A mother rushed into the bedroom and shouted to her husband, quick, call the emergency room, little Johnny just swallowed a quarter. The husband sighed and said, just call the pastor. He can get the money out of anybody. As most of you know, baseball is upon us. Could I please see maybe a show of hands how many of you are Chicago Cub fans? Raise your hand. How many of you are Chicago White Sox fans? Raise your hand. Do we have any Yankee or St. Louis Cardinal fans? You are free to leave. No. I’m joking. Okay.

Let me share with you one baseball term. A sacrifice bunt. It means the batter gives himself up so the runner can advance to second base into scoring position. It recently occurred to me we rarely hear the word sacrifice in our society today. Our society speaks so much about taking. What’s in it for me? That to sacrifice to give one’s self up, to lay down one’s life for someone seems foolish or a sign of weakness to many people. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, sacrificed all that we may have life. He gave His life for us. We hear in Psalm 23 from The Old Testament, the Lord is my Shepherd, there’s nothing I shall want. This Old Testament image of God as the Good Shepherd is carried over into the New Testament. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, I am the Good Shepherd who is willing to die for his sheep. Jesus is the one who can be depended on and trusted.

We are invited to trust and depend upon the Lord as our Shepherd, but this trust on our part is not totally passive. Many years ago, a fire consumed a building in New York City. A blind girl was trapped on the fourth floor, perched on the window ledge. Firefighters could not maneuver their ladder between the buildings to get to her. So, they kept saying by putting up a net, please jump, we’ll catch you. But because she was blind, she was too terrified to jump despite the firefighters begging and coaxing. After many anxious moments, her father arrived on the scene. He shouted to her that there was a net, that she should jump on his command. The girl jumped and was so completely relaxed that she did not break a bone or strain a muscle in the four story fall. All because she trusted her father when she heard his voice.

In our life, whose voices do we listen to and follow. We are invited to trust the Lord, the Good Shepherd, to follow, to sacrifice, to listen to His voice, and the Lord will never ever drop us