In our reading today, taken from the Gospel of John, Jesus refers to himself as the ‘Good Shepherd.’

The way of life of tending sheep has changed since Jesus day.  Some shepherds today, instead of a staff may be more comfortable riding a horse. 

But whether the shepherd is from the first century or the 21^st century, Jesus understood about the way of life and what it was to be a good shepherd. 

Sheep, sadly, aren’t the brightest animals in the world.  They need someone to look after them, to protect them, to care for them.  Sheep need someone to lead them to the right place to find grass to eat and water to drink.  A good shepherd will carry the sheep when necessary, and will be the healing hand when needed. 

It is the shepherd who protects the sheep, especially at night, from their enemy - the wolf - who would come to kill and destroy them. 

One of the concepts of 'shepherd' from scripture that is often overlooked is that from the book Song of Songs. 

It’s a wonderful book about two people in love and uses what in its day would have been very erotic language to describe their love for each other.  It uses poetic language as the conversation between two lovers as they describe each other’s bodies and their love for each other using the symbolism of things in nature: plants, fruits, spices and animals. 

In one passage it uses the symbolism of the shepherd and how the shepherd takes care of the flock of sheep. 

Tell me, you whom my soul loves,

   where you pasture your flock,

   where you make it lie down at noon;

for why should I be like one who is veiled

   beside the flocks of your companions? 

If you do not know,

   O fairest one,

follow the tracks of the flock,

   and pasture your kids

   beside the shepherd’s tents. 

My beloved is mine and I am my beloved’s;

   who pastures his flock among the lilies. 

Well, all of this talk about shepherds and lovers, got me thinking about a modern tale of the two:  Brokeback Mountain. 

For those of you who haven’t read the story or seen the movie, it begins in 1963 with two cowboys in their early 20s who meet when they take on summer jobs herding sheep in the mountains of Wyoming.  Their names are Jack Twist and Ennis Del Marr.

They are alone up on Brokeback Mountain looking after a large herd of sheep.  But the sheep aren’t the only thing each of them is keeping an eye on! 

There on the mountain, all alone with no one to interfere, they fall in love and their desire, both physically and emotionally, grows for each other. 

The needs and desires and passions that have been suppressed deep inside them finally come out in the safety of the isolation of Brokeback Mountain.  It’s a struggle, especially for Ennis, as he struggles to accept who he is, to accept the feelings from deep inside him, to open up and allow himself to be loved. 

But as he does the feeling of joy and contentment that he experiences allow him for the first time in his life to open up and be carefree and experience the love for which he has longed all his life; love that he has suppressed for so many years because of the fear of the glare of the world around him. 

Ennis’ experience is the experience I’ve seen in the life of many people who have walked through the doors of MCC for the first time.  The joy and contentment that each of us has experienced when we were able to come before God in the fullness of who we are, leaving behind the guilt and condemnation of others who say we’re not good enough to be loved by God. 

We come and experience the joy of knowing God fully, no longer hiding who we are, carefree in loving God and being loved by God.  We enjoy that experience of the first-time falling in love with God being totally ourselves, and experiencing the fellowship of others who, too, are experience the love relationship with God. 

The unfortunate part, however, is that many never get past that first stage of our love relationship with God.  We never go on to making a full commitment to God. 

Ennis has a similar struggle.  He has to decide whether to make a commitment to Jack. 

Jack sees the possibilities of their love and how they can be happy together.  He wants Ennis to settle down with him on a small ranch, just the two of them.  He wants to love Ennis, give his love and life to him, and spend a lifetime inspiring him to be all that he sees he can be. 

But it’s 1963 and Ennis knows that two men can’t fall in love.  He fears what others will think, say or do.  Besides he’s engaged to Alma.  He must marry her, have children, raise a family, and live the life that is expected of him.  It’s too much of a risk to go with his heart, with what he senses is right, and make a lifelong commitment of his love for Jack. 

The summer comes to an early end.  There are storms coming towards Brokeback Mountain and so the boss sends word for them to come down off the mountain.  Ennis isn’t prepared for it to end.  He likes his new found happiness in his love for Jack, he enjoys the carefree time they’ve had together on the mountain.  He wants it to continue. 

But he can’t bring himself to make the commitment.  His inner struggle becomes an outer struggle.

God wants to love us and give us an abundant life just like Jack desires for Ennis.  But just like Ennis we struggle against making the full commitment to God.  We enjoy finding out that God loves us as we are.  We like the warm feeling of fellowship we find at church especially at MCC but are we willing to take a chance on further commitment? 

We fear what further commitment to God might mean.  Might it mean more time commitment to my church and less free time for myself?  Might it mean more commitment to reading and studying the Bible?  Might it mean more time spent alone with God in prayer? 

A greater commitment to God may mean giving up things we hold dear--things we think we just can’t live without.  Because God loves us and knows what’s best for us, God often leads us to leave behind those things which are holding us back:

• a job that gives us all the money and material goods we desire but in reality is stressing us and choking life from us,
• a life of partying that takes us from one drink to another, one drug to another, one shag to another, but never gives us true fulfilment,
• a relationship that might look good to others but in reality is unhealthy and slowly draining life from us.

God calls us to a life of commitment to God, not because God is some spoil-sport wanting to keep us from fun, but because God created us and knows what is good and healthy for us and leads us to a life of true joy and peace — a life of meaning and purpose — a life of being loved by Jesus Christ. 

