The Resurrection and the Life

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

13th March 2022

John 11.1-44

You may not realise this, because I’m told I hide it a lot of the time,
            but I am actually someone with deep emotions:
            I feel things profoundly, I get hurt, I have my insecurities.
 
The things that happen to me, and to those I care about
            (which includes the congregation here at Bloomsbury),
            can affect me greatly.
 
You may not often see me cry, but it does happen.
 
More likely you will see a flash of frustration
            when I feel misunderstood or misrepresented;
or a moment of silence when my spirit is stirred
            and I don’t trust my voice to keep steady.
 
But please hear and know that beneath all this,
            is someone longing to be loved, wanting to help,
            and trying to make a difference in the lives of those around me.
 
Now why, you might wonder, is Simon starting a sermon in this way?
            Surely it goes against all the advice to keep a sermon about Jesus,
                        rather than about the preacher?
 
Well, it comes from a conversation I had this week with my Spiritual Director,
            who invited me to reflect on
            What Jesus might want to say to me?
 
So I’m sharing my thoughts, my response to this question,
            because I hope it might stir a similar engagement for you,
            as you listen to me reflecting on this.
 
What might Jesus want to say to me?
            What might Jesus want to say to you?
 
My answer to my Spiritual Director fell into two areas:
            firstly, what might Jesus want to say about the things I do?
            And then secondly, what might Jesus want to say to who I am,
                        to my spirit, to my soul?
 
The difficulty with answering questions such as these, of course,
            is that if we are to avoid simply putting our own words into the mouth of Jesus
            and then asking him to say them back to us,
we have to turn to scripture, to the gospels,
            to see who Jesus is, what he said, and what he did.
 
And it occurred to me that what we don’t often see with Jesus,
            is him expressing his emotions.
 
Mostly he bounces around the Holy Land,
            delivering stupendous sermons,
                        responding pastorally to the needy,
            challenging the systems of oppression,
                        and calling out religious hypocrisy.
 
He seems to make enemies with ease,
            and then not mind when they turn on him in anger and threaten his safety.
 
It’s all a bit intimidating, if I’m honest.
            As someone who preaches, offers pastoral care,
                        and speaks out against injustice,
            it’s a lot to measure up to!
Particularly when people I’ve annoyed or upset start to bite back.
 
But more broadly, however, I also sense encouragement here.
 
What might Jesus want to say about the things I do?
            Well, hopefully, he’d tell me to carry on! To try harder!
                        To keep going! To be not discouraged…
 
We are, as the old hymn puts it,
            to fight the good fight with all our might.
We are to keep on keeping on,
            to take heart and not grow weary.
 
The path we tread in this world is not new ground,
            because Jesus goes before us to show us the way.
 
For a church like Bloomsbury,
            which has an activist spirit, and is hard-wired to engage in actions
                        that make good news a reality for people
                        whose lives are dominated by bad news,
the activist example of Jesus that we see in scripture
            is an encouragement and an inspiration.
 
Which is great, right up to the moment when we hit the wall.
 
But what happens when we are derailed? Thrown off course?
            Or just run out of steam altogether?
 
My suspicion is that this is where many of us find ourselves right now:
            at the limit of our energy and our emotional capacity.
 
The upheaval of the pandemic
            and the changes it has wrought in so many areas of our lives;
coupled with the horrific news
            that streams into our consciousness from the Ukraine;
added to the profound uncertainties many of us feel about the future
            as we grapple with the rising cost of living,
            fears of escalation in international conflict,
            and the ever-growing needs of the poor and vulnerable in our own city;
all these have left many of us in a place of emotional exhaustion,
            overwhelming grief, and paralysing fear.
 
It’s like we’re stuck in the darkness of a sealed cave,
            with our hands and legs bound, and our eyes covered.
 
Which brings me to our reading for this morning from John’s gospel,
            and the story of the death of Lazarus.
 
This is the moment when, in the fourth Gospel,
            Jesus hits his own emotional wall.
 
It is in chapter 11 that Jesus finally breaks down, loses the plot for a while,
            and stares death and despair in the face.
 
Verse 35, ‘Jesus wept’, is famously the shortest verse in the Bible.
            But in those two simple words are captured a whole world of pain.
 
Yes, Jesus is weeping because his beloved friend has died.
            But he is also moved to tears by the emotions of those around him
            as Mary and the other Jews are crying in their grief.
 
