As a crowded airliner was about to take off the peace was shattered by a five year-old boy who picked that moment to throw a wild temper tantrum.  Whatever his frustrated, embarrassed mother did to try to calm him down, the lad continued to scream furiously and kick the seat in front of him.  Suddenly, from the rear of the plane and elderly man in a Marine uniform slowly walked forward up the aisle.  He raised one hand to silence the flustered mother, and then in a kindly, grandfatherly way he leant down and whispered something to the child in a soft-spoken tone.  As he was talking he pointed to his chest.  Instantly the boy calmed down, gently took his mother’s hand and sat motionless while she fastened his seatbelt.  As the Marine made his way back to his seat all the other passengers burst into a spontaneous round of applause, and one of the flight attendants admiringly beamed at the man and asked, “excuse me, sir, what were the magic words you used on that little boy?”

The Marine smiled serenely and gently replied, “I showed him my pilot’s wings, service stars and battle ribbons, and explained that they entitle me to throw one passenger out of the plane door on any flight I choose.”

That joke is relevant (but only slightly!), and you’ll have to keep listening and thinking to make the connection with what I’m going to talk about this morning.

But first I want to remind you about the gospel reading we had last week.  It was after the Resurrection of Jesus, and the Risen Lord meets some of the disciples on the beach.  During that meeting he makes a fire and cooks breakfast for them, and he has a fascinating and vital conversation with Peter.  You’ll remember that Jesus asks Peter three times if Peter loves him.  And three times Peter says ‘yes’.  Then three times Jesus instructs Peter to ‘feed’ his ‘sheep’.  And you remember that the reason this was so important was that before he could go on to become the person God wanted him to be Peter needed to face his past and deal with it.  That ‘saying things three times’ exchange.  You see, it was reminiscent of another occasion when Peter said something three times around a fire.  The night he disowned Jesus, when he denied knowing him three times.  So on the beach, after the Resurrection over a fish breakfast, Jesus gave Peter the chance to turn around completely on his three-time denial by saying that he loved him three times.  And then Jesus gave him a wonderful commission to work as a pastor in Christ’s Church – again three times.

So with that amazing act of forgiveness and restoration in our minds, we read this morning’s gospel lesson with a longing for more gracious words of Christ.  We’re keen for more of those compassionate and transforming sentiments from the lips of the Savior.  And we’re not disappointed.   Today’s event actually happened before the death and Resurrection of Jesus.  He is walking in the temple courts and is approached by some Jews who are clearly perplexed and intrigued by him.  And they ask if he is the Messiah.  They say, “How long will you keep us in suspense?  If you are the Christ tell us plainly.”  Now Jesus doesn’t give them a direct ‘yes or no’ answer, but nonetheless makes the point that he is.  He says that the miracles he does in his Father’s name are all the evidence they need to decide for themselves.  And then he goes on to make a glorious statement about his followers.  He says, “My sheep hear my voice.  I know them and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.  No one will snatch them out of my hand.  What the Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.”  That phrase is obviously very important for Jesus and he really wanted the 11 to understand it, so he repeats it: “No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

What a wonderful, wonderful promise from Christ to us.  If you are one of his sheep, in other words one of his followers, a member of his flock, his people, then nothing can steal you away.  It cannot happen.  Nothing in the universe is more powerful than the love of God, and nothing – not temptations, not suffering, not evil, not the devil himself will ever be able to prize you away from the grip of his love.  Christ has got you and he’s not going to let you go.  You see, there is nothing you could have ever done to earn God’s love and salvation.  You could not work hard at being really good and holy so as to impress God sufficiently to accept you.  No.  All the pious, holy, loving acts you could muster could not persuade God to love you and take you home.  You didn’t have to do anything.  He did it anyway.  There’s nothing you could have done to make him love you, and there’s nothing you could do to make him stop loving you.  There is nothing you could have done to make him accept you and there’s nothing you could ever do to make him reject you.  You can’t be extra perfect so that he’ll love you more than now.  He loves you fully and completely today.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep and will never let anything snatch you away.  In Australia they have a lot of sheep.  I mean a huge number of sheep.  72 million of the bleaters.  That’s a lot of wool.  There are only 25 million humans in the country.  So that’s nearly 3 sheep per person.  (Incidentally, that’s not as high a ratio as New Zealand, where there are ten wooly-backs for every man, woman and child.  A land of 44 million people, 40 million of them being sheep.)   Now like every industry today, Australian sheep farming is being transformed by technology.   Apparently in New South Wales ranchers attach tiny GPSs to the ears of baby lambs, and they are watched throughout their lives from a computer monitor.  During the day the sheep will move freely around from the grazing area to the drinking area to the sleeping area.  These zones are divided by fences, each of which has a gate that is only wide enough to allow one sheep at a time.  So when a sheep passes through one of the gates into a different zone the farmer at his computer screen knows exactly what sheep it is and where it is.  Bill Murray (no, not that Bill Murray, the Bill Murray who is spokesperson for the Australian Sheep Industry) says, “We can keep tabs on a single sheep from the time it is a little lamb to the time it becomes lamb chops.  The transponders allow the sheep to make their own decisions, without being hassled by people or dogs.”  And apparently stress-free, happy sheep that can make decisions for themselves make for better meat.  Something else they can do is weigh the sheep remotely, so that a farmer knows when a ewe is pregnant and when she has delivered her lamb.  I suppose this computer screen it’s a kind ‘ewe-tube’.