But we so often fight against God, just like Ennis fought against Jack.  And we usually end up getting bruised and bloodied in the struggle. 

I’ve read that in the Highlands of Scotland, a sheep will often wander off into the rocks and get into places where they can't get out. The grass on these mountains is very sweet and the sheep like it.  They will jump down ten or twelve feet, but then they can't jump back again, and the shepherd hears them bleating in distress. They may be there for days, until they have eaten all the grass. The shepherd will wait until they are so faint that they cannot stand, and then they will put a rope around themselves, and go over and pull that sheep up out of the jaws of death. One may ask why the shepherd doesn’t go down there when the sheep first goes down.  The shepherd knows that the sheep is so foolish that they would run from the shepherd and dash right over the precipice and be killed if the shepherd went after them. 

Sadly, that is often the way with us: we won't go back to God until we have lost everything and have nothing left—until we have grown faint from all our own ways of trying to find happiness in life.  In 12 step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous it’s called ‘hitting bottom.’  Reaching that place where you have nothing and no one but God. 

Sometimes we struggle and fight so, against a commitment to God that God has to let us reach the end of our own abilities as we run from the shepherd, in order that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, can bring us back to safety. 

But God never gives up on us.  God keeps following us, watching out for us, trying to encourage us to make that commitment. 

Just like Jack in our movie.  A couple of years later he looks up Ennis and they reconnect.  But Ennis still refuses to make a commitment.  And so he and Jack begin an affair that goes on for 20 years.  All they have is a few days together once or twice a year to rekindle their love, but never a fulfilling life of love.  Jack becomes Ennis’ mistress but there is no lasting joy because of Ennis’ fear of commitment. 

How like many of us.  Like Ennis, we steal away now and then with God, getting a taste of what life could be.  We come to church and enjoy a date with God now and then, but we never make Jesus our full time lover.  Or maybe we come every week because we like the warm feelings we get from the fellowship, but we never truly make a commitment to God with our lives.  Even when our hearts tell us it’s the thing to do, that a life lived in the fullness of the will of God for our lives will bring us true joy, peace and fulfilment, we still run from the commitment. 

For Ennis, the opportunity to throw himself fully into the arms of Jack comes to an end when he abruptly hears of Jack’s untimely death.  Jack has been the victim of a hate crime, brutally beaten to death because of who he is—a man who loves men.  He is put to death simply because he is a person who just wants to love freely and openly. 

Funny isn’t it.  That’s why they killed Jesus.  He went against the status quo and said you should love openly, love freely, love passionately, love intimately.  His love equalled his shed blood. 

Ennis searches for Jack’s parents and goes to meet them.  It’s a ranch in the mountains where Jack had invited Ennis to go and live with him, to share a life of love with him. 

While there, he goes up to Jack’s childhood bedroom and there he makes a discovery of the deep love that Jack had for him. 

It’s Jack’s blue bloodstained shirt that envelopes Ennis’s white one.  A symbol of the enduring love that Jack had for him, a love that carried the promise of a full abundant life.  A love that became all the more clear in his death.  Just like Jesus love for us became clear through his death. 

Ennis finally begins to understand.  Through Jack’s death and the bloodstains on the shirts he begins to see that only through living without fear of what others might say or do could he find true freedom.  Only by living a life of commitment could he experience true love. 

It is only when we look closely at the bloodstains of Jesus upon the cross of Calvary that we truly understand God’s love for us.  It’s only when we free ourselves to a commitment to Christ’s love for us that we are able to experience true love and freedom for ourselves. 

When Ennis’ daughter, Alma Jr, comes to tell him that she’s getting married and wants him to be there, we see the struggle Ennis faces.  He fears that by now many in the community have heard the rumours about him and know he’s different.  Once again he’s faced with the struggle of stepping out into the freedom of love, love for his daughter and her love for her fiancé, or of recoiling into the security of not going and remaining in the safety of isolation. 

Ennis finally gets it.  He’s no longer willing to let everyone else determine for him what he should do or be.  He’s ready to stop living in fear.  He realises the chance that his daughter has to live a life of love and commitment to her fiancé, a chance he never took, and he’s no longer afraid, he’s willing to make a commitment to her and her happiness. 

Sadly, it’s too late for him and Jack, but it’s not too late for you and your commitment to a relationship with Jesus Christ. 

So what will you do with the love that Jesus has for you?  Will you ignore it and walk away?  Will you just settle for a few days now and then of revelling in his love for you?  Or are you ready to make a lifelong commitment to God?  Will you settle for an on-again-off-again relationship with Christ?  Or will you grab hold of the abundant life that God promises is yours? 

To put it another way:  Will you stop treating God like a mistress and take her as your wife?  And allow her to love you, care for you, protect you, provide for you, and be your partner all the days of your life. 

Jesus said, ‘I am the gate.  Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.  The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.  I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.  I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’ 

Did you notice the shirts in the last scene?  Before, it was Jack’s blue shirt enveloping Ennis’ white one.  But now Ennis has taken his white one and wrapped it around Jack’s blue one. 

Jesus has shown his desire for you be shedding his blood for you and enveloping you with his love.  Now will you in return envelope Jesus Christ with your love?  Will you take him into your life, making a commitment to a life lived together?