It’s a bit like that moment you get sometimes at a funeral,
            where one person starts weeping, and that sets off others as well,
            until you have a communal outpouring of sorrow and grief.
 
The sad truth is that those of us raised in the British culture
            can struggle with such Public Displays of Emotion.
I remember being told at school that, ‘big boys don’t cry’,
            and many of us have learned over the years to suppress our emotions,
            to keep it all inside, to ‘bottle it up’.
 
And yet, as we see in the story of the death of Lazarus,
            communal expression of emotion
            can be the precursor to something wonderful.
 
Many years ago, in my first church,
            we had a child in the fellowship who had developed cancer.
It was terrible, heart-breaking,
            as her young life hung in the balance.
 
We had been praying for her and the family for weeks,
            and of course supporting them in a variety of ways.
But somehow it didn’t seem real.
 
We knew it was happening at an intellectual and practical level,
            but we hadn’t, as a congregation, owned it emotionally.
 
And then, in open prayer one Sunday,
            my colleague lifted his voice and started shouting to God
                        that this situation was intolerable!
He told God that it was utterly unacceptable
            that a child should be facing death,
and that despite all our prayers,
            and all the skill of the medical profession,
            she remained gravely ill.
 
He continued for a couple of minutes, tears rolling down his cheeks,
            articulating before God the raw emotion
                        and rage and impotence we all felt.
 
It was like watching a Psalm taking form before us.
 
Many of us joined him in tears,
            and somehow in that moment,
            which is still with me all these years later,
the communal owning of our grief
            opened the door to a new world of hope,
as we entrusted our fears of the future
            to a God we dared to believe was a God of love;
as we entrusted a little girl’s short life
            to God’s eternal loving embrace.
 
Another more recent example, from Bethlehem in 2018,
            when we made our Bloomsbury visit to the Holy Land.
Each evening, back at the hotel,
            we sat around to process together what we had seen that day.
A wall that divides a community.
            Children who have been shot at.
                        A refugee camp. A city under siege.
            Evidence of illegal weapons.
 
And several times we found ourselves crying together.
            Holding the pain in communion before God,
                        hardly daring to believe that a better future might ever exist
                        for those whose lives have been blighted by war.
 
And tomorrow, I shall be going to join a vigil at King’s College London,
            as we will stand in solidarity and prayer and hope
            for the people of the Ukraine.
And yes, I will probably shed tears there too.
 
Crying with others, and for others, is a profoundly Christ-like action.
 
And somehow, before God,
            tears of despair can become tears of hope, tears of resistance,
            in a world where, in Christ, death does not get the final word on life.
 
But there is yet another dimension for us to explore,
            in this shortest verse of the Bible.
 
Yes, Jesus wept in grief at the death of his friend;
            and yes he wept in solidarity with others.
But maybe also here we find Jesus weeping for himself.
 
The Fourth Gospel doesn’t include the story of Jesus in Gethsemane,
            sweating blood at the prospect of his imminent death.
 
Instead, it is here at the tomb of Lazarus
            that Jesus confronts the reality of his own mortality.
 
It is no coincidence that we are reading this story in the season of Lent,
            as we make our own annual pilgrimage towards the cross.
 
The story of the death of Lazarus
            is carefully constructed by the author of this gospel
            as a precursor to the story of Jesus’ own death which follows it.
 
The Lazarus narrative is the final of John’s ‘Seven Signs’,
            and as with each other sign, it points beyond itself
            to a revelation of the kingdom of Christ.
 
So as Jesus makes his way to his friend’s tomb,
            he is also taking decisive steps towards his own death.
 
And he weeps.
 
This is no divinely disconnected being,
            emotionlessly floating through life on his way to somewhere else.
 
This is rather the word made flesh,
            a human being confronting his own frailty and contemplating death.
 
And it is in this context that we find Jesus pondering the meaning of life.
 
It starts with his conversation with Martha (vv.23-26),
            as they debate the nature of resurrection.
 
It seems that Martha is of the view
            that resurrection is some future event for people to look forward to.
 
She says, ‘I know that [Lazarus] will rise again
            in the resurrection on the last day’ (v.24).
 
And in this she was expressing a view common in Judaism at that time,
            and in fact this is a view found amongst many Christians today also.
 
The idea has its origins in the philosophical question
            of how to justify the goodness of God
            in the face of a world where bad things happen to good people.
 
