WebKinz Jesus??

4th Sunday of Easter, May 3, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Acts 4:5-12
1 John 3:16-24
Psalm 23
John 10:11-18


Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/28F5BE7B-F100-1240-2A9F-99895836F6A0.mp3



Perhaps too often, Pastor Mohn offers, we tend to picture Jesus (or see artistic renditions of Him) as blonde with flowing hair, like the cute, stuffed animal sheep we buy our kids in the store, aka WebKinz (www.webkinz.com). They’re soft, cuddly, romantic and, in the end, unlike “the real thing”. As in the Psalm today, the green pastures Jesus will lie beside us in goes hand-in-hand with the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Along with Blonde Barbie Jesus is another Jesus we meet in today’s scripture texts. And, yes, there’s a dirty (and real) side of what goes along with “I am the Good Shepherd”. The reality is Jesus is moving around the world saving His sheep from the wolves, but THAT Jesus doesn’t always look like the one in the frame at the top of the stairs.

The reality is often so very different from “the idea”.

Much like parenting or the proverbial oil change, the job can often be dirty (and painful) in the details.

The Good Shepherd knows His sheep and they know Him. Pastor Mohn shared a story about a “shepherd” in Minnesota who’d had his sheep stolen while at the County Fair. While visiting the County Fair one county over, he found that a farmer there had stolen them. When he approached them, the sheep received him and they KNEW HIM. But Pastor Mohn cautioned us to “wait a minute”. Here’s the Hollywood, Hallmark moment when we tend to romanticize, when the music changes to a “happy ending crescendo” and the Webkinz sheep “comes to be”. But that’s “the idea” that we tend to romanticize. The reality is often different, if we can be truthful with ourselves long enough to resist Hollywood, Hallmark and Webkinz.

It’s not altogether only a sweet story.

WHY do the sheep know their shepherd? When it’s snowy, rainy, storming, he opens the barn door to let them seek warmth; when they’re hungry, he fills the troughs and feeds them; when they’re scared, he’s there to calm them and comfort them. They know the source of their life. When Jesus says He knows his sheep and they know Him, this is NOT a warm and fuzzy story. This is a stark reality.

Pastor Mohn remembers a dirty story of a calf birthed by her father in the mud room of their home. It was a difficult, dirty, messy birth IN THEIR HOME! The calf came too early, too cold, too afraid, but their shepherd, her father, was there to “make it OK”. He would bring the mud and gunk and filth into his own home to save that calf. The mud and blood and dirt and afterbirth, the fear, the mess, the disgusting mess – this is not the stuff of Webkinz.

It is the stuff of Baptism!!

Through all the mess and gunk of your life, God brings you into the warm waters, he gets right in with you and brings you out clean and safe and OK on the other side. There’s no barrier between Jesus and the mess in your life.

When we say that Jesus lies down before us in green pastures, it is because we know He’s there in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. When we say He’s the Good Shepherd, it’s because we know there are wolves out there.

What you won’t see in any Hallmark card or Hollywood movie or cute Kinz website, is that, in the Easter season, Jesus is out there between us and the wolves, to bring us through the mud and the gunk and out the other side.