Last week was servant Sunday. Our guest preacher, Simon Bar-Jona of Capernaum, Galilee, told us how Jesus three times asked him if he loved him, and three times instructed him to feed his sheep. Simon Peter (or Rocky, as he prefers to be called) told us how this event made him realize that Jesus wanted him to be a servant, and wants all of us to be servants.

Once more in today’s liturgy, the gospel is all about sheep, and about the claim of Jesus that he was the Good Shepherd.

What did Jesus mean by that? Well, first you have to understand that Jesus was not talking to his followers. He was addressing the leaders of the Jewish nation, especially the Pharisees. And he was not just telling them that he was a nice guy who liked animals.

For thousands of years, the Jewish people had used the Good Shepherd image for God. It goes all the way back to Genesis 49:24, which says that Joseph was saved "By the power of the mighty one of Jacob, by the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel, the God of your father ..." Such imagery was used by Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekial, Amos, Zeccariah, and of course by David in his Psalms. Todays psalm, psalm 100 says, "We are his people, the sheep of his flock." Psalm 80 begins "Shepherd of Israel, listen, guide of the flock of Joseph, ... reveal yourself" And who can forget psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."

So the Pharisees knew exactly what Jesus meant — he was claiming to be God. Twice in this chapter of John, the Jews picked up stones to kill Jesus for blasphemy because he claimed identity with Yahweh.

The Pharisees also knew Jesus was contrasting himself to them — the hired hands entrusted to care for God’s people, but caring only for themselves. (The Pharisees came in for a lot of abuse at the lips of Jesus. It wasn’t that they were particularly bad people. By most standards they were very good people. But they had gotten legalistic, and had lost sight of the spirit of Judaism. I’ve been told that can even happen to Christian churches.)

But today, I’m not going to preach about the contrast between the shepherds (like Bishop Bernardo, who’s concelebrating with me today and who supports his church out of his own pocket) and the hirelings who are only in it for the money and the house and the car and the retirement benefits and the medical coverage. I’ve heaped enough abuse on the televangelists and the Roman Catholic hierarchy in my other sermons.

Instead, I’m going to concentrate on another aspect of Jesus’ claim to be the Good Shepherd. He said, "I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd."

Contrary to what you may have heard, this does not mean that there is to be one institutional structure over all Christianity, ruled by one supreme bishop. It does not even mean that one day all God’s people on earth will recognize Christ as their Good Shepherd. But it does mean that one day in heaven there will be a huge crowd from every nation and race, people and tongue worshiping before God’s throne. And all will have been washed clean in the blood of the lamb. Some of them, I am convinced, will never have even heard of Jesus of Nazareth. Yet they will be there, loving God, somehow having been saved by the God who loved them first.

Every one of today’s readings is about inclusivity. The psalm says, "Sing joyfully to the Lord, all you lands." The reading from Revelation talks about the heavenly crowd from every nation and race, people and tongue. In the gospel, Jesus tells us he has other sheep not of this fold. And in the book of Acts, when Paul and Barnabas are rejected by the Jewish leaders of Antioch, they turned to the Gentiles, proclaiming, "For thus were we instructed by the Lord, ‘I have made you a light to the nations, a means of salvation to the ends of the earth.’"

That’s what Father Bernardo in St. Cloud and Father Chuck Leigh in Tampa and Bishop Orlando Lima in Miami and others of us right here in Florida are trying to do. We’re gathering the lost sheep. To the rejected, we offer acceptance; to the outcast, inclusion; to the afflicted, comfort; to the sinner, forgiveness; to the despondent, hope; to the troubled, peace.

We are attempting to do what Paul did in Antioch, and what Jesus did in Galilee. But we haven’t been crucified. We haven’t been expelled from the territory. We haven’t been threatened with stoning. And that means we haven’t been doing a good enough job of following their example. We haven’t even been arrested. Well, I haven’t. The closest I came was when some of us celebrated the Eucharist with Bishop Leroy Matthieson on the main road into the Pantex nuclear weapons plant near Amarillo. But some of us have been arrested. Father Chuck Leigh in Tampa served five years in federal prison for helping Salvadoran refugees stay in this country illegally in the 1980s. He is now ministering to prostitutes on Tampa’s infamous Nebraska Avenue.

Jesuit Father Dan Berrigan and his saintly brother, Father Phil Berrigan, have been arrested numerous times for witnessing against nuclear weapons. Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois has spent years in prison. These valiant Christians are dear friends of ours ... and jailbirds all.

Brother Leonard Doyon, a founder of our church, was arrested many times for trying to shut down the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia. Just a few days ago, I learned that Len lost his battle with ALS, Lou Gherig’s Disease, and passed away. Today’s Mass is dedicated to him. Len was a leader in Veterans For Peace and in Pax Christi. He was a courageous worker on behalf of the downtrodden, and often worshipped with us in this very room. We will miss him greatly.

Have any of the rest of you ever been arrested or persecuted for doing God’s work? Maybe for praying outside an abortion clinic? Protesting nuclear weapons? Holding a vigil against the death penalty? If not, why not? By the way, the reason Bill and Nan are not here today is because they are at this moment holding a vigil against the death penalty. But what about the rest of us?

Are we Christians? Then, for Christ’s sake, let us do something! It doesn’t have to be something that will get us crucified. It doesn’t even have to be something that would get us arrested. But at least we could bring upon ourselves some scorn and derision for the sake of our faith and our God. Couldn’t we?

So today’s readings are about inclusion, about bringing all nations together in the worship of God.

Ironically, at this time, our government is once again reneging on our debt to the United Nations. Congress has attached a poison pill amendment ending funding of any organization which performs abortions. Now, I’m against abortion. But I’m also for paying our debt to the U.N. While we’re at it, we might as well add an amendment saying we won’t pay our UN dues until they kick out all countries violating human rights (like China, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Turkey, Israel, the United States). Or kick out the countries which allow their workers to be exploited by big corporations (like Indonesia, Mexico, and the United States). Or kick out the countries which have failed to ratify the treaty on the rights of children (there are only two of those — Somalia and the United States). Or kick out the countries which still maintain the archaic, brutal, counterproductive, immoral practice of exacting the death penalty (and we know who the only one in the industrialized world is).