Back in the olden days, when I was an idealistic college student, I was very drawn to reading about the utopian religious communities in 19th century America-the Shakers and Amish, the Amana community, the more worldly Brook Farm experiment with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Uptopias were appealing to someone living through the Vietnam War, and I put them in the same mental file as the early church we read about in Acts today-spiritually based and benevolent versions of Karl Marx's dream of a proletariat, working together for the common good. Few uptopias survive in reality.

Which leads us to question today's lectionary pairing. My sermon title shows I expect we can make something of the pairing-maybe the Good Shepherd and the Good Community. It's Eastertide, so we're exploring the implications of the resurrection and, I am here to tell you, the implication of the resurrection for individuals is merely a side note to the community aspects of it. It isn't "my" church or "my" resurrection, it is "our" church, "our" resurrection, "our" faith. Which brings us to the shepherd stuff. God is often portrayed in the Old Testament as the shepherd to the "flock" Israel. God doesn't take over shepherding Israel as a micro-manager driven crazy by others' mismanagement. God is shepherd of Israel purely out of love, and God first shows shepherd's care in Israel's constitution, given in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. God's constitution sets up a social order designed to eliminate individual poverty, because the religious good is the common good, which meant good for everyone. If this were in effect anywhere today, it wouldn't be a welfare state, but a world in which there was enough for everyone. It would be a world where that Sesame Street thing would be true-"And that's what we call 'cooperation.'" It would be a utopia so high-minded that it would take an act of God to make it work. Which is what Luke says happened in the early church.

The Pentecost community Luke writes about is a church that embodies the gospel. They are a community committed to their faith, which means they are committed to each other. To make the community work, they study together (early Presbyterians?) learning what the abstract "resurrection" meant lived out in their daily lives. They do something they call "fellowship," and they pray together.

Fellowship to that first church might have been cookies and juice after worship, but more practically, their fellowship was economic, and it resulted in what they called "signs and wonders" and the character trait "generous hearts." Luke uses Biblish to describe fellowship as breaking bread "with glad and generous hearts." At Springwater we call it "food, fun, and fellowship" but it's the same thing. In both Acts and Spring-water, fellowship is people eating together, being family, enjoying each other's company because we have a faith in common. The results are both practical and spiritual.

So besides those two Presbyterian things-food and study-there was another way that Pentecost community lived out the implication of the resurrection in their lives. What was it? Oh yeah, they prayed together. Oh man, she's not on that again, is she? Yep, the church in Acts prayed together. Most of them at the beginning were Jews, and they kept the tradition of worship together in the temple. But we read they got together to pray with each other in between times. They knew they needed each other to be Christian.
This reminds me of one of the values handed down in this community from our founders. This value isn't inscribed on a plaque or written in any of our church histories, but I see it acted out. People here act as if the good of the "whole" is more important than being "right." This value is found in both of today's scripture passages, and it has a couple of implications for how we live.

One implication is what I can only call its "flock-ness." You know that, in English, there is no difference between the singular and plural of the word for "sheep." As my favorite shepherd, Lynn Deshler, points out, a "good shepherd" tends a flock of sheep, but knows the individual sheep. To do this, the shepherd spends a lot of time with the animals and gets to know them individually as uniquely individuals. Nevertheless, to each other, sheep are flock animals and they don't do well separated from the flock. They need each other for safety reasons-a lone sheep is a vulnerable sheep-but they also need each other for exercising trust for the shepherd. As Americans, we prefer our individuality to our "flock-ness." We would rather be "me" than part of a flock. But the Bible clearly points to the need for God's people to be part of a community. Or, if you prefer, part of a flock. A flock of sheep, because they trust the shepherd, will do things she asks them to do-for their good-which they might not be inclined to otherwise do. Lynn tells me that sheep, left to their own devices in the spring, will gorge themselves on the tasty new green grass-to the point of sickness. The shepherd will oversee the new grass feeding and balance the flock's food sources. Because the flock trusts the shepherd, they will allow themselves to be moved to less attractive places. Trust. And "the good of the whole."

Which leads me to another implication of this Springwater core value, besides "flock-ness." In the matter of "the good of the whole over being right," we trust God to bring the community to "right." Just as the shepherd oversees the diet of the sheep. This is, after all, "Good Shepherd" Sunday, not "how to be a sheep" Sunday. The long and the short of it is, this is about our shepherd, our Creator and Savior, the One who sustains us. In terms of the "how to" for us, we need to learn to pay attention to the shepherd. And it works best, if we learn it from each other-if we do it as a flock.

This is something to which the Pentecost church in Acts was committed. It is as important today as it was 2,000 years ago. Our relationship with the shepherd is what keeps any community of faith from being warm-hearted busybodies, and we sum it up in a word: prayer. More specifically, prayer together. For that New Testament church, the community is united around prayer and committed to doing it together. Their community works as a church-is Spirit-generated-because they are involved in listening for God together as community. For the sake of this church, we need to be asking God who we are, what we should do, whom we should do it with. This is why the Long Range Site Plan was so long in developing, why it is taking so long to discern its implications. We are listening to the shepherd. Session-and all of us-need to continue to ask these very questions of God-who, what, when, where, how. Then we need to listen together for God's answers. It's part of our "flock-ness." There are different formats for "praying together," and we must continue with our private praying, but there must be a core group that prays for this church-a group that is committed to it and intentional about it. Otherwise we are only a service club, a social service agency, a financial institution. Or worse, we are a dying institution.

It is not necessarily comfortable or convenient or easy to pray together. But the good news is, all 60-some of us are not expected to come together and pray out loud in front of each other. That would probably scare most of us to death. On the other hand, God hasn't called Christians to a life of ease. God has called us to lives of intention and commitment and compassion. We are called to be intentional about and committed to the community in which we serve and grow. For us, that's Springwater. But in both the long and short run, this call is not to celebrate our flock-ness. This Sunday is about our shepherd. For the sake of the church, let's listen for this shepherd's call together. Christ is risen!