| “I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The
hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own
the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep
and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters
them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does
not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know
my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me
and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the
sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this
fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to
my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For
this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my
life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from
me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power
to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.
I have received this command from my Father.” |
|
| John 10:11-18 |
| You can sense True Love and its effect upon us as Christians
writes the poet Kathleen Norris. |
| True Love... |
| makes us fight |
| and bleed, takes us to the heights, |
| the deeps, where we don’t |
| want to go. … |
| You can tell. |
| The way light surges |
| out of nothing. The Magdelene, |
| the gardener. God help us, |
| we are God’s chosen now. (1) |
|
| The poet states that knowing ourselves as God’s beloved,
chosen in Christ, helps us bear life’s hard times. While
knowing true love as seen in Jesus’ resurrection lifts
us up, it also leads us to risk going where we don’t
want to. She claims in a few short verses that we know love
through the actions of the One who loved us first. Yet it is
a struggle for many of us to claim God’s love. There
are many voices screaming for our attention, judging our self
worth these days. It is sometimes hard to know which voice
is the One we should listen to. |
| There is a story I heard once about two artists who were
commissioned to paint a picture of their conception of peace
and love. The one who best captured the theme on canvas would
be given a prize. Each artist went to their studios and painted
for the allotted period of time, and then the moment came for
the judges to look at their renderings. They pulled the veil
off the first canvas, and there was a marvelous canvas. It
was a Grandma Moses, peaceable kingdom sort of scene. A farmer's
wife was preparing the evening meal. The farmer was bringing
the cattle in at the end of a day from the pasture. The children
were playing on the porch, and smoke was coming out of the
chimney. The colors were beautiful. It made you want to be
there. They thought that this painting was the one but thought
they’d better look at the other. |
| So they pulled the veil off the second rendering and instead
of beautiful colors and a peaceful scene, there was a raging
waterfall. When you looked at it, you felt terribly upset.
It got down into your soul and disturbed you. But at the side
of the waterfall was a little tree. That tree grew in the mist
coming from the waterfall, and on the end of the branch jutting
out over the water was a bird's nest, and standing on the edge
of the bird's nest was a mother bird singing her heart out.
The judges knew they had their winner. The gift of finding
peace and love in the raging waters of here and now far surpassed
their anticipation of a harmony that seemed so far removed
from every day life. |
| The good news of God in Jesus is full of the same mystery
the mother bird held onto. In the face of chaos, knowing God’s
love can lead us to sing a song of love and peace. Today’s
scriptures state that we know love, by the death of a man who
laid down his life “for his sheep” even though
he had the authority to take his life back at any point. The
author of 1 John told early Christians, “We know love
by this, that he laid down his life for us…let us love,
not in word or speech, but in truth and action…and this
is [God’s] commandment, that we should believe in the
name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as
he has commanded us.” (1 John. 3:16,18) |
| The Gospel of John elaborates on the work of Jesus through
recording his “I am” statements. “I am the
good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the
sheep...I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father
knows me and I know the Father.” These words of intimate
love are meant to be known in our innermost being. Jesus’ actions
show us that his voice is the one to be trusted in the chaos
of being sheep. |
| I had a friend who was very good at nurturing and expressing
love to others but had trouble claiming God’s love for
herself. Because she did not know herself as loved by God,
she constantly self sacrificed and laid her life and needs
aside for another, her husband. One day I listened in stunned
amazement as she told me that she was sure her friends only
put up with her because they really loved her artistic husband.
She believed that love came for her only through her attachment
to him. I said, “I’m not in your life because of
your spouse, but because of you—I barely know him. God
doesn’t love you for or through your husband. God loves
you for you.” Declaring God’s love for her and
stating my own was more than she could bear. |
| Though tears that streamed down her face she confessed that
her marriage offered no loving support or intimacy. It had
been that way since a few weeks after their wedding ten years
before. All her pain, shame, self-doubt, fear, anger, and uncertainty
tumbled out of her mouth and down her face in tears. That day
my friend was resurrected to begin a new life just as surely
as her savior had been. It was as if she finally heard God’s
voice calling out to her as a beloved sheep. She had been living
with the flock, a participating member of her church, but emotionally
was isolated from all that the flock believed. That we would
realize God’s love and claim it or ourselves! |
| Some of us know God’s love best from experiencing the
love of a parent, friend or spouse during our lives. Others
of us come to know God’s love as it bursts into our lives
and reorders the way we see ourselves through the Spirit of
truth. No matter how we first know love, the good news calls
us to claim the love of the shepherd so that we may glorify
God through love that leads to right relationships with God
and one another. |
| Jesus’ love for the world determines who we are and
how we live. Our identity is found in listening to his voice
as a sheep would listen in ancient days to the voice of their
shepherd. This means all the other voices competing for our
attention fade away. |
| The voice of the spouse that told my friend she was nothing
without him, the voice of her family that told her she was
damned for leaving the church she was brought up in, and her
inner voice that told her she didn’t deserve intimacy
and love from her own husband…all these voices began
to lose their power. She clung to the voice of the one that
says “I know my own and my own know me. Abide in my love.” Anne
Lamott writes “Hope is…about choosing to believe
this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak [stuff]
anyone can throw at us.” (2) When we know God’s
love is larger than anything else in our lives, we can claim
the harsh truths about our lives in sure belief that God loves
us and calls out to each one of us as one of God’s own.
Claim the one thing that is bigger than anything else in our
lives, God’s love. |
| Amen |
| Beth E. Godfrey - May 7, 2006 |
| Central Presbyterian Church, Geneseo, New
York |
|
| 1. Kathleen Norris from Journey by Kathleen Norris,
2001, University of Pittsburgh Press. |
| 2. John M. Buchanan ed. The Christian Century, in “Sunrise.” April
4, 2006. |
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