I don't know if you have ever seen one of those powers of ten movies that start with an image, a normal photograph of a couple for example, and then progressively magnify by degrees of ten, zooming in closer and closer until soon you see the molecules, then the atoms, then the quarks. Then it zooms out, until soon you see an aerial view of the entire city, then the earth, then the solar system, etc. Although such movies tend to be short, they are quite fascinating.

Well, I can't promise that this sermon will be as fascinating, but this zooming in and zooming out is sort of what I am doing with our Biblical texts from Psalm 23 and Revelation 7. For those of you who weren't here last week, today's sermon is in some way the second part of the sermon that I preached last week. Last week I sort of zoomed in on Psalm 23, looking at the text with a metaphorical microscope under a high degree of resolution. We went verse by verse, paying careful attention to individual words and phrases.

This week, I am zooming out. I am zooming out from the Psalm text in order to examine the story of sheep and shepherds in the Bible as whole. As we shall see, the story of sheep and shepherds is a story woven throughout the entire fabric of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Telling this story is a way of telling the story of faith.

What prompted me to investigate this story were the two Scripture readings from last week. You see, what struck me most powerfully about these texts was not either one of them individually -- it wasn't the familiar 23rd psalm with its comforting message of God's care, nor the passage from the seventh chapter of Revelation, with its vision of a heavenly community. Rather, what was most powerful to me was the juxtaposition of these two texts together, in particular the images of sheep and shepherd they contain. In Psalm 23 the central image is of God as a shepherd, but in the Revelation passage it is somehow the reverse, with Jesus as a lamb. Something has happened here, between these two texts, and what intrigued me most was neither text by itself, but the story that they don't tell directly, the story that is told by the gap between them, the story of the transformation of that metaphor of sheep and shepherd.

How did the shepherd become a sheep? Why did it happen? What does it mean? That is the story I aim to tell today.

In thinking about and praying about this story, two books in particular have been of great assistance -- Finally Comes the Poet, by Walter Brueggemann, and Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, by Jack Miles.

As Miles points out in his book, and as I suggested in my sermon last week, ancient Israel identified strongly with sheep in a way that we do not. Many of the Israelites were shepherds and their lives were lived in close proximity with sheep. Like sheep, they were vulnerable to outside enemies. As a nation, ancient Israel was a small fish in a big pond -- or rather, a sheep among wolves. The major powers of Israel's day were Egypt and various Mesopotamian Empires -- the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires. Certainly not Israel itself. To read the Old Testament is to read of the Israelites' constant struggle to survive in a hostile environment. Furthermore, like sheep, the Israelites were also prone to wander off -- not physically, but spiritually. A frequent theme of the Old Testament is that the people have wandered off to worship an idol or a false God, and God uses prophets to call them to repentance. Given their proximity to sheep and their similarities with them, it is thus not surprising that the Israelites saw themselves metaphorically as sheep.

If the Israelites were sheep, then what they needed was a good shepherd. They needed someone who could protect them, a strong leader that could keep them from wandering off the path. This theme of a shepherd is developed relatively early. As Moses looks at the promised land before his death, he prays in Numbers 27:16, "Let the Lord . . . appoint someone over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, so that the congregation of the Lord may not be like sheep without a shepherd."

The one that is appointed is Joshua, whose name means "deliverer." Using his skills as a warrior, which are essential to any shepherd that defends his flock against predators and human thieves, Joshua conquers most of the promised land. Like a good shepherd, he settles the tribes of Israel on the land -- they are like sheep going out to pasture.

But in the period of the judges that follows, the people repeatedly stray from the path, the unity among them is broken, they become once again like sheep without a shepherd, vulnerable to the Philistines and other surrounding peoples. They need a good shepherd. They want not just a shepherd, though, but a king, or better yet, a shepherd-king. Remember that the kings of Israel were anointed with oil, and the word for the "anointed one" in Hebrew is "messiah" or in Greek, "Christos." This shepherd-king, this shepherd-messiah for which they long . . . well, in David, that is what they get. In the Old Testament, David is the paradigm of kingship. He united the people, he slew Goliath and defeated the Philistines, he established the city of Jerusalem as the capital of a united kingdom. It was the high point of Israel's history. For generations after, people would still be saying, "Those were the good old days, when David was king. Hopefully, some day one of David's descendants will return, and it will be once again like it was then."

Of course, David was not just a king, he was and to some extent always would be a shepherd. That seemed to be part of how he saw himself. It is no accident, I think, that the 23rd psalm is a psalm of David. His experience as a literal shepherd of sheep, and as a metaphorical shepherd to the people of Israel, had taught him something about God. David's psalm takes the metaphor of the sheep and shepherd to a deeper level. If David as shepherd-king comforts and protects, then how much more is that true of God?!

