Being Sheep: Caleb Adcox
The following homily was shared at our Sunday Evening Eucharist Service July 21, 2024.
Readings:
I have always found it interesting how dependent on people sheep are. They need to be fed, led, guarded, and shorn just to survive. I guess a small part of me is weirdly disappointed in sheep that they aren’t more impressive, especially compared to some of the animals that shepherds have to protect them from. By most metrics, they are kind of pathetic. And yet, God seems to love comparing us to sheep.
All throughout scripture, you will find examples of God acting as our shepherd- feeding, leading, and guiding us. And it is only by being led, by letting ourselves decrease that He might increase, that we can earnestly call ourselves Christians. Even pastors, who are also described in scripture as shepherds, must first be as a sheep led by God before they can even attempt to lead others. This leadership by being led seems backwards to our modern, individualistic values. But it is the foundation of the Church as laid out in Scripture, and it is exactly because of these apparent downsides that it is a fruitful and valuable structure.
The fact remains, no matter your role or position within a congregation, you are in need of guidance. God is gracious enough to offer to us the gift of the Holy Spirit, which grants this guidance to all who have received Him, but this guidance also comes by way of those ministers put in place by God to shepherd His flock. The idea in modern Christianity that I can have “my own faith” and “figure it out myself” is an outright lie. We need to be led, we need to be taught, and we need to be made into disciples. The Great Commission doesn’t say to go tell people about Jesus, and then leave and let them figure it out. To make disciples is to form relationships. To become a disciple is to allow yourself to be led, first by God, but also by the people sent to you by God for the express purpose of leading you. It takes a staggering amount of arrogance to become a Christian and immediately say to the people who led you to Christ “Actually, I think I can do this better than you’ve been doing it”.
On the other hand, those of us who are tasked with leading and shepherding and making disciples must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture”. The task of making disciples is a beautiful and joyful thing, but also a great responsibility. No individualistic Christian who uses their own power to share their own account of their own gospel will lead anyone to anything but death. A sheep cannot shepherd other sheep. One must instead be made into a shepherd, by letting the one true shepherd lead them first, before they can point others to Christ.
I’ve talked a good bit about pastors, but this is not a warning specifically for Ryan or just the handful of us called to vocational ministry. If you are a Christian, you have been charged to make disciples of all nations, and you cannot do that without leading someone. In a few minutes, before we receive communion, Ryan is going to ask God to bless the gifts, making them the body and blood of Christ, “so that we might be for the world the body of Christ”. Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John that “unless anyone eats my flesh and drinks my blood, there is no life in him”. So come receive Christ, both in communion and as the shepherd who guides you, that others may witness and receive the life that is given to you.
Caleb is a joy to be around. Filled with the Holy Spirit, he is always ready with a dad joke, a smile, or a word of consolation. He will be a senior at LA Tech this upcoming school year studying Business, as well as a third year member of our Wesley Discipleship Team. We are so blessed to have him!