By Rev. Kathy Itzin

    “I am the Good Shepherd.”  We think of Jesus as our Good shepherd, our personal shepherd, and he is, but he is also the shepherd of the world.  He is the shepherd of creation, the shepherd of animals, the shepherd of birds and insects, the shepherd of forests and grasses, and of the earth itself. He is the Good Herdsman, the Good DNR official, the Good Forester, the Good Farmer, the Good Gardener, the Good Environmental Protection Officer.
     We need him.  We need Jesus to care for us personally, intimately, and strongly.  That’s what a shepherd does. 
I heard a story about two men who were out duck hunting one cold Fall day.  One of them owned a boat, and they spent a good day together. They got a few ducks, and at the end of the day, they pulled their boat onto shore and walked back to the car, carrying the guns, some ducks, and a few of the decoys.   They had another load or two left in the boat.  When they got back, they saw that when they had been walking back to the car, the boat had slipped back into the lake and was floating down the shore.  They walked fast, and started running, but the boat kept drifting farther out into the lake. Eventually, they realized that one of them had to bite the bullet, strip out of his jacket and second layer of heavy pants, and head out to sea.  At that point, they looked at each other with question marks in their eyes, wondering which one was going to jump in, until one of them said, “It’s not my boat.”
That’s the difference between Jesus, the shepherd, and the hired hand.  It’s Jesus’ boat.  We’re Jesus’ boat. And he’s ready to do the dirty work.  Jesus is the one with skin in the game.
 
Some time ago, I was very busy, a lot of my friends were struggling with very hard issues, and I knew I couldn’t fix anything.  I was complaining to a friend of mine, and she said, “It’s like the little boy in the story of Jesus and the fishes.  You only have so many fish, and there’s a lot of need, but it’s not you that multiplies the fish. You just give what you have, and know that the rest isn’t up to you.”  
Later that night, she sent me a picture of Jesus, the crowd of people, and the boy with the plate of fish.  Jesus was looking up, praying, with his arms outstretched. I texted back, “Yes, that’s me rolling my eyes and saying to God, “More problems? You’ve got to be kidding!”  She responded, “Uh, No. That would be Jesus praying. You’re meant to be the little boy. Maybe that’s part of the problem.”
And she was right. That’s what Jesus was telling us. He is the Good Shepherd. He cares about us, because we are his own. We’re this close.
So, I started thinking about that.  Is it really true, that he cares for us like that? And I wondered about Terri, dying so suddenly this week. I don’t doubt for a moment that Jesus was with her, but exactly how does that work? I didn’t know the circumstances of her last two or three days. Was Jesus really being a Good Shepherd to her and her family during this time?
As I thought back, I know Terri called Carol asking for a ride to church last Sunday.  As it turned out, we cancelled because of the blizzard, but still, she knew that people here were happy to give her and Steven a ride. And we loved them enough, we shepherded them well enough, that they wanted to come.  They felt at home.  Throughout the afternoon, she had some back pain, and as the night came on, it got worse, so that about 11:30, she knew she needed to go to the hospital.  She called her mother, and she took her there.  It kind of reminds me of the picture of Jesus carrying the little sheep to safety.
Her mother called me on Wednesday morning.  I know that in the two days between Sunday and Wednesday, the doctors and nurses cared for her as well as they could, and they shepherded her through the time when her body was beginning to die.  Somewhere along the line, a doctor or nurse or chaplain suggested that the family gather to say their goodbyes.  Her mother knew that her relationship with God, and with our church was important to her, so she called me and asked me to come.  When I asked if I could let everyone know, Nancy said, ‘Oh yes, they would appreciate our prayers.” Before I left for the hospital, I put it on our Facebook site, and I called several members of the Bible study group, who said they would call others. As I was leaving, I checked Facebook, and several people had already said they would be praying. Lots of caring, kind shepherding going on!
When I got to the hospital, it was obvious that Terri was physically unresponsive. We read a little bit from Romans 8, which says that Absolutely nothing can ever separate us from the love of Christ.  Nothing physical, nothing spiritual, nothing in the past, nothing in the future, nothing in all of creation. And that’s all true.  I reminded her that God is as close as the breath in her lungs, the beat of her heart, and the blood in her veins.
When I began telling everyone about the funeral, they started volunteering to bring bars or cake, to come help set up, to sing, to print the funeral bulletin. 
 
Where was the Good Shepherd in this story?  Was he or she part of Terri’s last days, part of her dying?   As I reflected on the last three days in this woman’s life, and in the life of this church, I see a lot of shepherding.
I read a great article in the Opinion Page yesterday.  It said that in a time when we see rudeness and immature behavior in the lives of many political leaders in public offices, it is easy to get a little depressed.  But she said we have as many or more leaders whose public honesty and virtue are great examples. She held up the example of the Southwestern pilot who guided her plane to safety after an engine exploded last week, and a district judge, who treated everyone with respect and fairness, even when some of them tried to be influential and pushy.  She ended up concluding that “we have no shortage of admirable Americans in public life who know its not all about them.  They are decent, dignified, and gifted at their jobs, and they let their performances speak for themselves. Look in …offices, firehouses, police stations…there are men and women who have spent decades striving to do their jobs well and to do their institutions, families, and country proud.” (Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post reprinted Start tribune 4/21/18).
 