Many atheists today point to the existence of pointless suffering
            as a key factor in their disbelief in God.
 
And one possible religious answer to this
            is the one articulated here by Martha:
            It all gets sorted out when we die.
 
Sure, in this world some people die young and tragically,
            but they will get their heavenly reward at the resurrection;
and sure, some people commit terrible deeds and seem to get away with it,
            but they will get their comeuppance on the last day at the final judgment.
 
It’s highly compelling, quite logical,
            and many of us will have been taught this, or something very similar to it.
 
The problem, however, is that this isn’t what Jesus means
            when he talks about resurrection.
 
In reply to Martha, Jesus says, ‘I am the resurrection and the life’.
            And it is worth our while spending a few moments unpicking this
            if we are to get to the heart of what is going on
                        in the story of Lazarus’s death.
 
Firstly, it’s another one of those ‘I am’ sayings
            that we’ve met before in John’s gospel,
where Jesus deliberately echoes the words spoken by God to Moses,
            when Moses asked for God’s name:
‘I am who I am’, said the Lord;
            ‘I am…’ says Jesus, positioning himself as the revelation of God,
            the word of God made flesh.
 
And then we get these two concepts
            of ‘the resurrection’, and ‘the life’.
 
We would be mistaken to think
            that these are simply two different ways of saying the same thing,
            as if ‘the life’ was a synonym for ‘the resurrection’.
 
Rather, Jesus uses these two terms to provide a different perspective
            on the meaning of life in the face of suffering,
            to that just offered by Martha.
 
For Martha, ‘the resurrection’ was something future,
            something that comes after life.
 
But what Jesus wants people to grasp is that in him,
            through his human embodiment of God’s divine nature,
the resurrection is something that people can be part of
            in the here-and-now of this life.
 
If you remember, one of the key concepts of John’s gospel,
            articulated clearly in the opening prologue,
            is that the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
 
And in today’s reading, from this central chapter of the gospel,
            we discover that the final decisive revealing sign of God’s kingdom
                        is the reality of resurrection;
            and here we get to discover what it means for us
                        that the word has become flesh and dwelt among us.
 
The abundance of life that is in Jesus, is our today.
 
The assurance of ‘death defeated and life without end’
            is ours in the here-and-now.
 
We do not need to wait until this life has ended
            for life eternal to begin.
Quite the opposite!
            Rather, eternal life is ours now,
            as death’s hold over our lives is broken.
 
Did you notice what Jesus said as Lazarus came out of the tomb,
            still bound in his grave clothes?
‘Unbind him, and let him go’ (v.44).
 
And I wonder what binds you?
            What is it that constrains your freedom,
                        covers your eyes, shackles your movements?
            What hold does death have over you
                        from which you long to be released?
 
What fears hamper us? What sins hold us back?
            What damage done to us scars our present and our future?
 
Well, hear this: Jesus says, ‘I am the resurrection and the life’.
 
Jesus is the one who reveals God’s abundant life to us,
            who calls us forth from our tombs,
            into a new life of love in community, and hope in life.
 
This is an invitation for us to centre the reality of resurrection
            at the heart of our faith and our lives.
 
People often place the cross at the heart of their faith,
            focussing on the significance of the death of Jesus
            as the key theological truth of his life.
 
But John’s gospel offers a different perspective:
            it centres the resurrection.
 
The indwelling of God in human flesh is a gift of life,
            to be experienced by each of us, today, here, and now.
 
This life matters, because in Christ,
            God is present in our lives, today, here, and now.
 
Calling us from the tomb,
            unbinding our ankles and our hands,
            and lifting the grave clothes from our eyes.
 
The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
            In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
            The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

Reflections on Marriage

As Baptists continue to debate the nature of marriage, here are some personal propositions as a contribution to this conversation.

What do we mean by marriage?

