Many years ago, when I was early in my ministry as an associate in Anderson County, our neighbor’s young daughter told her mother, I don’t think the man who lives next door has a job, because some days he comes out wearing old clothes and other days he dresses up. That must be when he is looking for a job. Well, after my many years in ministry, I can say that some people still believe I don’t really have a job. The reason why I had such variety in my wardrobe back then – and now – is because one day I might be out riding on the back of someone’s tractor to help on their farm, or painting the youth room, visiting a hospital, helping to put insulation in the church attic, or participating in a funeral, all of which require very different wardrobes.
On many occasions I have thought about the reality that seminary did not fully prepare me for the breadth of ministry opportunities and experiences, especially when it comes to being involved in the lives of others. Seminary can be a very cerebral exercise, and life is very often anything but cerebral. Life is very emotional and very unpredictable, neither of which can be prepared for in a classroom experience.
Being involved in the lives of others, and caring for others, is the cornerstone of ministry. Involvement in the lives of others is the cornerstone of everything. Ministry is relational, and any ministry that fails to recognize the importance of relationships is a ministry that cannot be very effective. My mom reminded me many years ago, for instance, that good pastoral care makes up for a lot of bad sermons, but no amount of good sermons can make up for bad pastoral care.
As we continue with the series What Did Jesus Do, this morning we come to the message He Cared for People. One of the ways Jesus differentiated himself from the religious leaders was in his expression of love, care, and concern. Generally speaking, the religious leaders were fairly removed from the everyday lives of people. The teachers of the law instructed others about what they saw as the requirements of the law, but they weren’t necessarily close to the people and did not express care for them. The Pharisees were so busy demonstrating their own righteousness and so preoccupied with telling others what they should be doing, they did not have a connection to people.
Follow along with me as I read the Scripture text for this morning, from John 10:7-18 –
7 Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.
8 All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them.
9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it.
13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—
15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.
16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.
17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to 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 authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
I have three very simple, basic points. Very elemental, but also very important.
Jesus Cares for You.
When I read the gospels, I am often struck by how many of the stories are set in everyday life. They are stories that take place while Jesus and the disciples walked along. They are parables that Jesus shared when he saw the opportunity for a “teachable moment” with his disciples. The moments came about as they shared a meal, as they visited with others, and so many other ordinary, everyday moments.
Mark 10:46, for instance, tells us that as Jesus and his disciples were walking through Jericho, they encountered Bartimaeus, who was blind, and Jesus healed him. Luke 9:57 says as they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” In response, Jesus gave a lesson about the cost of following him. In John chapter 4, Jesus has a conversation with a Samaritan woman. Jesus and his disciples were walking through Samaria, and Jesus sat down at a well while his disciples went into town to buy some food. In that conversation, Jesus speaks of the living water.
We can go on and on with similar examples, but the point is, so much of the ministry of Jesus took place as life was happening. It didn’t happen at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning or any other appointed hour; it happened as it happened, and especially when it needed to happen. We can become so tied to our schedules and responsibilities – and I am too often guilty of being so tied – that we miss the opportunities that come our way.
Years ago, when a friend called me one day, he asked how things were going for me. Out of my frustration for being unable to get to everything I needed to get to, I said, if it weren’t for all the interruptions, I might be able to get some ministry done. His response really lodged in my heart and mind, and has remained there, as he said, maybe the interruptions are the ministry.
Jesus never saw an interruption. Jesus saw need, and he saw opportunities to meet those needs. Jesus never saw an interruption in his schedule – I’m not sure Jesus even had a schedule, actually. Can you imagine Jesus saying, hang on a minute; let me check my schedule, and then unrolling a scroll containing his calendar. No, Jesus saw the call and the need to care and always responded.
Jesus Cares for Others, So Let’s Care for Others.
In June of 1984, I began my first full-time ministry. I remember very vividly my first day in the office, 36 years ago. I wore a suit to the church office on that Monday morningand carried a briefcase. I was acting more like a lawyer or accountant. I quickly learned it was necessary to be ready for anything, and to dress for anything, and it was not much later when our young neighbor took note of my mixed-up wardrobe.
We are living in an unprecedented time, and there is no shortage of opportunities to demonstrate care. And yes, we have to speak about equality and justice for groups of people, but we also need to remember that individual people need care. Working for equality and justice is a way of expressing care on the macro level – the big picture – of caring. What we call pastoral care – caring for the individual – is the micro level; expressing care to individuals.
