Scripture: Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand…(that is, out of the Father’s hand)…I and the Father are one.”

-- John 10:27-30

We could go through this text item by item and experience a nourishing sermon today, but I feel moved to take the opportunity of the familiar image of the Good Shepherd to offer a meditation on leadership. The shepherd is a traditional symbol of the ruler and Jesus says in vs. 11 of this chapter, “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” He is contrasting the Good Shepherd with the bad shepherds, the shepherd to whom the sheep belong, with the hired hand who has no personal stake in the flock. How do our current shepherds of the nation appear on such a spectrum?

Nevertheless, let us look briefly at the items in our text above as an introduction to our meditation on leadership. We are metaphorically sheep in the flock of Jesus the Good Shepherd. As such we hear, in the sense of recognize, his voice; we follow him, in the sense of doing what he wants us to do; he gives us eternal life, a gift we have been emphasizing since Easter, and have claimed is the single most valuable characteristic of the church, the one that sets it apart from all other organizations in the world and makes it uniquely precious. If we follow the Good Shepherd we shall never perish and never be separated from God, because Jesus holds us in his hand and his hand cannot be pried open because it is the almighty hand of God. Thus our text confirms what we have been emphasizing especially since Easter, that the spiritual engine of the church is the power of eternal life beyond this world.

I have made this text the introduction to our meditation on leadership because it makes clear that the gift given by the Gospel is not for life in this world but for the life of heaven. In this world we live under the sign of the Cross, we see puzzling reflections in a mirror, we walk by faith and not by sight, and are well advised to take reason, evidence, and humility as a guide to decision making. Therefore, we judge our earthly shepherds with understanding, not expecting perfection. In the light of this brief exposition of our text, and in the spirit of faith in eternal life, let us turn now to a meditation on leadership.

You will have noticed by now that I have discharged part of my obligation as your shepherd, by always making clear this sheer centrality of Christ, his Cross and Resurrection, to the faith. I challenge you to find one sermon in the 415 I have preached here that does not point first and overwhelmingly to the living Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives, Lord of the church and giver of the most precious gift of eternal life. Having put that eternal truth at the center I have then tried to relate it to living in the world, sometimes on the personal level, sometimes on a communal level using psychological, anthropological, ethical, and yes,  political categories. I usually do the relating in terms of the realities of life that are impinging on me at the time, and I try to make sure that those realities are not idiosyncratic but representative of important things that anyone living in the world would be bound to take note of.   

Today my meditation begins with a picture of a father and mother receiving the body of their dead child in a military coffin. I am speechless with dismay as I imagine the agony of loss, the desolation at so much life lost. I have just become a grandfather for the sixth time. Anna Elizabeth Wallin was born to our daughter Ruth and her husband John late on Saturday night. I am filled with the joy and satisfaction of one of life’s incomparable moments. All that beauty, all that blessing, all that promise, all that grace, as this beautiful little creature comes from the darkness of the divine love into the light of a loving family and a generous world! Against this background I imagine the father and mother whose child has come home in a military coffin, - more than seven hundred and thirty seven such agonies to date, (not to mention the thousands of Iraqis killed), - and I imagine them experiencing the opposite of what I am experiencing, and I hear them asking why, wrenchingly, desperately asking why, and hungering for a truthful assurance that their child died defending our country because there was no alternative, that this death was not just brave, but necessary, utterly necessary, occurring in the face of a real and imminent threat to the existence of our homeland. Can our political shepherds assure them that the death of their child was absolutely necessary for the country? Good shepherding would seem to demand it.

Then there arises in my meditation on leadership the picture of our leaders painted by Bob Woodward, in a memoir encouraged by the president, who himself gave three hours plus of face to face time to the journalist and allowed himself to be taped. This record does not assure me that the death was necessary, rather it persuades me that it was unnecessary and even whimsical. Woodward had similar access to all the principals, and gives vivid accounts of meetings, debates and exchanges at which he was present or had information from those who were present. I conclude from this account, entitled “Plan of Attack,” (New York: Simon and Schuster, March 2004) that there were only three people involved in the actual making of the decision to go to war, Dick Cheney, George Bush and Condi Rice. All the other principals, even Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, and especially Powell and Armitage, were out of the loop where the decision was finally made (The latter are the only two who have personally seen military action). This means that the decision came from deep within the consciousness of only two men, Cheney and Bush, because Rice, although she was always present at meetings seems only to have reinforced Bush’s already made decision. At least two of the principals, Colin Powell and Karl Rove said to Woodward that Cheney was in a “fever” over Iraq, and Woodward sums up his impression of Bush as never really in doubt, never really questioning the decision.