Now this is not the kind of shepherding that Jesus was talking about when he said he was the Good Shepherd.  It’s not for him to sit at a monitor with his feet on the desk, drinking coffee while flicking through a copy of Sheep-shearing Monthly.  No, the Good Shepherd gets his hands dirty.  He has close relationships with his sheep.  His sheep, he says, listen to his voice, and he knows them.  He goes with them into the open hillside, stands watch when they face the dangers of the terrain or predators.  He goes to great risk to protect them; in fact he ultimately dies for them.  My fellow-sheep, we don’t have computer tracking devices in our ears.  We don’t need them.  We have a Shepherd who is with us.  And his promise is that no one will snatch us out of his hands.  We live securely in the love of God.

And that fact can transform our lives if we really let it live in our hearts.  It means that we won’t be thrown off the plane for being too naughty.  Those little self-doubts we have that maybe we’re just not good enough for God, that maybe his love is just a little too small to accept us after the wrong things we’ve done.  But being safe in God’s love does not depend on what we have done for Christ.  It depends on what Christ has done for us.  How could we be so narcissistic as to think it’s all about us and our performance?

But the good news is even bigger than that.  We read this morning the 23^rd Psalm, surely the most famous Psalm of all.  We shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever, as it says at the end of the Psalm.  But that’s not all.  Because the Lord is my shepherd I shall lack no good thing today.  He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters right now.  He restores my soul this week.  I will fear no evil because the Good Shepherd is with me; he comforts me, wherever I go tomorrow.  Goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.  My cup overflows.  This is a lavish picture of a God who is extravagant.  Wasteful, even.  Cup overflowing?  Well he should stop pouring; the wine is going all over the floor.  But, no.  That picture of God’s wasteful love is deliberate.  God will keep on pouring blessings into our lives.  Sometimes it doesn’t feel like that, though, does it?  When we are sick and scared.  When we have conflict.  When there’s still too much of the week left when our money runs out.   Yet, maybe those are the moments when the Good Shepherd draws even closer to us.  Maybe it’s in those moments of fear and worry and pain that he calls us to rest awhile by that cool stream, to lie in the grass, to receive from him the comfort, the peace, the courage.

Now we have a choice.  We can resist the love of God.  Just like that lad in the story.  His mother loved him, she was trying to calm him down for his own sake, (as well as for everyone else’s), but he kicked out against her love.  And, sadly, humans being have the power to do that with God’s love.  We can wrestle and resist.  That’s an option.  D.L. Moody wrote about just this thing, and he used the example of sheep in the rugged, craggy Highlands of Scotland.  He said, "The vegetation on those mountains is so sweet that the sheep will jump down 10 or 12 feet to get it. Soon their bleating can be heard as they try unsuccessfully to return to higher ground. The shepherd does not rush to the rescue but leaves them where they are until there's no more grass to be eaten. After several days they become so faint they can't stand up. At that point the herdsman will lower himself to the dangerous ledge below and bring them to the fold.  Why doesn't he go down as soon as the sheep get into trouble? Because if he did, those animals are so stupid they would dash right over the edge of the cliff and be killed!"

Let’s not be like that, running away from our Good Shepherd, thinking that our plans for our lives will be better for us than his perfect will.  Why would we run away from the Good Shepherd when we can enjoy his protection and his lavish gifts?  So come and rest in his comforts and enjoy the lavish generosity of his love.  Don’t strive and resist but receive God’s protection and be confident in his promises.