• Marriage is a function of society - and has been redefined many times over the years, from issues such as the age of consent to marry, to language around property and ‘giving the bride away’, to more recent changes in legislation on Same Sex Marriage.
• None of us would suggest that a Civil Marriage contracted in a Registry Office or a Hotel is not a marriage, nor is it any less a marriage than one contracted in one of our churches.
• The role of God’s people here is not to define marriage - and there is no such thing as a ‘biblical view of marriage’. For example, Joseph married Mary when she was a younger teenager, and plenty of the Men of God in the Old Testament had more than one wife / concubine. I don’t think any of us would suggest that these are biblical patterns for us to follow in our time, but neither do we condemn Abraham, Solomon, or Joseph for being people of their time.
• So if marriage is a function of society, then the church’s role is to respond to that, to challenge it where it is abusive, and to bless it where it is Godly. These are judgment calls that the people of God must make in each generation, rather than a set of rules for us to follow that are applicable for all time.
• In the light of the changes of law regarding same sex marriages some churches have, on the basis of their discernment from scripture, chosen contract such marriages in the presence of God’s people as part of a service of worship.
• Others have chosen to contract only marriages between a man and a woman, on the basis of their interpretation of scripture.
• Others have chosen a middle-path, declining to offer services of same sex marriage, but instead blessing such partnerships where they are civilly contracted
• None of this means that Christians own ‘marriage’, and nor do we get to define it definitively.
• As Baptists we resist the idea of state and church in the collusion of Christendom, including with regard to marriage. Rather, we respond to, speak prophetically to, bless or critique, the decisions taken by the state as it codifies the shifting sands of society.

What about the Bible?

• With regard to the Bible, we can argue about the ‘hot topic’ texts until the cows come home, and often that this is exactly what we do, time and time again. I’m just not sure it gets us anywhere.
• This post is not going to rehearse the different ways people interpret certain biblical passages - that has been done at length elsewhere - and just as no-one is going to argue one person into thinking that the Bible really does condemn their LGBTQI siblings, neither is that person likely to argue others into a conviction that it doesn’t.
• What we need is not arguments about exegesis, but a renewal of hermeneutics.
• We need to challenge people to re-think the basis of what they are asking scripture to be for them.
• Is it a book of instructions to be followed as literally as possible in the quest for a holy life?
• Or is it a record of the wrestling of God’s people with the revelation of God down the millennia?
• The Bible can be described as ‘a series of thought experiments about the nature of God’; and we can see this playing out in many places.
• For example, we find the Bible asking, ‘What if God is jealous and violent?’ in some places, and then in other places asking, ‘What if God is forgiving and loving?’
• Similarly, we find some places where scripture asks ‘What if God rewards the faithful and punishes the faithless?’, and then we meet the Book of Job which asks, ‘What if God doesn’t always reward faithfulness, and what if suffering is not a result of faithlessness?’
• I suggest we move to a view of the Bible as a record of God’s people trying to work out the nature of God, sometimes getting it right, sometimes getting it wrong; sometimes killing people in God’s name, but sometimes concluding that God’s kingdom is peaceful and peaceable.
• Then the question before us, as those who are relating the Bible to an issue such as whether to fully affirm LGBTQ+ people in the life of God’s people, becomes not ‘what does the Bible say in this verse or that verse?’, but ‘How can we discover the revealed character of God through the scriptures?’.
• This is an invitation to dialogue with the text, as we bring the revelation of God in Jesus into dialogue with other texts within the canon of scripture, and also into dialogue with our own experience of what God is doing in people’s lives today.
• So when some of us read texts such as the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, or Paul’s writing on sexual ethics, we read these differently to those who see within them a message of exclusion or condemnation for LGBTQ+ people.
• In addition to the ‘hot topic’ texts, we also need to hear the witness of the Song of Songs - a beautiful celebration of erotic love which makes mention of neither children nor marriage.

What about children?

• Some have asserted that marriage is for procreation or for the nurturing of children. Some see a child-less marriage as deficient. 
• Others see marriage as valid in God’s eyes even if it is intentionally child-free. Many would want to assert that child-free or child-less marriages are not selfish - they simply offer their blessing to others in other ways.
• We need to realise that sex and sexuality and sexual identity are gifts from God in and of themselves, and that whilst children and marriage often arise from our created nature as sexual beings, they do not define who we are.

Where do we go from here?

