s the courage comes from a heart that says, “I’m doing this because I love you.”  

So, it’s the courage that dares to love those who are different. It’s the courage that loves those who may not deserve your love or may not appreciate your love and may not love you back.   It’s the courage that loves the student at school who’s being bullied and says to the bullies, “I’m not going to let you do this.” Or how about the little boy who was asked to donate blood so his sister could have an operation that she needed to save her life.   The thought of donating his blood frightened the little boy but he loved his sister.  So he agreed to do it.  It wasn’t until the little boy was on the table and the needle was in his arm that the doctors and nurses realized how much the little boy loved his sister.  That’s because it was then that the little boy looked up and said, “Doctor when do I start to die?”   Unfortunately, no one had explained to the little boy that they weren’t going to take all of his blood.  They were only going to take some of it. So the little boy thought that the transfusion meant that he was going to die so his sister could live.

It’s call the courage to love.  Danny Thomas experienced that kind of courage many years before he became famous.  He and his wife Rosie were living in a rooming house and struggling to make ends meet.  They were expecting their first child and all he had was the $7.85 that he had in his pocket.  One day while sitting in church with that $7.85 he put his usual dollar in the collection plate. On this particular Sunday, however, there was a second collection for a special mission.  While listening to the priest describe the suffering of the people who were going to be helped by the offering Danny got carried away and ended up giving the $6 he had left.  Realizing what he had done, he then went up to the altar rail after the service and started to pray. “Look,” he said, I’ve given my last seven bucks.  I need it back tenfold because I’ve got a kid on the way, and I have to pay the hospital bill.”  After he finished his prayer he went home with 85 cents in his pocket.   Danny later wrote, “You won’t believe this but the next morning the phone rang in the rooming house hall.”  The call turned out to be a job offer for a small part in a commercial and guess what it paid? $75.  After Danny stopped celebrating an eerie feeling came over him.  “The seventy-five dollar fee,” he wrote, “unheard of for me at that time was almost exactly ten times the amount of money I had donated to the church.”

Deep within the human spirit there is a tremendous reservoir of courage. So, as you make your way through this sometimes scary world the question isn’t whether or not you have the courage you need.  The question is whether you have the right kind of courage.  The fact that you’re sitting here in God’s house on the Sabbath says the answer to that question is a resounding “yes!”  You do you have courage that you need. It’s the courage that you see in the Good Shepherd and it’s called the courage to love.  Amen.

Rev. Dr. Richard A. Hughes

April 29, 2012