This is Good Shepherd Sunday. It is a time when we think about who is central to our faith. We are called to model our faith and its expression upon the examples of Jesus. Jesus reached out to the poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised. Jesus love the outcast, the center, the strange ones. He reached out to the people of his time were considered the lowest of the low- tax collectors and prostitutes. Jesus not only acknowledge them but embraced them, loved them, cared for them and demonstrated God's abiding presence with them. Even though the society of the day judged these people another outcast such as the lepers, Jesus demonstrated His Abiding abiding presence with them in love and care.
It is a challenge for our own time. Living in the time of fear and a desire to scapegoat to in order to make ourselves feel powerful by putting down people of different races and colors. It is a sad time in the history of the world.
We must guard ourselves against the temptations to "other" other people. It is not the Jesus way. We are called to love, to reconcile, to heal and embrace people who are different than us. It is a challenge because it goes against our herd instinct. Jesus calls us to be thoughtful, mindful and ready to serve. His call to be servants in this world. Through our serving we will find God's love abiding within us. We reach out to new issues every day i as the Holy Spirit guides us. I pray that may we carry on in faithfulness, tackling the emergent issues of our day guided by the love of God, the strength the Holy Spirit in the example of Jesus. We are servants as God called called us to serve.