• Firstly, Christians need to listen more and talk less.
• Secondly, in our listening we should prioritise listening to those voices who have a history of being excluded from God’s people.
• And thirdly, we do this because the witness of scripture is that God is often encountered with the marginalised and excluded.
• So if we want to know what truly Christ-like love is, we need to look at whom Jesus loved, and to realise that his priority was those whom others told were unloved.
• We also need to think carefully what we mean when we talk of ‘sin’. Sin is not fundamentally the naughty things we do, nor the things others do that we think are naughty. Sin is displacing God as the centre of creation: the sin of idolatry is at the root of all that is evil in the world, and sinful behaviour is that which emerges from placing ourselves rather than God revealed in Christ by the Spirit at the centre of our personal universe.
• So when any of us normalise our own experience of what it means to be human, and impose that on others who experience humanity differently, that is sinful.
• The people of God are called to stand up and be counted for their conviction that God is love, and that all people are deeply, irrevocably, loved by God.
• It is a tragedy of the highest order that on key issues of inclusion, whether gender or sexuality, or ethnicity, or culture, Christians have often been at the forefront of exclusion.
• We need to realise that it is not our job to keep God righteous, it is God’s job to declare us righteous, which has been done in Christ.
• So we should resist all narratives of exclusion, and rebel against all empires of domination that keep people from discovering the gift of life in all its fullness in relationship with the Spirit of Christ.

The Good Shepherd

A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church 

6th March 2022

John 10.11-30  

 

I don’t know about you,

            but my subjective experience of the last couple of years

            has been a growing awareness of my own mortality.

 

From the huge global death-toll of the pandemic,

            to wars in Afghanistan, Syria, and now the Ukraine,

the fragility of life is increasingly apparent,

            and the invincibility of youth

            seems an ever-receding illusion as each year passes.

 

It may just be that this is creeping middle age,

            as the marriages of friends give way to divorces,

                        and divorces give way to remarriages,

            and the generation above me, that once seemed eternal,

                        gives way to illness and infirmity.

 

But it all feels very real.

            And life seems very fragile.

And I am left wondering, in my darker moments,

            what the point of it all is.

Sometimes, in fact, it feels as though

    there are forces at work in the world

    seeking to stifle life, joy and creativity.

 

And I suspect I’m not alone in sometimes struggling

            to find meaning in life and death…

 

After all, what, at the end of the day,

            is it all about?

 

What is the point of life? What is the point of death?

            What is the point of fighting, struggling, surviving?

 

Where do we turn for meaning in it all?

 

There are many people around in this world

            who, it seems, are only too willing to offer to look after us

 

Sometimes it can feel as if, from cradle to grave,

            someone, somewhere is promising to take care of us

 

From political ideology, to religious belief, to consumerism to capitalism,

            the range of options on offer to assuage our existential angst are huge.

 

We only have to spend a few minutes watching the adverts on the television

            to be bombarded with people offering to solve problems

we didn’t even know we had

                        until that moment the nice smiling person in the advert

                                    told us that they had now found the solution!

 

And of course, the reason that this is such a powerful

            and effective advertising method

    is that deep down, many of us latch in very easily at a subconscious level

                        to the idea that something is deeply wrong,

    and we long for someone to take care of us.

 

We long to feel safe and secure

            perhaps to recapture something of the safekeeping

felt by the small child we once were:

            with parents attentive to our every need

                        and the next feed only a screaming fit away…

 

But it’s not just the adverts offering to pander to our every desire,

            we live in a society which is inherently structured to take care of us:

 

The police are there, we are told, to keep our streets free of crime,

            and the health services work with the scientists

            to keep our bodies-illness free.

 

A plethora of diet plans and fitness classes

            promise to keep us young and beautiful forever

from spinning to zumba, from swimming to Pilates,

            we can exercise to our heart’s content

and hopefully its continued good health.

 

And then there’s the whole host of creams and ointments

            promising youthful looking skin into old age

            as the ‘wrinkles just melt away’.

 

Our insurance companies say they’ll always be there for us,

            whatever little accidents come along.

 

Our marriage partners promise to have us and to hold us

            till death us do part.

 

Our parents say they’ll always love and support their little baby.

            Our friends say they’ll stand by us come what may.

 

The preacher on the God channel

            promises cheap grace and easy salvation,

and we elect our politicians to represent us

            on their promise of taking our needs with them into government.

 

From compassionate conservatism to democratic socialism,

            from the nanny state to the big society.

From the personal to the national,

                        we are surrounded by people and institutions and ideologies

            all of whom are all too ready

                        to offer to care for us throughout our lives,

            all of whom will promise

                        to help us keep the wolf from the door.

 

And yet…

 

How cared for are we, really?

 

Ultimately, we still age,

            we still get sick and eventually die.

 

Marriages still fail,

            and parents grow frail.

