Rev’d Peter Balabanski
Good Shepherd Sunday C – Jn 10 22-30
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. John 10:27 Jesus knows us and loves us.
When you think about it, how many people really know you, warts and all, and still love you anyway? We deal with lots of people every day – people who don’t know us, but want something from us – or we want something from them. Most of those relationships are superficial. How many people in our lives really know us and love us anyway?
Caro spoke to parish council last week about the many people in our community who are so isolated that it’s a significant health risk to them. Their loneliness is up there with obesity, smoking and heavy alcohol use as a mortality risk; particularly younger people! Why are people in any community so isolated that it puts them at risk of dying? How many people really know them? Who do they love? And who loves them? For these people, isolation is a matter of life and death. And yet their situation can be improved so simply –with genuine friendship.
Eugene Petersen describes a moment when … someone enters our life who isn’t looking for someone to use. They make time to find out what’s really going on in us. They’re secure enough not to exploit our weaknesses or to attack our strengths. They recognise our inner life and understand the difficulty of living out our inner convictions. They confirm what’s deepest within us. They’re a friend. Eugene H. Peterson ‘Leap Over a Wall’
Who really knows us? We just heard Jesus say My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. John 10.27 Jesus declares his friendship for us as being of that very rare quality we’ve been thinking about. ‘I know them.’ To let anyone get to know us at a really deep level, we have to trust them; trust them with our deepest feelings; know we’re safe with them even when our most embarrassing weaknesses are disclosed; trust them to deal gently with our very strongest convictions; our greatest passions. And that goes both ways.
Perhaps you know the very beautiful little poem of W.B. Yeats: ‘He wishes for the cloths of heaven’.
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, / Enwrought with golden and silver light, / The blue and the dim and the dark cloths / Of night and light and the half-light, / I would spread the cloths under your feet: / But I, being poor, have only my dreams; / I have spread my dreams under your feet; / Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Yeats somehow captures the beautiful, vulnerable friendship that Jesus our Good Shepherd offers us – where he’s as vulnerable as we are. Whatever predicament we’re in, he’s in it with us; shivering in the cold; wilting with heat and thirst; facing our fears with us.
We’re completely safe offering Jesus our feelings, our weaknesses and our passions because he knows us and yet he loves us anyway. He knows how dangerous we can be to a friend, and yet he’s come to be that friend. He hasn’t come to condemn us, but to save us. John 3.17 We’re safe with him.
He’s entered our world in utter vulnerability as the baby. He’s faced our shame and helplessness as the naked man hanging on the cross. He has come fully into our world so that we might enter fully into his.
Jesus, our good shepherd, calls out to us to follow him on the path that leads to that place of green pastures and still waters, to a living hope in the face of danger – even in the face of death.
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. John 10:27
Follow. We had that word in the 23rd Psalm too. Jesus the good shepherd calls us to follow him. King David tells us what will happen when we respond to this call – Surely your goodness and loving-kindness will follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Prayer
Jesus our Good Shepherd, we know your voice. You call and we follow you. Jesus, gate of the sheepfold, you are our doorway into life. You are the doorway through death into eternal life. You call and we follow you.
Jesus our Good Shepherd, you have laid down your life for us. There is no greater love than this. You know us – you know the danger – and yet you love us. Grant us the courage to love like you do, and to do it bravely in your precious name. Amen