April 25, 2010 Des Moines

John 10:22–30

Safely in Hand

On his newest album, David Wilcox, one of my favorite singer-songwriters who has sung in concert in this very room, makes this observation:

In the future that we used to imagine
The one they pictured in those old magazines
Their tomorrow-land is so old fashioned
A delusion of the modern dream
But they had a skyway to the city towers
And we're still rocking over stones and tar
I've been crawling down the freeway for hours
I want my fusion-powered flying car

This ain't the modern world that I  remember
The one they promised all us boys and girls
This ain't the vision that the artist rendered
What happened to my modern world?

They said my leisure time was gonna be cooler
I'd have my holographic TV phone
And we'd be cooking in our
One Button kitchen
In our aluminum dymaxion home
With the enlightened ones
leading the nations
Bringing peace around the world at last
A utopia of cooperation
Where injustice is a thing of the past

What happened, indeed? Which is not to say that the modern world is the same old “sixes and sevens”. It may not be what we expected, but it is a long way from what we used to know.

· Just think about how different are our patterns of communication from what they were only 10 years ago – 5 years ago. Emailing is already so “yesterday.”

· We may not be commuting in fusion-powered flying car ala George Jetson, but the cars we do have now boast multiple DVD entertainment centers, satellite radio, internet hotspots, park assist automatic steering, moisture sensing windshield wipers, GPS guidance systems and, of course, multiple cup holders.

· My iPod, less than half the size of a deck of cards currently holds close to 12,000 songs – with the capacity of something 3-4-thousand more.

· Think about those old tape-spinning, card-spitting computers that used to fill up whole rooms and try to comprehend that probably ten times – maybe a hundred times – their computing power is packaged in a common smart phone currently vibrating in dozens of purses and pockets in this room.

With everything spinning and evolving so rapidly around us it’s easy to feel like pop singer Del Amitri who sang a few years ago of that sensation of “...driving with the brakes on” and “...swimming with your boots on...” We understand that dynamic of “drag” – of feeling somehow too encumbered to make much forward progress.

It is an understandable sensation because rapid change is not just taking place in our imagination and our technology. It’s occurring everywhere we look. And change begets other changes. During the meeting of the General Board of the Christian Church last week in Indianapolis our General Minister and President Sharon Watkins called attention to the morphic nature of this time in which we are living, describing it as a time of seismic change. It is, she noted, borrowing the language of Ronald Heifetz, the Harvard scholar on leadership, a time of “adaptive challenge” when more than a little tinkering and tweaking will suffice. “Everything must change,” insists emergent church leader Brian McLaren. Spiritual sage Phyllis Tickle describes ours as a once every 500 years time of change, the last of which was the protestant Reformation and the invention of the printing press.

Listening to her reflect on this time in history that we are occupying, I thought of the divine pronouncement near the end of the book of Revelation that “behold, I am making all things new...” and how the thought of that can be both exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time.

Here, then, we are; at a time when everything is changing. Well, almost everything. At least one thing is not changing, according to the story in front of us: that we are inextricably held in the palm of the shepherd’s hand.

Jesus’ affirmation came in the midst of conflict – as important affirmations so often do. He was walking, according to the story, in a particular area of the Jerusalem Temple called Solomon’s Portico, named after Israel’s poster child for wisdom, during the annual celebration of the Festival of Lights – what we know as Hanukah – which commemorates the care of God in the midst of revolution. Some there approached Jesus and just huffed right out with the question:

"How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." Jesus answered, "I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.

In other words, you don’t know the answer to the question you are raising because you aren't paying attention. It’s something like the response Jesus gave, albeit on gentler terms, to the disciples of John who had sent them to Jesus with instructions to find out if he – Jesus – were the one for whom they had been waiting, or should they look elsewhere. According to Luke, Jesus responded, “Well, let me answer you this way: Go and tell John what you have seen and heard, that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them” (Luke 7:18-23).

It’s as if to say, “my actions speak for themselves. Take a look, and draw your own conclusion.”

Unfortunately, the questioners in the Temple that day had been listening with their ears instead of their eyes, and the language that Jesus had been speaking was action – demonstration, not intellection. It’s a common confusion. Comprehension and apprehension -- really “getting it” – will never come from mental calculation alone.

Anthony DeMello once told a parable about an explorer who returned to his people after a time in the Amazon. The people were eager to know about what he had seen, but “how could he ever put into words the feelings that flooded his heart when he saw exotic flowers and heard the night-sounds of the forests; when he sensed the danger of wild beasts or paddled his canoe over treacherous rapids? So he told them, “Go and find out for yourselves.”

To guide them he drew a map of the river. They pounced upon the map. They framed it in their Town Hall. They made copies of it for themselves. And all who had a copy considered themselves experts on the river, for did they not know its every turn and bend, how broad it was, how deep, where the rapids were and where the falls? (“The Explorer” by Anthony DeMello, from the book Song of the Bird)

Biblical scholar Gary Jones muses that “many of us are still trying to exorcise the ghost of Descartes (‘I think, therefore I am’) by recognizing that we have relied overly much on the intellect as the primary faculty in the Christian life” (Gary D. Jones, Feasting on the Word, year C vol. 2 p. 448). But basing our understanding of Jesus on our intellect alone is a little like those townsfolk’s understanding of the Amazon. They had read the map but they hadn’t walked the roads. And we can memorize the teachings without ever knowing the teacher, but we will be driving with the brakes on; swimming with our boots on, and never getting more than part-way there.

Because the Good News is embedded. Not virtual or mere abstraction, It is always comes wrapped in flesh. Enacted, demonstrated, it is finally tactile; something like being held in a shepherd’s hand – a poignant image, given the fact that the hands of the shepherd who holds us are scarred with the prints of nails.

My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.

The world may be dizzying, indeed – changing faster than we can follow or comprehend. And despite all the claims of “new and improved,” we still feel grief and longing, fear and confusion. Loved ones still suffer and nations still rage. Feelings still bruise, hearts still break, and aspirations still get disappointed. But amidst the cacophony of it all, the voice of this good shepherd still reassuringly calls our name:

“I know you, and I hold you amidst eternity itself. I have you safely in hand, and no one nor nothing can loosen my grip.”

Thanks be to God.