Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

John 10:22-30

You might have seen this on Facebook.

Picture of tenth graders in steeple ON screen.

On Wednesday, the recently confirmed tenth grade class picked up an old tradition, not always sanctioned but this year official, to climb up a narrow circular stairway and two metal ladders to the first level of the steeple. It has been a few years since I’ve been up there, and I began to worry if it was safe enough to have the whole group. What if one of them slips on that last big step of the ladder? Would they crowd together too much or get silly, inadvertently pushing one over the edge? How high is that balcony, anyway? Is the railing up to code? Do I want to be the shepherd remembered as the one who lost a few tenth graders? My wondering became worry, and then fear, than a loud voice in my head. The irony is that I’ve been up there before, and I know it’s just fine. I just forgot when I realized I would be the one responsible for the climb.

When do we have that first inkling that things can go wrong; that we can tumble over some kind of edge? That it’s possible to be lost or left behind or snatched away from the thing that we thought was holding us? The “what if” comes from an amazing brain and this deep, common sense of fragility and loneliness. Feeling it, knowing it, or seeing it is painful. A lot of us try really hard to avoid it, or to pretend it’s not true. We can run all the way up into a steeple of a disaster by getting stuck on what’s possible, rather than what’s probable.

We’re afraid of feeling vulnerable so we bluster, blame, and stockpile weapons; we demean and exile those who remind us that we all come from the same place. We order enough from Amazon that the boxes alone can build a dam to keep it contained. We’re afraid of what our children will face in the world. We’re afraid because we know that so many things can go either way, and we might be responsible for it. We’re even get afraid, because, despite 500 years of standing on “grace alone,” when death if just around the corner, we wonder, “What if Luther was wrong?”  It’s not about grace. Maybe St. Peter isn’t the one who shows up to bring resurrection to Dorcas, but this guy who is at a gate with a clipboard that includes our final grade. According to all the jokes, which are often a reflection of anxieties, heaven operates on a pass-fail system.

Writers in the third century began to use the term Original Sin to describe that sense of common separation, vulnerability, and responsibility. The Christian tradition ended up running up so many narrow stairwells with that concept. However, we got to bring along original sin’s twin sibling, Original Blessing, so the voice of the church sounded like it needed to tell everyone how bad they are. When I was growing up, the first words the people ever spoke on communion Sundays was this:

O Almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended Thee and justly deserve Thy temporal and eternal punishment. (The Lutheran Hymnal, page 16.)

Uffda. That’s a rough way to say hello.

Maybe that language worked in previous generations to catapult us into grace. But a whole generation stopped listening to the church because all they heard was that humans are rotten to the core, and deep down (probably because someone embodied love along the way) they knew that this was not the voice of the shepherd. The Good Shepherd wouldn’t wait to gather you in until you were sufficiently ashamed of yourself. The Good Shepherd wouldn’t be so focused on personal, private behavior and ignore entire patterns of injustice, violence and cruelty. The Good Shepherd wouldn’t tell their queer or non-binary friends that they are disordered. The Good Shepherd would love everyone, not just a few.

Ironically, they left the church because they could discern the voice of the shepherd. The writer of First John summarizes John’s whole school of thought by saying, “God is love. Whoever loves is born of God and knows God.” As I heard on scrolling video that I can’t find again: “If Jesus got you, girl, you ain’t gotta worry. You safe.”

Maybe our first words need to be more like: Okay, before we dive into the good, the bad, and the ugly of being a real human, listen carefully to Jesus: No one will snatch them out of my hand. Paul said it this way, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” If you’re breathing, you’re in the God who was one with Jesus. If you’re alive, you are in the flow of eternal life. Human birth may convince us somewhere deep down that we’re separate from the Mother’s waters, but baptism washes over us in the name of the One God, Mother of us all. It’s no accident that Psalm 95 is supposed to be sung every morning. “We are the people of God’s pasture, and the sheep of God’s hand.” We need that voice in our heads when we start.

We may have moments as “poor, miserable sinners,” but we’re still sheep. Jesus’ sheep aren’t any different than any other humans. [And, by the way, don’t hear this text read to mean that Christians hear the true voice and Jews don’t. There’s a whole history of antisemitism with these kind of verses.] We all climb, both getting and not getting it. The ones who recognize the shepherd aren’t necessarily the one who name Jesus out loud as the Messiah; they’re the ones who abide in love and try to let it flow right through. By the way, listening and letting it flow through is a group project, not an individual task. It takes every one of us, of all different shapes, sizes, cultures, bodies, ways of experiencing the world, love, and every wonky or weird thing about any of us.

I’m a pastor, ironically a word that means shepherd, not because I’m more like Jesus, but because enough people in my church and family let it flow around me, so much so that at my confirmation Sunday, when we received communion for the first time back then, I heard the promise.  Love is “for you.” Despite all the voices, both within and around me, there was another one: The Body of Christ, given for you.”  I do this work because I want you to hear and to trust with your whole being that you are in the hand of Christ. God’s got you. Don’t be afraid.

All of us want to remember that, and we’re here, either because we’ve been conditioned to listen for it, or we need someone to tell us about it. It’s part of our strategy to tune out all the words that snatch love, life, goodness from us, and especially the most vulnerable and the poor. Right now, so many know that they are losing something, that the world, the country, our future has fundamentally changed. That might be true.

If we can practice listening together, we’ll start to recognize the voice of the shepherd everywhere. Possibly in this morning, even at a business meeting between services.

Picture of the steeple in which you can see the class high up on the balcony.

For sure last Wednesday night when those Tenth graders climbed up in the steeple. They did all crowd together on the south side of the steeple, calling hello to people walking by, “nice car” to the guy in the convertible, waving to people who couldn’t hear them, one singing, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” Tenth graders looking out over the edge, the neighborhood, St. Paul and Minneapolis, and sending out expressions of joy, silliness, and a desire to connect with everyone who was passing by.

They were channeling the voice of the shepherd. I suspect they might not have even known that. You could sense something good, something eternal, was flowing. So much in life snatches away our confidence or our trust, but every now and then, our spirit self recognizes that the voice of love is being spoken and we get a chance to tune our life to its harmony and come down the stairs and back into a world that needs to know:

God’s got you. Ain’t no letting go. Alleluia! Christ is risen. Christ is risen, indeed. Alleluia!