In the centuries after David's death, the united kingdom breaks apart and is eventually conquered by other peoples. God's people go into exile, scattered, like sheep without a shepherd. In time, a remnant returns, and after the passage of several more centuries, they succeed in re-establishing themselves as rulers in their own land. But it wasn't like before, not like under David, the good shepherd-king. And in any case, it doesn't last. The Romans come and occupy the land. And as the situation deteriorates, the longing of the people for deliverance from the Romans grows, their longing grows for a good shepherd to unify them and protect them from their enemies. They feel the need not just for any shepherd, though, but for the shepherd to end all shepherds, a messiah unlike any anointed king before, a descendant of David that is somehow greater than David.

Into the history of this metaphor of shepherd and sheep, into this context of occupation and longing for deliverance, comes Jesus. Or perhaps I should say, Joshua. For what we translate in English as two names, Joshua for the Old Testament figure, and Jesus for the son of God, is in the original language the same name. The very name of Jesus, therefore, explicitly connects him with Joshua, the powerful warrior and deliverer of the Old Testament. Furthermore, when Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ, the messiah, it is a statement not only about Jesus but also about Peter's expectation that Jesus will be the messiah for whom they long, the descendant of David who, like David, will be the paradigm of a shepherd-king, uniting the people against the occupation and re-establishing a kingdom, just like David as messiah united the people and established a kingdom.

What I want you to see here is that almost before anything has happened, the stage has been set, the expectations have been raised, there is a sense of excitement in the air. Can you feel it? Could Jesus the Christ, the Joshua messiah, could he be the one? Could Jesus be the one to deliver them from the Romans and to protect them? Could Jesus be the one to deliver us, two thousand years later, and to protect us? Could he be the Good Shepherd we have been longing for?

In John's gospel, Jesus identifies himself as such. He says quite plainly in John 10:11, "I AM the good shepherd." He sees the people as sheep without a shepherd, and has compassion on them. As it states in Mark 6:34, "As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. . . " This compassion of Jesus as shepherd is contrasted with the fear and indifference of the hired hand later in John 10. "The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away -- and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. . . And I lay down my life for the sheep."

Wait a second. Hold on. That's not right. That's not the way it is supposed to be, that's not the way the script is supposed to go. According to Jack Miles, what Jesus is supposed to say, what we expect him to say, is "A hired hand, when he sees a wolf coming, abandons the sheep and runs away. I am the good shepherd. When I see a wolf coming to attack my sheep, I kill the wolf." That sounds better, doesn't it? What is going on here? Didn't we read in the 23rd psalm that the Lord prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies, which is to say, that God's power keeps the enemy at bay? If the shepherd lays down his life, doesn't that leave us defenseless?

Before answering that question, I must backtrack to tell another story, or rather, another dimension to this story of sheep. It is the story of the sacrificial lamb.

I suspect that we have a tendency to look at animal sacrifice as barbaric, primitive, superstitious. Perhaps we even have contempt for it. If so, I think it is because we don't really understand what it is about.

To understand sacrifice, we have to understand something about sin, something that Israel understood. The first animal sacrifice, Abel's sacrifice of lambs to God, occurs right after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, after they have been dismissed from the presence of God as a consequence of their sin. Sacrifice therefore has something to do with sin. What the Israelites understood about sin, real sin, what they understood about the deep sense of alienation from God, oneself, and one's neighbor that is a cause and symptom of sin, is that it isn't a problem to be fixed. It isn't just a matter of apologizing, it isn't just a matter of some high quality therapy, or a support group -- no, there is more to it than that, it is deeper than that, it is worse than that. It is a mystery. The Israelites knew that as humans we can't fix ourselves, we can't fully forgive ourselves. The restoration of our wholeness as individuals and as communities requires something bigger than us, something beyond us. It requires the action of God.

That is what sacrifice is about. As soon as sin enters the world, as soon as our sin distances us from God, sacrifice becomes a way of crossing that distance. The sacrifice was a physical way of mediating a spiritual encounter. It is, in other words, sacramental.

It isn't so much about the animal -- the animal is a symbol, an important symbol, a symbol of ourselves. Remember, as I mentioned before, that Israel saw themselves metaphorically as sheep, so when they sacrifice sheep, they are symbolically sacrificing themselves. The most important part of the physical sacrifice was the blood, for the blood was the quintessential symbol of life, so in sacrificing the blood of the lamb, they were offering their very lives to God.

