Riddle Me This ....

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 10:1-18 Acts 2:42-47 Psalm 23

“Riddle me this: what is it that is always coming, but never arrives?! … Tomorrow. For when it arrives, it is today.” That’s the earliest line that I remember from a television show. It’s the Riddler speaking to his henchmen in an episode of Batman that aired in 1978 when I was five years old, and it began my childhood fascination with riddles.

“What is black and white and red all over?” A newspaper … or a sunburned penguin.
“What belongs to you but is most used by others?” Your name.
“What can run but never walks,
has a mouth but never talks,
has a bed but never sleeps,
has a head but never weeps?” A river.

And my mother’s favorite: “What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?” …
Any idea? ….
A towel.

Riddles like these challenge the wits of young and old alike, and the harder ones have been fodder for legends and myths throughout history. Remember the riddle of the Sphinx that guarded Thebes:
“What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”

Or for those who weren’t forced to study Greek mythology in Jr. High, the riddle of the Sphinx blocking Harry Potter’s path to the Tri-Wizard cup:
First think of the person who lives in disguise,
Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies.

Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend,
The middle of middle and end of the end?

And finally give me the sound often heard
During the search for a hard-to-find word.

Now string them together, and answer me this,
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?

The first answer is: a human. We crawl as babies, walk upright as adults, and use canes as we grow old. The second, a spider, is made up of three other answers: a spy, the letter “d,” and the sound, “eeerrr.”


It’s fun, isn’t it, teasing out the clues in the text to solve the riddles. At least it’s fun when we aren’t facing the Sphinx ourselves. It feels different when we think about the riddles that affect our lives yet remain a mystery despite our best efforts to unravel them. How is it, for example, that US special forces were able to get into Pakistan, carry out pitched battle near the capital, and then leave with captives in tow all without being detected by the nearby military base? (Or to put it in a more traditional form - riddle me this: when is a secret raid not a secret?) (pause) Or how is it that the United States continues to have 50 million people going hungry while we throw away 31 million tons of perfectly good food each year?

Those riddles can take us deep into feelings of fear and uncertainty, shame and guilt and compassion. If governments (ours included) are willing to actively deceive their people in order accomplish their own purposes, how can we trust anything they say or put our faith in their promises? How can we feel good about ourselves when we waste enough food to feed much of the world - not to mention the exorbitant amounts we eat?


Still, whether they are just for fun or they are truly troubling, riddles fascinate us? There’s just something about the mystery that lives at the core of their mis-directions that intrigues and engages us. It’s almost as if we are being compelled to wrestle with them.

Jesus knew that about people. That’s one reason he taught in parables – in riddles that beg to be explored. And today’s lesson is a perfect example … one that gives us hope in the midst of our struggles with the disturbing enigmas of our time. Riddle me this, he said, when is a gate not a gate? When it is a devoted shepherd.

Shepherds at the time brought the flocks into a common, guarded enclosure for the night on a typical day. But sometimes they had to go far afield to find enough food for their sheep, and they were forced to camp out in the wilderness. It was a common enough situation that shepherds built rock enclosures out in the countryside so that anyone caught out after dark would have a relatively safe place to put their flock for the night.

Those paddocks were nothing fancy. They didn’t even have gates. But they afforded some protection from predators and poachers, and they kept the animals from wandering off as long as the entrance was closed off. So, many shepherds would herd the sheep into the pen and then lie down in the gap, making themselves the gate and providing protection.

In a very real way, this represented a willingness of a good shepherd not only to lead his flock to food and water but even to risk his or her life for the safety of the sheep they tended. In the same way, Jesus said, he was not only the one who guided those who followed him to all that they needed for abundant life, he was the one who would lay down his life to save theirs.


It’s a comforting image – this metaphor of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and it’s not surprising that it’s a favorite among Christians everywhere – even where we no longer have shepherds in our midst. If Christ is our shepherd, than we need not worry about much. We listen to his voice, follow where he leads us, and we have all of our deepest needs met. We find ourselves in tranquil meadows filled with food, and we lay down to rest in safety beside the waters of life. Even when we walk in threatening shadows or stand in the presence of those who would do us harm, we have no cause for fear because there is someone who stands between us and them – who lay himself down in the gap for our protection.

It’s a wonderful way to portray the love of a caring God, and it provides immense comfort in a spiritual sense. It probably provided comfort in a more immediate way to those whose illnesses were healed or who received bread and fish on the mountain or who saw the storm’s rage subside, … but it doesn’t always feel so clear cut to us when we are in danger and there is no body to stand between us and the threat. Perhaps that’s why we continue to embrace violence and save our wealth against some unforeseen need.

So, what do we do – what should we do when we stand in need or when we see someone else lacking basic human needs? How do we bring comfort and a sense of security to those among us who are suffering or grieving or living with threat of violence and death? What are the sheep to do while the shepherd is gone?


The gathering of followers in Jerusalem had one answer in their time and for their situation. Many of them had walked the roads and the countryside with Jesus. Some of them had seen the risen Christ. All of them trusted the power of the Spirit to guide and sustain them through the easy times and in the valleys of the shadow. And they took Jesus’ final commission to Peter literally and metaphorically and continued the work of feeding Christ’s sheep in body and spirit.

They took hold of their own strength and ingenuity and set about meeting the needs of everyone in their community, sharing a common table and gathering daily to worship in the Temple. Each person gave what they had, not out of a legalistic sense of duty but out of a deep desire to care for each other, and in that way, they solved the challenge of Jesus’ physical absence with a riddle of their own: when are sheep no longer sheep? …. When they become the shepherds.


It is true, as Marion Soards says, that “[Acts] presents us with an idealized moment in early Christian history.” Even then it was not a perfect system. There were constantly new needs to be met and resources – both in terms of skills and money – were limited. (Sound a little familiar?) But people shared willingly out of a generous compassion for one another, and their common faith led them “to focus on what they had in common rather than what distinguished them from one another.”

Even though things changed in short order as the community grew and spread and wealthier people began to try and hold something back, the story is clear that the members of that first community accomplished great things. They met the needs of thousands of people and lived together with a level of harmony that brought awe to the whole of Jerusalem.


We are the sheep of the Good Shepherd, and we are called to be more than just sheep. In his last conversation with his followers, Jesus told them that he thought of them as friends - friends that would carry on his work of sharing the good news of the kingdom and of caring for those in need. The early church lived up to that trust admirably in their own way, and we can learn a lot from their example and their experience. We can learn from their faith in the Spirit and from their determination to step up and do some things themselves. It’s not so much the exact model of their life together that can guide us to the place that restores us, body and soul. It’s the way they lived it into reality.


So riddle me this: How do we solve the troubling problems of today? How do we meet the needs of those who desperately need the day to day care of a good and faithful shepherd? …

Or in words that echo down from one of our forbearers: are we our brothers’ keepers?