[Propertalk] 4 Easter a

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Off to eat and read ... I hope you enjoy this weekend!

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY                   	    THE 
FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER (A)
ACTS 2:42-47							                 11th MAY, 2014
1 PETER 2:19-25						                  PSALM 23
JOHN 10:1-10

	This little story has a lot of names in it, but please hang in there. 
You’ll understand what happened.

	“When the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, Moshe & Ela Mandil fled 
with their two children, Gavra and Irena.

	“They reached Tirana in Muslim Albania, where Moshe found a photography 
store owned by his former apprentice, Neshad Prizerini.

	“Neshad invited Moshe's family to stay in his home.

	“When the Nazis invaded Albania, Neshad's 17-year old apprentice Refik 
Veseli undertook a long and dangerous journey by mule, leading the 
Mandil family to his parents' house in the mountain town of Kruja.

	“The Mandils hid during the day while their children mingled with the 
Veseli kids. Some time later, Refik's brother Xhernal brought another 
Jewish family from Tirana - Ruzhica and Yosef ben Yosef, and Yosef's 
sister Finica.

	“The two families stayed with the Veselis until the liberation in 1944. 
Toward the end of the Nazi occupation, partisan activity intensified, 
and the village was often bombed and searched by the German occupiers.

	“Fortunately, the Veselis and their guests escaped harm.

	“After the war, the Mandils returned to Yugoslavia, and Moshe reopened 
his photography shop. Refik continued his training under Moshe's 
supervison, and their families remained close.

	“In 1987, Yad Vashem recognized Vesel and Fatima Veseli and their 
children Refik, Hamid and Xhemal as Righteous Among the Nations - the 
first Albanians so recognized.

	“Gavra Mandil wrote, ‘In those days, when danger and death were all 
around, the small and brave Albanian people proved their greatness! 
Without any fuss and without asking anything in return, the Albanian 
people performed the elementary human duty and saved the lives of their 
Jewish refugees.’

	“The remarkable assistance afforded by Muslim Albanians to the 
persecuted Jews was grounded in Besa, a code of honor.

	“Besa means literally ‘to keep the promise.’ One who acts according to 
Besa is someone who keeps his word, someone to whom one can trust one’s 
life and the lives of one’s family. It is estimated that 600 to 1800 
Jews, as well as many non-Jews were saved under Besa, as a matter of 
national honor by the brave people of Albania.” 1

	What an incredible set of shepherds the Mandis encountered! Their 
story, and that of the folk who sheltered and watered them, who made 
sure they were safe, and moved them around from one pasture to another, 
who fed them, their story is filled at every step with risk, with fear, 
with frustration, with discouragement; but, thank God, it’s also filled 
to the brim with love, with respect, with compassion and with hope!

	And, again, thank God, this is not the only example of this sort of 
behaviour. We hear of it, we read about it, we may even have witnessed 
it ourselves. Or, dare I wonder, we may have been either the giver or 
the receiver of this care ourselves!

	What an incredible thing it is to be either the giver or the receiver 
of this loving assurance, that no matter what happens, we will be 
protected – even if it means someone else risking his or her own life 
for us to ensure that we’ll be given the greatest possible chance in 
life, the greatest chance of having stress and anxiety removed, the 
greatest degree of safety.

	Does it work all the time. No, tragically it doesn’t. Sometimes 
someone’s resolve weakens; sometimes some outside influence changes the 
circumstances and a link is broken; sometimes someone can’t hold up 
under the stress and a careless word slips out, imperiling everyone and 
changing lives, sometimes for ever. We’re read of or seen that also. 
It’s heart breaking. It can break up families, friendships, communities, 
deliberately or not, and lives are never the same. Even an illness – I 
say “even”, not to belittle the pain and the uncertainty that illness 
brings – but “even” an illness can be tremendously disruptive, and the 
lessons and examples of Holy Week and Easter don’t eradicate any of 
these.

	BUT, and this is a huge step for us to take in faith, BUT the events of 
Holy Week and Easter give a tremendously exciting edge to the story 
which Jesus told before He’d even reached Jerusalem.

	We have all sorts of views about sheep and shepherds, not forgetting 
sheepdogs. We “ooh” and “aah” over cute lambs; we smile at the way that 
flocks scatter all over a hillside, appearing so independent and 
self-sufficient. We tend to idealise the life of the shepherd, possibly 
thinking of someone at a sheep-dog trial, standing, leaning on a 
well-loved crook and whistling while the dog does all the work. Listen 
to William Blake, who lived into the early nineteenth century, who loved 
the bucolic life and had a thing about anything which smacked of dirt or 
regimentation.

		How sweet is the shepherd’s sweet lot!
		From the morn to the evening he strays;
		He shall follow his sheep all the day,
		And his tongue shall be fillèd with praise.

		For he hears the lambs’ innocent call,
		And he hears the ewes’ tender reply;
		He is watchful while they are in peace,
		For they know when their shepherd is nigh. 2

	Quite a pretty picture, but how idealised is it, no matter how engaged 
the shepherd is, or how well behaved the sheep. But that isn’t always 
the case. That’s SELDOM the case! What is called for from whoever 
answers the call to shepherd is extreme watchfulness and complete 
devotion, regardless of what happens. The description offered under the 
illustration in the bulletin is hardly much better.

