Readings: Psalm 23, John 10:1-10
Let us pray: may your word for us today
challenge, encourage and sustain us O God and may we have the courage to live
out that which you ask of us. In Jesus
name. Amen.
The Gospel reading for today is a bit of a
trap for young players is it not? For
centuries the imagery of Christ as the only gateway to salvation, the debate of
who is in and who is out, the idea of fencing to keep out dangers and keep those
who are within safe has tended to dominate our understandings of this story of
Christ the shepherd and maybe of much of the Gospel message. On it we have
based acts of exclusion, of isolation, of judgement and false hope. That is a pretty strong start to a sermon
today for me. But it is something I feel
passionate about – the ways we engage with scripture in isolation from the
command of Jesus to love – love God, love neighbour, love self and to hold that
command in the light of the empty cross.
So I would like to take a different
approach today - I would like to suggest that these concerns over the
conditions of entry, who is in and who is out, are mere distractions – taking our
energy and attention away from the core message that our abundance is to be
found in the person of Jesus Christ – that he is our sheepfold, our strength,
our security and our hope!
You know so often it is incredibly easy for
our faith to get tied up with harmful social perceptions and expectations when
we fail to keep Christ at the centre of it.
We can talk about a church that has told
some people that they are not welcome, we can see decades of teaching that
suggest the vast majority of the world is dammed because they have not
personally accepted Christ as their Lord and Saviour, or even being Christian
is not enough, you have to be of a particular sort to get through the gates,
that you have to have outward signs of blessing to prove that you are inwardly
in right relationship with God. We can
talk about a society that is showing exactly those same values, exclusions and
judgements and would ask quietly ‘who is influencing who here?’
Our daughter recently sent me a link that
speaks volumes into the way that as a society we apply these same skewed
principles to our ways of living.
There is an actress in the states called Gabourey
Sidibe – who has starred in various movies and television show, who has been
nominated for an Academy Award. Now she
is not your normal svelte, stunningly good looking vision of physical
perfection – quite the opposite one might say (in fact when I googled her to
find more information do you know that the first suggested search strategy that
came up was Gabourey Sidibe – weight – what does that say?)
And her story is one of the most powerful I
have come across. As a young child she
and her brother went to live with her Aunt who was a great friend of the Gloria
Steinem, the American social and political activist and a big part of the woman’s
liberation movement throughout her life.
Gabourey said each day of her life she was
berated somewhere for her appearance, made fun of, called names, and with fame
and social media it got worse of course.
She says the most frequent question she gets now is why she is so
confident in the midst of this continuing battering of her looks? She has two responses. First of all she asks: So why aren’t you
asking Rihanna that question? Why just me?
And secondly she tells the story of her sheepfold, her place of
strength. Each day as she left her aunt’s
house for whatever pain the day would bring she passed a photo of her aunt,
also a lifelong activist, and Gloria Steinem, young and determined and with their
fists held high in the air. And she
would salute them back and ‘march off
into battle’ – her words. And she
says today she is so confident because she dares, she lives, she loves. Again her words:
"I live my life, because I dare. I dare to show up when
everyone else might hide their faces and hide their bodies in shame...If they
hadn’t told me I was ugly, I never would have searched for my beauty. And if
they hadn’t tried to break me down, I wouldn’t know that I’m unbreakable".
We have a
gate that says only those who have the blessings of good looks are allowed into
the hallowed ground of success, a gate that keeps out the less than perfect and
yet also entices us into ridiculous ways of trying to be what we are not in
order to get in that gate. Not so different really to the way some have kept
guard on the gateway to the church, deciding who can come in and who stays
out. Might I suggest that the decision
of Calvin Church in Gore to exclude from membership a 70+ year old woman
because her live-in male companion is not yet ready for marriage and she
refuses to tell him to leave sits in this space.
Now just in
case you think that this is all getting a bit negative – oh no. The good news is very much in this reading before
us today. “The Lord is my Shepherd I
shall not want!”[1]
Jesus is inviting us into a life with him, where his vision is our vision, his
way our way, his path our path. And what
is the vision of Jesus – abundant life for all!
“I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”[2]
Molly
Marshall has this definition of abundant life in Christ:
“a purposeful
vocation that serves common good, participation in generative ecclesial
community, delight in sustaining relationships and a sense of security in
Christ no matter what comes.”[3]
What are
some of the things we need to re-imagine here then that will help us be a more
Christ centred church living into the vision of abundant life.
First we
need to be aware that security in Christ, that coming into the sheepfold does
not mean the absence of danger or disappointment, of predators or valleys of
death. The abundance is in Christ with
us, not in our lives being glam and glitter.
Secondly
that the Christ the gateway is not there to keep people out or to have people
running some gauntlet as the entry price – the way to Christ is for all and it
is not for us to set entry prices or judge when we kick someone out. Not to say that there are not times when
there needs to be some serious accountability within that sheepfold but not
when people are simply wearing slightly alternative clothes or don’t conform to
our ideas of living, rather more when they are hurting others by greed,
arrogance and exclusivity. Use the Jesus
yardstick, not our own.
Thirdly it’s
not about being separated from the world to keep ourselves holy. Being in Christ demands that we are part of
the world, offering our gifts and our faith to the battering ram that can be
the world we live in, being like Gabourey Sidibe and
finding our strength and confidence in the presence of Christ Jesus as our
shepherd, turning to walk in the world each day knowing that no matter how bad
it gets we are not alone and, even more in fact, we are using our gifts to
bring pleasure and build relationships, often with those who might mock us.
Abundant
life in Christ is dangerous, challenging, uncomfortable, unpredictable and yet within
this abundant life we know confidently and with assurance the depths of our
beauty in the eyes of God and the unbreakable power of love that is the love of
Christ for us in the empty tomb. And for
this we say thanks be to God. Amen
Margaret
Garland
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