The Good Shepherd Cares For Us, Especially In Our Animated Dust Phase
As one of my Lenten disciplines, I've decided to start blogging again. So we will see if I can do 40 posts. To start off nice and easy, here is the text of my Ash Wednesday sermon. It uses John 10.1-28 (from the Narrative Lectionary) and Psalm 23 as its basis. This lesson comes right after the lesson we heard on Sunday, where Jesus healed the blind man. In fact, the people whom Jesus is addressing in this lesson are the man who had been born blind, but who can now see, and the Pharisees, who drove him out of the Temple. He is continuing his conversation with the Pharisees, who think that they are acting in God’s will. Jesus tries to explain to them that we are saved through God’s love on God’s terms, not on our own. So he tries to explain this using an analogy of a sheep’s pen and a shepherd. He first refers to himself as the gate through which the sheep enter their fold. It is through Christ that we come to the Creator. He is also the gatekeeper;