As with any sacrament, however, the most important part is not the physical part, it isn't the water of baptism or the bread and wine of communion, or the sheep or blood of the sacrifice, rather the most important part is the God part. In the sacramental sacrifice of a lamb, in giving their lives to God, they were able to receive and celebrate the life that God gave them. That is the paradox -- it is only in giving ourselves to God that we can fully receive what God has already given us. It is only in offering ourselves that we really receive. And what they received through the sacrifice, what it re-presented, was God's forgiveness of their guilt, God's healing of their wounds, God's deliverance from their sin.

This forgiveness and new life given by God in the sacrifice is seen throughout the Old Testament. Instead of the sacrifice of Isaac, God's provision of a lamb is a means of giving new life to Isaac -- one person is delivered. Instead of the sacrifice of the first-born sons of Israel when they are in bondage, their sacrifice of lambs and the smearing of the blood on the doorways becomes a means of shielding them from death, and thus giving them new life, free from the oppression of the Egyptians. An entire nation is delivered.

Something changes with the coming of Jesus, however. In the very first chapter of John's gospel, John the Baptist confesses Jesus as the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." This is a reversal, a change, instead of a sheep sacramentally standing in for a person, now we have a person standing in for a sheep, and not just any person, but a God-person. This suggests that it isn't just the physical blood of a lamb that is being offered, nor even our metaphorical selves, rather the very life of God will be the sacrifice.

What does all this mean -- a God-person that is a lamb, a shepherd that is a sheep, what does it mean, what does it tell us?

From a Christian perspective, I think what this means is that Jesus witnesses to a deeper understanding of sin. He witnesses to a different, more profound understanding of God's power, or perhaps even better, God's powerlessness. You see, in some way what has happened between the Old Testament and the New is that the power equation has changed. The New Testament writers don't see the balance of power between God and the forces of sin and death the same as in the Old Testament. The forces of sin and death have grown stronger. While the 23rd psalm suggests that the shepherd is strong enough to keep the wolves at bay, that is not what is suggested by Jesus as a shepherd who dies. The answer to the question, "Doesn't the death of the shepherd leave us defenseless before the wolves?" is, from a Christian perspective, to a large extent, Yes. On some level, in some way, God cannot protect us, or at least God does not protect us. Contrary to their hopes, the Jews were left defenseless before the might of the Roman Empire. Within a century of Christ's death, they would suffer two genocides at the hands of the Romans. Historians think that a greater proportion of the Jewish population died in those genocides than in the Nazi Holocaust of the 20th century. God doesn't protect us from the flood. God doesn't protect us from the valley. The valley is darker than we thought, even the rod and staff of God do not protect us. The sacrifice of a lamb just doesn't cut it anymore. Even the sacrifice of ourselves isn't enough to receive God's forgiveness and new life. The gap of our sin separating us from God has become too great to cross.

And there is a sadness there. I think about that sometimes. Sometimes, when I sit alone in the dark. I think about the sadness of God, the powerlessness of God, the death of God, and it makes me cry. I don't even really understand why, I don't really understand at all. I don't really understand why the powers of sin and death are so strong, I don't understand why God seems so weak, why God does not protect us, I don't understand this mystery of God's powerlessness.

But if the metaphor of Jesus as a shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep and the metaphor of Jesus as a sacrificial lamb tell us something about the power of sin, they also tell us something about God. What they suggest is that if God cannot protect us from death, then God will die with us. If God cannot heal our guilt/brokenness, then God will share it. If our sacrifice, if our blood, if the sacramental blood of our lambs isn't enough, then God will become the lamb, God will sacrifice God's very self.

And as God dies with us, as God shares our brokenness, as God sacrifices Gods very self, as God becomes the Lamb of God, even Jesus Christ and says to us "take, eat, this is my body broken for you, this is my blood, this is my life, shed for you" -- in all of this, we experience a new and different mystery of God, a mystery that is deeper than the mystery of God's powerlessness. It is the mystery of God's power. It is the mystery of this agape power, this power of sacrificial love that makes the impossible possible, that makes the dead alive again, that makes the shattered whole. It writes new chapters to stories that were already over. In the death of Christ with us and for us, we receive new life. In God's sharing of our wounds, we are healed. In God's acceptance of our guilt, we are forgiven. In the washing in the blood of the Lamb, we become clean and white.

And as much as I don't understand the powerlessness of God, neither do I understand God's power either. But like those gathered in our Revelation text from today, I am in awe before it. Of course, you don't have to understand it to experience it. And once you've experienced it . . . well, you won't be the same after that. Alleluia!

Glory be to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! Amen.