 

Insurance companies declare an act of God,

            and decline to pay out.

 

Our streets show ample evidence of crime,

            and all too often the bad guys get away with it.

 

Politicians follow the whip,

            if they know what’s good for them,

            on their way to the front bench.

Countries go to war over self interest

    and nationalist ideologies.

 

And televangelists get richer,

            as their congregations pay for salvation.

 

Sometimes, it feels as if we are like sheep without a shepherd,

            lost amidst a bewildering array of promises,

                        unsure who to believe, and who to distrust,

            uncertain who to turn to for help when the going gets tough.

 

And let’s make no mistake about it, there’s plenty out there to distrust!

            there’s plenty out there to be afraid of.

 

As the current tragedy of war in the Ukraine so horrifically demonstrates,

            the wolves of the world circle around us,

                        just waiting for us to show our vulnerability

                        so that they can pounce.

 

And when they do,

            who is to care for us?

 

Don’t get me wrong,

            the police, the health services, the politicians,

            our friends, our families, our loved ones,

they all, at their best, do their best,

            and sometimes they do it very well.

 

But ultimately, when the wolf bites,

            sometimes the best they can do is to stand alongside us,

            holding our hand to comfort us,

                        as we find ourselves passing

through the valley of the shadow of death,

            facing that which we have so long sought to avoid.

 

And it’s at moments like this,

            when all other helpers melt away,

that Jesus’ words from John’s gospel

take on their most compelling meaning:

 

‘I am the good shepherd’ says Jesus,

            and ‘the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep’.

 

Jesus draws a distinction between a good shepherd

            who protects his sheep even unto death,

            and a hired hand who doesn’t own the sheep in his care

 

The hired hand, who is paid to protect the sheep,

            will ultimately fail them if the danger gets too real,

                        if the wolf gets too close.

 

The hired hand, however well intentioned,

            is never going to exercise the same care for the sheep

            as the shepherd who owns them and knows them by name.

 

Jesus description of himself as ‘the good Shepherd’

            is an image of great comfort

            for those facing times of darkness and difficulty in their lives.

And many have found great assurance in Jesus’ words

            when they have experienced the terror

            of being deserted by all other earthly consolations.

 

But this image is far more than simply an assurance

            for those who need comforting.

 

You see, the description of Jesus as the good shepherd,

            who lays down his life for the sheep,

offers a direct challenge

            to the way in which we have been conditioned

            to understand the very concept of care and protection.

 

The way the world typically works is that we enter into a contract

            with someone or something who promises to care of us.

 

We pay our taxes, and they pay the police,

            we collectively pay for the NHS,

            and then some individuals pay even more for private health care.

 

We pay our politicians and our insurance companies,

            we pay for our low fat cookbooks, our diet classes, our fitness groups.

 

We even speak of marriage as a contract.

 

We pay, we pay, we pay,

            and in return we receive that which we have bought,

            and we are cared for, protected, loved and looked after,

                        at least we are some of the time…

 

I want to suggest that the ideology behind much of this care

            is an ideology of death-avoidance:

We are paying to cheat death for another year,

            we are paying to sleep safely in our beds for another night.

 

And so we judge the success of the care we receive,

            by whether we make it through another day unscathed,

            through another year unharmed.

 

Yet all the while we creep closer to that point

            at which we will be deserted by the guardians

            with which we have so assiduously surrounded ourselves.

 

From the world’s perspective, death is so often seen as the ultimate failure:

            it’s the point at which our contracted protectors fail us,

            it’s the point at which our medical care has run its full course,

            it’s the point at which we are parted from our loved ones.

 

It is, if you like, the ultimate enemy,

            one we are told is to be avoided and postponed at all costs

 

But Jesus statement in John’s gospel

            forces us face-to-face with the brute reality of death.

because the care he offers us is not a care which avoids death,

            it is rather care which embraces death.

 

You see, he describes himself as

            the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

 

When the hound of death finally creeps up on us,

            and takes us in its jaws,

Jesus describes himself as the one, the only one, who will not desert us,

            because he himself is the one who journeys with us through death,

laying down his own life as we lay down ours,

            in order that as he takes up his life again through resurrection,

            so we too might enter into an experience

of new life which transcends death.

 

And in the face of protection like this,

            the wolf of death is rendered powerless.

 

Jesus isn’t simply talking here about some promise for beyond the grave,

            some kind of ‘pie in the sky when you die’ vision of heaven.

