The Rev. Noah Van Niel
St. John the Evangelist
April 22, 2018
Easter 4 (B): Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
On March 16th, 1978 the Hokule’a, a traditional Polynesian voyaging canoe departed from Honolulu on a 30 day trip from Hawaii to Tahiti. (For those of you who have seen the Disney movie, Moana, you’ll have an idea what it looked like.) The Hokule’a was the crown jewel of the Polynesian Voyaging Society which sought to recreate traditional Polynesian seafaring 
techniques and celebrate that cultural history. The ship had made the voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti two years earlier, but on this day in ’78 they were trying a slightly different route and things did not go as well. Bowing to pressure from the press and political officials, they set sail in questionable conditions. Five hours later they got struck by a large wave and capsized, about 12 miles south of the island of Molokai. The crew hung on to the vessel overnight drifting farther and farther from land. Their flares weren’t seen, their rescue signals went undetected.
On board as a member of the crew that day was Hawaiian surfing legend and lifeguard Eddie Aikau.
Eddie had made a name for himself by surfing, with glee, the biggest waves on Oahu’s famous North Shore and by being a fearless lifeguard who would rescue any swimmer or surfer from any situation no matter how dangerous. While he served as lifeguard of Waimea bay—the epicenter of the North Shore high surf—he made over a thousand rescues and not one life was lost. In 1971 he was named lifeguard of the year. And the phrase “Eddie would go,” became an island refrain, referring to the fearlessness and selflessness of this humble Hawaiian surfer.
As morning dawned with no rescue in sight and the capsized vessel floating further and further from shore, Eddie convinced his crew mates to let him take his surfboard and paddle for land. He figured he could make the 12 mile swim (though by now it was probably much more) to the coast of Lanai, on his board. But he eschewed a life vest as it inhibited his ability to paddle. And so, with a prayer on his lips and aloha in his heart, off went Eddie, into the Pacific, swimming for land, looking for help. He was never seen again.
The rest of the crew was spotted about nine hours later by a passenger jet and soon the coast guard had them all safely home. All except for Eddie. Planes, boats, helicopters searched the ocean for days but they never found him. He was lost in that great blue abyss that was the source of his glory and his ultimate resting place. And now he lives on as hero, legend, inspiration to all who brave those beautiful, but formidable waters on that island paradise.
Today in the church we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday. It’s not an official feast day, but the image of Jesus as our Shepherd has proved lasting and important enough to focus on it the same Sunday of the Easter season every year. It’s a beautiful as well as formidable day. Beautiful in the comfort we get from Jesus tending to our lost souls like lost sheep, and formidable when we are challenged by the author of 1 John to follow his example, and, like Eddie that Good Shepherd of the sea, lay down our lives for one another. The question of today is how we might be good shepherds and not just good sheep.
Jesus offers us a starting place for how to make this shift. It all starts with care, with love. Unlike the hired hand the good shepherd cares for his sheep, he loves them. And he cares for them because he knows them. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus repeats, “I know my own and my own know me.” Love is not an emotion that flourishes in the abstract. It is grounded in first-hand knowledge, interpersonal experience. Love grows on contact. It is rooted in interaction, and it is from that branch that sacrifice blossoms.
For example, I have never met anyone from Kyrgyzstan. I’m sure there are good people in Kyrgyzstan, who could benefit from my attention. I believe they are children of a loving creator and deserve to live good lives. But I can’t claim to care as deeply for them as for other people I know more personally. I had childhood friend who grew up in Mexico. We were very close. One year we even went and visited with him and his extended family down there and now, for the rest of my life, even though I have lost touch with him and haven’t been to Mexico in decades, I care when I hear about the difficulties and the struggles of people there because I can picture those struggles in living color, not in some gray, abstract reality. This same principle applies on much smaller scales. People in the abstract are hard to love and easy to ignore. That goes for people from Weymouth as much as from Kyrgyzstan. We care about people when we know them and we expand our circle of caring by expanding our circle of knowing. And when we care about people, we are more willing to make sacrifices to help them.
