Guest Pastor Rev. Dr. Douglas Groll

Rev. Dr. Douglas Groll

July 19, 2015

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

³⁰The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹He said to them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. ³²And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. ³³Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. ³⁴As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. ⁵³When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. ⁵⁴When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, ⁵⁵and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. ⁵⁶And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

In Jesus’ Name, Dear Friends,

Of course they were hurrying around with deep deep needs as sheep without a shepherd….they had every reason to be:   The Board of Commissioners had just raised the county sales tax to 10.25%  meaning that for every ten fish sold in the market, one would have to go to the county.   Herod and Pilate could not agree on a budget……Herod kept going over to Caesarea every other day…..but Pilate kept threatening the veto.   The synagogue schools were at the point of closing down because the local Pharisees and experts in the law could not be paid because all their retirement and pension fund had been used to beautify the Roman government centers of Sephora and Caesarea. ….the government’s part of the pension fund had not been paid in ten years.  No one had an answer to the violence brought about by poor schools, lots of drugs, lots of guns.  Each Tuesday or Wednesday the heavens were filled with helium balloons launched in memory of an infant, a child, a teenager slain the weekend before.  The heavens themselves began to smell of death.

 On the International front talks had broken down or seemed at an impasse between

the Roman negotiators  and the Barbarians from the North about their right to produce their own 300 pound rocks to throw in their own catapults under development.   The Roman Senate

was mired in acrimonious  debate…each side accusing the other of selling out.     Everything was spilling over into the courts…..the judges of the highest court in the land were using such phrases as “nothing short of ludicrous”…..gobbeldy gook”….”nonsense”…in describing the opinions of the other judges.  

If one could ever say that there is purely a religious or spiritual side of life…..there was even discord there…..The Pharisees and the Scribes…..seemed locked in perennial debate about liturgies, clerical collars versus neckties, diametrically opposed positions….or at least never really discussed positions on the role of women in the church, the Affordable Care Act or same sex marriage.   So the Sheep sought a Shepherd….Is it any wonder?

And all sorts of people came forth to be shepherds…..on the secular side alone at least 15 from one party and three or four from the other…..telling the world that they would be secular leaders, yet each one tried to outdo the other in appealing to religion.…while spiritual leaders simply seemed to sit back and shout at each other …..pretending to be religious….but not hesitating to give political opinions.  Sheep without a shepherd….and  would be shepherds sometimes just as bad as Jeremiah described them in our Old Testament lesson for the day…..sometimes really good people….Christian people…who simply got caught in the evil systems or the system….or institutions that want to do good but cannot change fast enough to help or act.   

And they had come too Him…..day after day…evening after evening….the needs….the sickness…the anger ……the alienation…the shouted words….the blood….day after day….evening after evening….it tired the disciples….it tired our Lord….And yet they kept coming….like sheep without a shepherd.   But that was back then….a simple society…nothing at all like our own this day.  When does the next bus leave for the wilderness?

³⁰The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹He said to them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. ³²And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. ³³Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.

So this is the scene.  Way back then….but perhaps not so far back.   Sheep…..sometimes innocent….many times guilty……themselves…Ezekiel 34 really paints that  picture….the whole blame cannot go on the shepherds….sheep and goats themselves beat each other out for the water and the grass……Here we have shepherds here we have sheep…..good, bad, confused, participants in what seems to be the endless…and perhaps most depressing scene of our condition. 

But now another side of the equation.   Jeremiah promised a Shepherd who would care….and Mark and the other evangelists….writing sometime just before or just after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D… not at all immune to the complexities of cruelty….having just described the beheading of John the Baptist a chapter before…not at all immune to homicide…yet the tell of a Shepherd who cared…a shepherd who loved….and a shepherd who healed and fed.  They told and tell us of a God who has acted…taken the initiative and continues to save in the midst of what seems to be bewildering situations.  The evangelists would have us know that there is a Good Shepherd there if we allow him to lead us.  ….if we see…him…hear him and follow him.

The offer is there…..He reaches out….He is there.  Can we listen….can we let Him lead us? Can we slow down to hear his will….and his good news for us?

Let me tell you about the Oblivious Shepherd and his Oblivious sheep who did not have a clue.   Early in my ministry..around 1968.. I served two small congregation of peasant farmers in rural Venezuela.   One of our congregations was in a village called Quebrada Seca….it literally means Dry Gulch….small farmers who had been re-located because of the agrarian reform program of the government.  In any event about the only thing most of them shared was their poverty.  Our small Lutheran mission had worked there for years.  Each Christmas the high point of the celebration was the live Nativity.   Early in the year we had purchased a property right along side the street.  It was a beat up thatched house, made of mud..It waited for us to tear it down..but we decided that it had to be the site of the Live Nativity.  And so, the night before Christmas…or a day or so before….in the afternoon.  The entire cast….Mary, Joseph, the Donkey…the Wise Men….Some Angels…all came parading down the street to stop in front of the beat up house..now the scene of the manger.   Everyone was in their place.   Mary in Blue and White….the donkey…the angels…the magi…..  And then all of a sudden….out of the blue…one of the local shepherds…..a sort of eccentric loner who lived in the mountains… came driving his herd of sheep right through the manger scene….right in front of the Christ Child and Mary and Joseph.  He whistled…he led….he pushed….he was in a hurry….the whole herd passed by in a matter of a minute….   But what struck me then and still does to this day..is that the man never knew he had been in the middle of the great drama of all time….

The Babe was there inviting….the Babe was there offering…. The shepherd  was busy…He was noisy…and the sheep…well…they just wanted to get to the next pasture…..to the next water hole…completely oblivious to the world around them.

IT DOES Not Have to be that way!  This part of the sixth chapter of Mark’s Gospel is really the transition bridge to the feeding of the 5000.   This is….only the set up for the miracle…  To see the sheep without a shepherd…but now to actually be fed by the Shepherd himself.   Mark used the same words about breaking  The string of verbs (“took bread, … blessed, broke, and gave”) is identical to that in the account of the last meal (14:24). In the account of the feeding of the 4000 that follows in Mark 8:1–9, the sequence of verbs is the same, with the exception of the second, which is “give thanks” (eucharisteō) instead of “bless”

Mark was writing to a New Testament people…a people acquainted with adversity, sadness, persecution…..the lack of earthly shepherding….   And yet…. He offered the real shepherd….the suffering shepherd who would continue to tire and suffer with the people to whom he ministered then and for whom he would die and rise again….. A people …those people for whom he would offer himself…..in the bread and the wine….a flock of sheep…weak, vulnerable….and often tired…like those first apostles….sent to serve…sent to suffer…sent to weep…sent to go back into the crowds…back to hearing of the hurting….back to trying to serve…..and educate  and legislate….and protest……but sent at the same time to reach out to oblivious shepherd and sheep alike…with a word…”You are not alone……with a presence…with a ministry….wherever it may take us.  Amen.