 

Rather, the new life which Jesus offers,

            this new ‘quality of life’ which transcends even death,

is something which begins very much in the here and now.

 

Other carers may seek to help us avoid death,

            but ultimately they are simply postponing the inevitable,

            whilst at best easing our journey towards it.

 

Whereas the image of Jesus as the one who exercises care,

                        by himself dying,

            is something altogether of a different order,

because it allows us to enter with him,

            into a new quality of life.

            where death is no longer the enemy to be feared,

                        a wolf to be dodged.

 

Eternal life in Christ, is something that radically affects

            the way we live our lives in the present.

 

And the effect of this is one of release,

            as we are freed from our oh-so-human compulsion

                        to see death as failure,

                                    death as defeat,

                                                death as the enemy.

 

            And instead we are enabled to see our whole lives,

                        from birth to death, as a gift from God,

                                    which has an eternal quality in Christ,

                        and is unconstrained to three score years and ten.

 

The significance of this is that who we are today is therefore of eternal value:

            who we are, even now, is held fast within God’s eternity,

because eternal life is ours today,

            it is ours as a result of the care offered by the good shepherd,

            who lays down his life for the sheep.

 

This way of looking at the world has the potential

            to radically alter the way in which we structure society,

                        including those parts of it

which we might call our ‘care systems’.

 

So I wonder what a health service would look like,

            which was predicated on the notion of a good death,

                        rather than automatically seeing death

as the enemy to be avoided,

            and which was focussed on wholeness of living,

                        rather than simply sickness management.

 

I wonder what a police force would look like,

            which was predicated on the concept of promoting justice,

                        rather than punishing wrongdoing,

            and which sought restoration

                        rather than exercising retribution.

 

I wonder what a political system would look like,

            which systemically recognised the eternal value of each human life,

            wherever that life was located on the planet,

and which sought peace and equality between humans

            as its first priority,

rather than the protection of national interest

            at the expense of those less fortunate than ourselves.

 

This way of living has the capacity to transform society,

            and it begins with us.

 

Those who are cared for by the good shepherd

            have entered into a fullness of life,

which offers a prophetic witness to the wider society

            that there is an alternative way of being human,

where death is not the ultimate enemy,

            and self preservation is not the ultimate goal.

 

The experience of abundant life, eternal life, ‘life in all its fullness’,

            comes to us as the gift of the good shepherd.

 

But it would be wrong of me to imply that it is cost free!

 

Certainly, Jesus never demanded nor demands money

            in exchange for the fullness of life that he offers,

and any who seek to sell wholeness of life in Christ

            are placing themselves at odds

with his free gift of abundant life available to all.

 

But, as I said, there is a cost;

            because entering into life eternal

            means entering into the life of Christ,

who asks us to give ourselves for others,

            just as he has already given himself for us.

 

This is no invoice we can pay and be done with,

            it is rather a call on all that we are,

            all that we do, and all that we have;

a call to begin to live lives dedicated to others,

            and to seeing them also entering into the free gift of abundant life,

            that has been so graciously given to us.

 

Jesus is very clear that the gift of life eternal

            is not something that people have the liberty of keeping to themselves,

and so he says that he also has other sheep that do not belong to this fold.

 

In the context of the first century, he was talking about the fact

            that the message of life eternal was not something just for the Jews,

            but was also a gift that must be given to the gentiles.

 

And in our context, it is similarly not something

                        just for those who come to church Sunday by Sunday,

            but it is also a gift for those who have never been near a church,

                        and may never do so.

 

This gift of abundant living, that comes through the care of the good shepherd,

            is good news for all.

And we who have received this gift,

            are those who must also take that gift and share it with others,

            through our words, by our deeds, and with our whole lives.

 

But as we do so, we bear witness to a new way of being human,

            which offers the world beyond our walls

            a profound and prophetic message of hope,

which has the capacity to transform lives

            and renew society,

as others enter into the care of the good shepherd

            and receive the gift of life eternal.

 

As Jesus put it, slightly earlier in John’s gospel, in chapter 6 (v.39):

 

This is the will of him who sent me,

            that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me,

            but raise it up on the last day.

 

Nothing is lost,

            nothing is wasted.

No life is of no value,

            and each moment is of eternal worth.

 

This is the good news of Jesus Christ, the good shepherd.

 

Thanks be to God.