Psalm 139: 1-18 (Known and loved)
You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand – when I awake, I am still with you.
John 10: 1-18 (The shepherd knows his sheep)
“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.
Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep 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 are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
Quiz: which two famous women died less than a week apart from each other in August September 1997?
Answer: Diana Princess of Wales died first at age 36 and as a result Mother Theresa of Calcutta’s death at age 87 barely went noticed. Did you know that the tall English princess and the tiny Albanian nun met several times and had an unlikely friendship. In fact, Diana was buried with a rosary given to her by Mother Theresa. More of them later….
To recap, we’ve looked at how Christian women and men have responded to the changing circumstances of the different eras of the last two thousand years: the Roman Empire, the Chaotic Age of Invasions, the Triumphal era of Christendom and the last 500 years of Revolutions. Now we turn our attention to the challenges of the present and the future, bearing in mind that it is in God’s hands, and he only knows.
We are in a new era for the Christian Church. It began five years ago with the covid 19 pandemic which profoundly highlighted the future we face.
First of all, it showed how interconnected our world has become, for better and for worse. Thanks to air travel infections spread across the world in a matter of hours. The sudden closure of factories and borders quickly interrupted our supply chains for food, machinery and building materials across the world. On the positive side international cooperation meant that vaccines could be developed and distributed to us quicker than ever before. Second it shattered the normal connections of life. Our offices, schools and churches were shut down and were carried on through zoom meetings. Our family gatherings like birthdays, weddings, hospital visits, funerals were banned. Loneliness and alienation were legislated to keep us safe from being infected or infecting others.
The sense of vulnerability and isolation from the pandemic deeply affected the younger generations who are the most anxious and depressed generation in history. They are also affected by the world becoming increasingly urbanised and human interactions becoming overwhelmingly digitalised. There is a growing crisis of personal alienation, with peoples’ sense of alienation from God, from one another, even from their true selves.
Back to Princess Diana and Mother Teresa were also on the same page when it came to their diagnosis of the world’s problems. Diana said in a TV interview shortly before her death “I think that the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved.” When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize she was asked, “What can we do to promote world peace?” She answered, “Go home and love your family.” Building on this theme in her Nobel lecture, she said: “Around the world, not only in the poor countries, but I found the poverty of the West so much more difficult to remove. When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person that is shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person that has been thrown out from society – that poverty is so hurtful and so much, and I find that very difficult.”
Diana and Theresa were on to something! In their own way they were prophets. These words were spoken last century but diagnosed the main challenge facing the human race and the best response. At one level saying that the world needs more love seems a bit flaky, like every songwriter of the sixties from Burt Bacharach “What the world needs now is love, sweet love,” to the Beatles, “All you need is love.” We need to unpack “love” which can mean everything from selfish lust to self-sacrifice. We know that Jesus gave us the best definition of the truest, most life-giving love. He did this by both word and personal example:
Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep 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 are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”
When he said, “I know my sheep and my sheep know me,” Jesus was tapping into the Old Testament concept of love. It is most clearly expressed in Psalm 139: ‘You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain…’
The Hebrew word for ‘know’, is “yada”, is not about information but about intimacy. Yada is not head knowledge like “I know the three times table” or “I know Vladimir Putin”. It’s about personally experiencing and appreciating another like when I say, “I know Pam” or you say, “I know.” someone you deeply care about.
Herein lies the clue as to how we as a Church to respond to the new era of growing loneliness and alienation. Probably the greatest Christian prophet of our generation was Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. His eulogy by the country’s President Cyril Ramaphosa summed it up, “Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been our moral compass and national conscience.”
Tutu applied Jesus’s teaching on love to the fundamental issue for all of us which is what it means to be human. He said, “A person is a person through other persons; you can’t be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships.” That’s worth repeating, “A person is a person through other persons; you can’t be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships.”
Tutu wasn’t a philosopher living in an ivory tower. For his whole life whole life was that time of bitter conflict in South Africa’s history before, during and after the breakup of apartheid. So, his voice came out of a well-schooled heart, “Our maturity will be judged by how well we are able to agree to disagree and yet continue to love one another, to care for one another, and cherish one another and seek the greater good of the other.”
What we as Christians have to offer to a world of increasing loneliness and alienation are two things.
First is intimacy with God, seeking to know and be known by God. For us God is not an abstract concept. We see God in the face of Jesus: Jesus as he teaches, Jesus as he heals, Jesus as he welcomes the outcaste, Jesus as he faces powerful enemies and most of all Jesus on the cross.
Our second offering to a world of increasing loneliness and alienation is to demonstrate intimacy as the expression of the love. As Christians we seek to model in our own lives Jesus’ caring and honest engagement with others. Engagement with others means being honest, being vulnerable, being open and being a good listener.
But we have a problem. The current battlefield for many Christians is gender issues, like the different roles of men and women, same-sex attraction and gender identity. They distract us from confronting the evils of division and alienation. Churches will need to focus on inclusion rather than exclusion, acceptance rather than rejection, confidence rather than fear. Church first and foremost are Schools of Love, places to learn and exercise the love of Jesus…that is our role and calling to meet the challenges of the future.
Amen.