Moving in Love

Sermon John 10:11-18 February 18, 2018 Lent 1

Moving in Love

Our theme this year in Lent is-‘Moving Toward the Cross’. Each week we will explore a Scripture that will support the various statements on the ways in which we move toward the cross. This week our movement toward the cross is in love, other weeks we move toward it in peace, in strength, in suffering, in faith. 

As we approach Scripture with these pre-set themes it sheds new light on how we explore and examine the Word of God before us. Everything we read, hear, touch, taste, and participate in is colored by the lenses of our experience, often our most recent experience. 

And it is also colored by the thoughts and ideas we might project upon it.

As we cross over into this movement of Lent on this first Sunday in Lent, perhaps what might be important for us, is to know a few things about Christ with whom we journey and a few things about ourselves.

Our reading this morning begins with the declaration from Jesus that he is the Good Shepherd. This entire chapter 10 is heralded as the Shepherd discourse. 

In John’s gospel this evangelist writes in a manner that puts us front and center in time with Jesus. 

As he declares to his disciples, “I am the Good Shepherd”, he declares it to us. We have no doubt about the identity of Jesus in these few words. He not only declares his love but also declares his purpose and his utter commitment to his purpose no matter what the cost, even the cost of his life.

Perhaps, this is what we need from Jesus as we begin our journey along this path of Lent. 

We need Jesus to be strong for us. 

We need Jesus to be certain and not wishy washy about who he is. 

We need Jesus to lead us as a leader who is firm in the knowledge of himself, not only as we travel through Lent but as we travel through life. 

An identified Shepherd leader is one who needs his sheep to do his job and I like that and find it quite refreshing. 

Jesus and the sheep cannot be separated from one another. 

We are his sheep. 

We are his beloved. 

We follow him and he guides us through thick brush, 

into the valley of death, 

and up to the river of life. 

Just as Jesus describes his relationship with the Father, 

he bring us into relationship with him.

However, for some, these 40 days can be daunting, as one of my friends said to me, “Lent is depressing. I stop going to church and don’t come back until Easter when its happy again.” 

Perhaps it is difficult to hear about the wilderness and chaos that confronted Jesus. And perhaps it is too challenging to witness him walking among those who suffered, and those who were in despair. Maybe what we find most distasteful is his own frailty and his own suffering and loss of life.

Yet, I find that is where our lives with Christ most often intersect. 

As we began our journey on Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, we began with the smudge of love, the smudge of God’s eternal love that claims us and calls us by name. 

Yes, we are finite creatures, but creatures who have a Good Shepherd who lies down at the gate of our lives, protecting defending, holding, and even giving up for us. There is no one else who would defend us to the end as he does. 

Jesus proclaims he is the one sent by God and will fulfill the promises of God in order to protect the flock. Jesus is the one who draws the sheep and the Father together. As God’s sheep we are God’s most loved treasure. Not just those sheep who call Jesus by name but all sheep, the ones who don’t even know God’s name, everyone of them are God’s most loved treasure.

 Perhaps, in the wake of the murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida this week, you are angry to even hear these words about God. 

Senseless loss challenges our faith statements about the love of God. 

It throws our faith into turmoil and locks us into asking questions that have ambiguous answers. We get lost as ministers try to validate their faith in God with bad theology-such as God’s plan, and God’s purpose. We hear strange proclamations about God’s love for some and not others…As ministers we often fail those who most need to hear about God’s love in times of greatest need.

Our theology, our understanding of God might still be skewed. We aim for the bull's-eye of the target and continue to miss the mark. We seek to do well, we yearn to do well. So what do we know in times like these? 

These things we know -God too lost a child. 

God too, lost a most beloved Son. God too watched and witnessed a world that would seek to destroy love by destroying and maligning that Son. 

We know-God was there in the midst of that suffering and God is there in the midst of all of our suffering. God’s presence (no matter how it shows up) brings comfort.

One most poignant photo from the scene of the school tragedy was that of a mother embracing another mother. 

Upon her forehead she bore the cross from Ash Wednesday service. 

An author (Valerie Shultz) writes this: We receive our ashes as a sign of repentance, of our yearning for God’s forgiveness, of our intent to live our faith more truly in the face of our mortality. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return,” says the priest or lay minister, blessing us with a blackened thumb. The ashes that mark our foreheads only last for a day, but the mark this makes on our hearts is meant to endure for the entire 40 days of Lent. And so, how sadly, tragically, wretchedly fitting is the front-page photo from this Ash Wednesday. We will carry these stories with us. Again, again. 

AP photo credit Jerry Auerbach

We, as God’s sheep, have the privilege of carrying along with this mother the burdens, the barriers, the wounds, the wonderings, the fears and the failings, of our sisters and brothers throughout the community.  (Susan McGhee) That photo reminds us that we are not alone. It reminds us that we are a community that holds and acts together for the love of God through and in all circumstances. 

God’s fellowship of love with Jesus is so beautifully woven into these words of John’s gospel. It is an intimate fellowship that intertwines every movement Jesus makes and grants him assurance as he goes. This expression, this knowledge of God and Christ offers us the mystical communion with the Shepherd who knows us by name and calls us to follow. We have the knowledge of God and ourselves as we enter this season. 

Let us go together through Lent with the watchfulness and tenderness of Jesus. In our ears we hear God whisper a blessing to us as we go-“You are my beloved”. Amen.

Resources: NIB; Word Biblical Commentary; Carolyn C Brown-Preaching to Kids Too; AmericanMagazine.org "Spiritual Lessons from a School Shooting"; Rev. Susan McGhee Holy Days and Holidays-Ash Wednesday