Now what makes this tricky is that we can only know so many people, which means we only really come to care about so many people, but there are far more people out there in need of our help. Jesus had the ability to know and care deeply about people he hadn’t even met yet. That’s one of his divine attributes. There are other sheep who don’t yet belong to this fold, he says, that he is also laying down his life for. But we are not so divine in our heart’s capacity. So if we really want to be good shepherds and expand our sheepfold, we have to be willing to help people before we care about them. If we sit here waiting to care before we help, we’re just going to keep on sitting here. I think that’s why the author of 1 John says this: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. [For} how does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” He recognizes that while Jesus may have been able to care about everyone in an emotional as well as practical way, the early Christians couldn’t depend simply on feeling to drive their loving actions. We are far too small-hearted for that. This is a much less squishy, emotional love. It is love as duty, as obligation. It’s love as a command not a feeling. If you are a Christian—especially if you are a Christian who “has the world’s goods”—to help a brother or sister in need is your job. Whether you like it or not. Whether you like them or not. In our contemporary culture “feeling” is often cited as the motivating factor in our decisions. That can have its benefits but also, its drawbacks because our feelings can be fickle and narrow. So while it may sound blasphemous to our modern ears, I think 1 John is saying, “I don’t really care if you care. God has given you a command to love one another by helping one another. And we are to obey his commandments.”
I’m pretty sure that as big-hearted as Eddie Aikau was, he didn’t care, in the emotional sense, about all those surfers he pulled from the crashing waves of the North Shore. He didn’t know their names before he dove in to save them. And I’m not even sure how well he knew all the crewmates he offered to swim off and try to save, as he was new to that crew. Instead he saw a brother or sister in need and helped. It’s that simple. He knew that to love, to be a good shepherd, was first a duty and then an emotional connection. Doing the loving thing was what mattered; fulfilling that obligation to love in truth and action was what he was about. “Eddie would go,” is the phrase, not “Eddie would care.”
If we wait until we care deeply enough about people to lay down our life for them—whether that’s metaphorical or literal—it’s going to take a while to get moving. Because our hearts and hands are only so big, and try as we might to expand them, we are never going to have the innate emotional capacity of Jesus, our Good Shepherd. For us, to be a good shepherd is to see a brother and sister in need and help them. That’s what it means to walk in love. How I feel about them is secondary. And actually if we want to care, if we start by helping, the caring will follow.
In 2004 the Hawaiian senate declared March 17th Eddie Aikau day. In the resolution marking that day they said they honored Eddie not just for his heroism but also for his preservation of the Aloha Spirit. Native Hawaiians often get miffed that popular parlance has watered down the true meaning of Aloha. It’s not just a word you use for “Hello,” “Good-bye” and “I love you.” It’s an orientation towards the world; an open hearted embrace of your fellow human being. It means treating others as your family whether you know them or not, whether you have any emotional attachment to them or not. In that sense, Eddie was the personification of “aloha.” And I think if Jesus had ever made it from Palestine to Hawaii, he might have embraced “aloha” as a better encapsulation for what he meant about being the good shepherd than simply “love.” For like the love that Jesus embodies and calls us to, aloha is not an emotion it is state of being. That’s why you greet and bid farewell to others with aloha on your lips. Your emotions may catch up, and you may actually come to feel love for every person you meet, like Jesus did, especially for those in need. That is a worthy aspiration. But until then, we are called to love in truth and action, not just in thought and feeling. There is too much pain and sorrow out there for us to sit by waiting for our hearts to be stirred. So while you’re going about that long term work of cultivating your inner aloha, grab your surfboard and head out into the crashing waves of the world seeking those who are floundering, bringing them the hope of the good news of God in Christ and the commitment to help end their suffering. That is how we can become good shepherds and not just be good sheep. That is how we love. Say it, yes, feel it, yes, but really, just go and do it.