That quote, indeed the wonderful painting, draws us to think perhaps 
more clearly, perhaps in a broader perspective that we might otherwise 
do in the twenty-first century. I really like the comment that, “Christ, 
the spiritual Good Shepherd, becomes a calming presence without being 
pictured, simply by the artist's use of sheep, staff/rod, and one who 
tends the flock.” It’s really helpful to bring out as full a picture of 
Jesus as we can in our imaginations. Therefore, finding the feminine, 
softer, perhaps more openly nurturing side of our Saviour is vital – and 
particularly appropriate as our minds may wander to the secular 
celebration of Mothers’ day. If it were not for nurture, for intuition, 
for that “eyes-in-the-back-of-her head” instinct that knows practically 
instantly when you and I are about to do something wrong and get into 
trouble; if it were not for the female side of Jesus we might forget 
half of what Jesus was trying to demonstrate and say about God’s love 
for us.

But what about such a cry of frustration and anger that we find in such 
places as Ezekiel’s prophecy? What’s the point of Jesus saying that He’s 
the “Good Shepherd” if He and His listeners were not fully aware of all 
the bad shepherds? What about shepherds, about those who take on the job 
of looking out for our well-being, ensuring our safety, making certain 
we have a shelter from storms and food to keep us relatively healthy and 
well-covered? What about those for whom justice is nothing but a word to 
be applied at the end of the process of self-aggrandisement? What about 
those for whom corruption seems to have become second nature?

We ALL know about these shepherds. These are the ones when the weather 
starts to worsen, or there’s a report of a cougar prowling around, here 
or in Beaverton, as happened last week; these are the ones who grab 
their papers and bank books and head for the safety of their off-shore 
or Swiss bank accounts. Not for them the risk of dealing with trouble, 
or inconvenience.

We ALL know that like in the care of sheep means putting others ahead of 
ourselves, even, at times, ahead of family members. Stick around after 
the sheep-dog trails all Wolfston Farms in Scio next weekend, and watch 
what work has to be done when the crowds have gone, and there isn’t an 
audience.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is, very definitely, a Holy Week, A Good 
Friday Shepherd, fully prepared to face up to whatever insensitivity, 
whatever vitriol, whatever danger anyone may serve up.
	
	THIS is why we can say:
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil; *
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

	NOT because someone really cute, someone who has an engaging smile, 
someone who dresses well is there. In all likelihood, the Good Shepherd, 
the REALLY Good Shepherd, smells as though she or he hasn’t had the time 
to shower in a week or two, and whose tongue has at least a touch of 
sharpness when it’s needed. What Jesus is pointing out about Himself is 
that because He is willing to go to, literally, any lengths on our 
behalf, THAT’S why the edge of the worry about another round of tests at 
the hospital, or a letter from one’s accountant about something that was 
missed in the middle of last month and – cough, cough – can you find 
another five thousand dollars? The appearance of the Good Shepherd isn’t 
what’s critical. It’s the unswerving commitment to the well-being and 
safety of the sheep that is the only thing that matters.

	This Shepherd risked going into the lion’s den in order ensure our 
freedom, in order to tell us that we can set aside our anxiety over any 
future rough patches on the remainder of our pilgrimage through life. 
This is why it’s so important to see and think of the Shepherd through 
the lens of the cross and the empty tomb.

	Still, as Suzanne Guthrie pointed out, “Everyone will be lost at one 
time or another. Or many times. Some of us chronically wander into 
narrow canyons where paths stop so abruptly (we) can’t even turn around 
and go back out. Only a shepherd’s crook from an overhanging ledge in 
the hands of a strong shepherd can haul (us) up to safety.” 3

	But there’s one further aspect of Shepherding. We, in addition to being 
sheep who are called to follow our Shepherd, we are called to shepherd 
others as Jesus does for us. We’ve to take what we’ve learned about the 
way in which Jesus' promise of His company has worked out, and offer it 
to anyone and everyone.

	“To become a good shepherd is to come out of the shell of selfishness 
in order to be attentive to those for whom we are responsible so as to 
reveal to them their fundamental beauty and value and help them to grow 
and become fully alive.” 4

	In other words, we have to learn how to live “Besa”, as the Prizerini 
and Veseli families did, without hesitation, in the darkness of the Nazi 
Regime. We, just as Jesus, have “to keep the promise”, so that others 
may entrust their lives and the lives of their families in our hands. We 
have to be, for Jesus, Good Shepherds anywhere – everywhere!

NOTES:

1 	Forgotten heroes remembered every Thursday at Accidental Talmudist. 
https://www.facebook.com/accidentaltalmudist  	Learn more about the 
Veselis and the code of Besa: 
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/veseli.asp

2	“Songs of Innocence and Experience”, Plate 14, “The Shepherd”  [from 
Project Gutenberg, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience] by 
William Blake, 1757-1827. See 
http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=s-inn.l.illbk.04&java=no

3	“4 Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday)”: “Edge of Adventure” by Suzanne 
Guthrie http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/easter4bca.html

4	 “Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John” by Jean 
Vanier. Paulist Press, Mahwah, N.J. © 2004 Page 189.


Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)
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