We are all seeking to navigate this new time, and how to care for others. The question so often in my mind during these months has been, how do you do pastoral care in the midst of a pandemic? In my almost forty years of ministry, this has been my longest stretch of not visiting in hospitals, in nursing homes, in assisted living facilities, and in homes. My first funeral during this time of pandemic was a surreal experience. Only ten of us were allowed to be present, which meant some of the immediate family could not attend. My heart was heavy for the family members who could not be there.
But we look to Jesus, who is the example of caring, which he sought always to teach his disciples. In the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000, for example, the disciples came to Jesus and encouraged him to send the crowd away, as the day was late and there was nothing to give the crowd to eat. The response of Jesus in Mark 6: 37 was, you give them something to eat! It was as much of an invitation as it was a command. Follow my example, Jesus was saying, of caring for others.
The book of Job is a favorite of mine, although I will admit it is not always the most encouraging of books of the Bible to read. One of the reasons I find Job to be so powerful is the example of his friends, and I don’t mean to cite them as good examples. Job’s friends are examples of how notto be a friend, and how notto care. They were well-intentioned, but wow, they were really unhelpful. Listen to some of their advice. In Job 4:7-8, for example, Eliphaz, the first “friend” to speak to Job said, think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. In other words, Job, it’s your fault. If you are having difficulty, it’s your fault. We should all be blessed with such friends, right? Thank goodness Job only had three friends offering him such advice! That was not the way to care.
We are blessed to have the Stephen Ministry in our church. In Stephen Ministry, we use the phrase called to care. That phrase is based in Galatians 6:2, which tells us to bear one another’s burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ.
Care for Yourself.
A study released a few days ago by the Center for Disease Control was startling in what it discovered. It revealed that 10.7% of Americans reported seriously contemplating suicide in the 30 days before the survey was taken, in the last week of June. It was even more striking among adults ages 18 to 24. In that group, 25% reported seriously considering suicide in the 30 days previous to the survey. The survey also found that 63% of that age group reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder and 25% reported either started or increased the use of substances. Overall, about 13% of those surveyed said they increased or started using substances to cope with stress during June. In total, 40% of Americans reported mental health or substance use issues in the month previous to the survey.
https://www.insider.com/cdc-11-percent-us-adults-seriously-considered-suicide-in-june-2020-8
https://www.livescience.com/depression-anxiety-increase-covid-19.html
That’s very disturbing, isn’t it? I feel the stress and anxiety of this time. You do too, don’t you? We all feel it. Many people were already pushed to the limit when this year began, before the pandemic and everything else hit, which has made the additional stress even more pronounced.
With all that is going on in our society and in the world, and with all the stress and all the anxiety that has entered into our lives, don’t you wish you could reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’s cloak and find healing, as did the woman with the hemorrhage (Mark 5:25-34)? She was part of the large crowd that surrounded Jesus, and having come to the end of her rope, thought to herself, if I just touch his clothes, I will be healed. She did touch the cloak of Jesus and was healed. Don’t you wish you could reach out and find all your stress and worry and anxiety and troubles taken away? Don’t you? We all wish we could do so.
We need to care for others, but we need to care for ourselves as well. People are always telling me to take care of myself. I know, I know. I do. I think. Sometimes. Every once in a while. Maybe. I appreciate the advice, and I know I don’t always take the advice, so I know that I am not the right person to stand up here and tell anyone to take care of themselves. Me, the guy who left church on a Sunday morning last fall to go to the hospital with a case of exhaustion, ending up the year talking with a counselor, trying to figure out why I’m so bad at taking care of myself. But perhaps that’s why I am the person to stand up here and say, take care of yourselves.
Masks are part of the problem. I simply cannot get used to looking out and seeing everyone’s faces covered with masks. I know they are necessary, and I do not dispute their necessity, but I can’t see your reactions, which I miss. I also can’t see when you’re sleeping, so that’s an advantage of masks. But the reason why I say that masks are a problem is because they have become a symbol and a metaphor for our time. Not just for medical reasons, but because we hide behind masks. All of us, at some point, have had a metaphorical mask in front of us, hiding behind it. We hide our worries and our concerns. I know I certainly do. We keep that mask on, acting as though everything is fine. But it’s not, and it is okay to acknowledge when it isn’t. Acknowledging that we need help is the first step to finding and getting help.
Maybe you began the year hanging by a thread, and with all that is happened, you feel as though that thread broke a long time ago, and you entered into a freefall. Keep this in mind – you might have fallen, but you fell into the arms of God, where you are safe and secure. Amen, and amen.
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