Here is a quotation: “(Woodward) Blair said that he had received letters from those who had lost sons in the war who wrote that they hated him for what he did. I quoted Blair, ‘And don’t believe anyone who tells you when they receive letters like that that they don’t suffer any doubt.’ ‘Yeah,’ President Bush replied. ‘I haven’t suffered doubt.’ ‘Is that right?’ I asked. ‘Not at all?’ ‘No. And I am able to convey that to the people.’ To those who had lost sons and daughters, he said, ‘I hope I am able to convey that in a humble way ’ (p.420).” Bush seems unaware that Blair’s quote brands him a liar; he does not disagree but rather agrees with Blair and then states the opposite of Blair’s position.

By this point I am greatly dismayed at the way our shepherds are leading us, and then my meditation becomes really dark, because as the recent PBS documentary in the Frontline series, called “The Jesus Factor” in the shows, Bush underwent a conversion to Christ in the Methodist church, just as I did. His language about his conversion echoes my own. It was in a Methodist chapel in Austin at a private service before his second inauguration as governor of Texas that Bush got the call to be president, when the preacher compared him to Moses, who was halting in his speech but nevertheless chosen to lead Israel to liberty. One of those present said there was  an “electricity” in the room at the moment when that text from Exodus was expounded while the preacher looked at Bush. Afterwards Bush told some friends that he believed God had called him to be president. This means that the decision to go to war came ultimately from a level of religious experience that I seem to know well. What makes this so problematic for me is that I continue to experience in worship something like that electricity and I also take it to mean that the Holy Spirit is present. I too have felt called, and done things on the basis of that call.

What is the relation of such experience to truth and reality? What is the deciding factor when calling our national shepherd not a Good Shepherd but a “hireling, who cares nothing for the sheep” (to quote the gospel text). I think it is the presence or absence of informed critical reflection in addition to the experience that makes the difference. Woodward’s book will shows that a lot of study and talking went on, but it will also show that all was ultimately for naught because the decision makers, Bush and Cheney, were in the end not listening, were not open to criticism and change. The former acted out of a deep sense of divine call, and the latter out of a volcanic rage that rumbled beneath the pale surface of the physically impaired cowboy from Wyoming.

Why am I dismayed? Because I have clung to the hope that a deep conversion to Christ is also a deep conversion to reality, and truth, a breaking out of the tissue of unreality that is the world of sin and death; but the opposite seems to be happening in our country today, and our shepherd who has had such an experience is leading us not through but into the valley of the shadow of death, strongly supported by Christians who put conversion to Christ at the center of their faith. This is troubling to say the least.

So, trying to be a good shepherd or pastor I have told you the truth as I, and any reasonable person, must see it. I shall not apologize for sharing this meditation with you, not least because, among other more important reasons, these bad shepherds are killing our young people and thousands of Iraqis for reasons that any reasonable person can only call delusional. I know that some of you don’t want to know; but if you think I make this stuff up to embarrass a Republican administration because I am a Democrat, you do not know me at all. I give you this information and opinion simply because I am trying to be a good shepherd and help you live honestly in the real world. I bet you will not hear such straight talk again from this pulpit for a very long time, if ever.

I speak also because only five corporations control the information the major information media in this country and we the public are  being swallowed by a propaganda monster. The example of the small Sinclair Broadcasting Group in Maryland, using its corporate muscle to keep off the air the reading of the names of the honored dead, scheduled on their stations by the ABC network, is a nutshell indication of our advancing imprisonment in propaganda. Also last week a woman lost her job for photographing military coffins, and her husband was canned too for obscure reasons. We are not to see the return of the honored dead, we are not publicly to acknowledge them, because that is politically unpropitious for the Bush campaign.

And that is not the worst; worse even than this is that millions are too lazy to read the books that reveal this corruption and decadence and are content to get their political information from Rush Limbaugh, whose recent confessions about drug use over the years must surely make his judgment suspect, or from the late night talk show hosts, Leno and Letterman.

As a pastor I want (in the last few weeks of my public life) do my bit to keep the pulpit a place where people may hear the truth they may not get from the media they consult, and from someone who is prepared to do the work necessary to penetrate behind the lies of the bad shepherds of our nation. All this work and witness might enable us who want to, to hear the voice of our Good Shepherd and to follow him into the real world, and to live there authentically and honestly. It may also help reduce the number of young people who die for nothing.

Amen.