In the story of the little boy sharing what little he had, which was just a couple of fish, and then Jesus multiplying it to meet the needs of the people, my friend reminded me that we each just do what we can.  God takes care of it.
And when I look at How God takes care of it, whether it is the Good Shepherd in action in personal relationships, neighborhoods, acts of caring and justice in our city, state or world, or when I see the Good Shepherd alive in actions of caring for creation, I see the Good Shepherd  in the lives of each of us.  Amen.

By Rev. Kathy Itzin

On Easter, Jesus’ friends and disciples experienced something extraordinary. We weren’t there.  We don’t know how Jesus presented himself, but it was very different than the way in which the disciples saw him before he died.  His body was different. He didn’t look the same.  They didn’t usually recognize him right away.
 
The writers of the Gospels knew that they had to tell the stories of Jesus’ Resurrection appearances.  They needed to let Jesus’ followers, (then and now), know that his spirit, and his actual presence, was still with them.  It was the beginning of a new way of experiencing Jesus. We know his spirit is with us in our lives, in a way that is different than when he walked the earth.  The Gospel writers needed to assure his followers then, and in the future, that he really is still here.
 
If someone were to tell us, out of the blue, that someone who died was alive again, we probably wouldn’t believe it.  Thomas had spent three years following Jesus and living intensely with his closest friends, and he still didn’t believe it when ten of them told him that Jesus came back.  If the Gospels just told us, ‘He rose again,’ ‘He came back to life,’ or ‘Jesus is alive,’ no one would believe it.
 
That’s one of the reasons that we have stories.  We want to know; ‘How did he come back again? Who saw him? When? Where? How was it? What are the details?’  During these fifty days of Easter, we hear about the different appearances of Jesus, what he said and did, until finally he ascended to be joined fully with God.  Then we don’t hear any more stories of him visiting the disciples.
 
The Easter season is the opposite of bad news.  When we get bad news, it takes us awhile to absorb it. We need to come to grips with thinking differently about ourselves.  I love that I have hearing aids.  I can hear well during the times when I’m busy, and at night, when everything is quiet, I love to take them out. I like the feeling of not being responsible for anything.  When I first saw the audiologist, she said, “Yes, you definitely need hearing aids.” I asked how the process worked. When would I get them?
 
She answered, “Take some time to think about it. Then when you decide that you’re ready to get them, give me a call and we’ll schedule a time to discuss your options.” I must have looked surprised, because she added, “A lot of people don’t want to think of themselves as needing hearing aids. It might take a while to get used to the idea.”
 
That is true of anything that changes how you think of yourself.  Sometimes, it can be a small thing, and other times, it is huge.  I might need bi or trifocals, or a joint replacement.  Larger issues might be a diagnosis of mental illness, or a serious disease, or becoming a parent or grandparent.  All of a sudden, part of your identity shifts.  It might take a while to get used to it.
 
For the friends of Jesus, an enormous part of their identity had changed twice, in a very short time.  After the Resurrection, on the road to Emmaus, the disciples said, “We had hoped he was the Messiah, and was going to save Israel….our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified.” (Lk. 24: 21,20)  Then, two days later, he came back from the dead. It took some getting used to. No wonder Thomas didn’t accept it! It was a lot to absorb in a very short time. What did it mean? What did it mean about Jesus, or God, or Judaism?  What did it mean about them? What did it mean about death? It changed everything.
 
 Jesus was ok with that.  He didn’t yell at Thomas, or put him down, but he accepted Thomas’ questions as part of the normalcy of life, part of humanity.  It was ok.  He wanted to take time to show Thomas that he was really still here.
 
We have several stories about Jesus appearing to his friends, and all of them are different.  He appeared to Mary Magdalene right away, in the garden. Then the next day, in the evening, he appeared to the disciples gathered in the upper room.  Since Thomas wasn’t there, he came back again eight days later.  Meanwhile, a little after Easter, some of the disciples were walking down the road to Emmaus, and he joined them on the walk.  They only recognized him at dinner, when he prayed before eating.   Later, when some of the men were fishing, after catching nothing all night, he appeared to them on the beach and cooked breakfast for them.
 
Each of these stories plug in more details of what Jesus is like now.  They answer questions his friends then might have had; that we might have.  They filled in some of the gaps. Can you touch him? Is his body the same? Is it the same Jesus we know and love? Does he still say the same kind of things? Will he still teach us? How will we know what to do? How will we connect with God? Is he still with us? 
 
Little by little, we see more and more. He didn’t want Mary to hold onto him, because she couldn’t hold onto the way things used to be. She had to give it up to embrace the way things are now, instead.  Yes, he still teaches.  Yes, he still leads.  He eats, he prays, he loves, just like he used to, but his body is very different. He is the same Jesus, his Spirit is the same, even though his body is different now.
 
For the next several weeks, he continued to visit his friends.  At the time John wrote this, most of the adults who knew Jesus while he walked the earth were dead.  If a child was six when Jesus died, he or she would be in their early 70’s when John wrote this Gospel.  Most of the Christian community alive then had never seen Jesus. 
 
John wanted to assure everyone (including us) that we weren’t second rate.  The disciples in this story saw him, and because of their sight, they believed.  John was writing for people like us, who didn’t see him, but heard the stories. Jesus reassured them, and us, that hearing about him is just as good as seeing him. Our ears are as trustworthy as their eyes. As he said to Thomas, “You believed because you saw me, but blessed are those who have not seen, but yet have come to believe.”  Amen.