WHO'S IN?
John 10:7-18
I was never good at kickball. And if you wanted to be anybody at Pinewood Elementary School in Elkhart, Indiana in the early 1970s, you needed to be good at kickball. But I went anyway, before school, to join the kickball game. They had to pick you--they always picked me last; I could never get a foot on that ball. It was--remember--that rubberized ball that was sort of soft but if you were there at close range in dodge ball and got hit, you'd have a welt on your chest the whole day? I think they still have those rubber balls around, but...I could never kick it, so I was always out in the outfield, just kind of waiting in the desolate asphalt out there.
And one day, I saw that thing arcing toward me, that rubber ball. It was Ken Neil who had kicked it--he was one of the biggest kids in school and great at kickball. There it was arcing toward me. And nine times out of ten when this happened, it would kind of rattle around my two arms and chest and pop out. But I saw that thing way up there, and I was way out in the outfield, because never--nothing ever came to me--and I caught it that day. And there was applause. People couldn't believe that Vamos caught the ball. I was "in" that day--I was among the people who were good at kickball! People slapped my back in the hallway. It felt good to be "in" that day!
Until the next day, when there was a low looper up in the...and I kind of swaggered with this newfound confidence thinking, "I'm a new person. I'm good at kickball now." Then it bounced around in my arms, and popped out.
I was "out" again.
You know I tell that story because I think, as adults, we might sometimes be under the illusion that we have left the playground behind. When--I think if we're honest with ourselves--when we become adults we simply enter a bigger playground, with more sophisticated rules about who's "in' and who's "out," and how we can belong in that culture. So that's what I want to reflect with you about this morning. What it means, for us as human beings, to belong. And what it means for us as we try to practice this Christian faith--to belong. We're going to use John 10 as our prism in looking at that issue. I call this sheep and shepherd Sunday. It rolls around this Sunday every year, when we reflect on the symbol of Jesus as good shepherd and the kind of ambiguous metaphor of community that is meant by being a part of a "sheepfold." And what that means for us as Christians, when we come into this place, to try to practice a different kind of community and find a different kind of belonging than the sort of community we sometimes find outside these walls. How is this different from what goes on outside? How do we belong?
Those of you who have studied psychology may remember a guy named Abraham Maslow, who established his famous hierarchy of human needs. It's interesting that right above the basic needs for human life--physical needs--and safety needs (and very closely related to safety needs) our highest psychological need is our need to belong. It's innate in our anthropology as human beings to want to belong. So we're going to pick that apart a little bit, and do a sort of anthropological analysis this morning about that. How do we attempt to find that and fulfill that need as human beings?
To use the language of John 10: if we want to belong, our attempt as human beings is to find a flock. Of course we've heard there's safety in numbers--you could say we also find belonging in numbers. By finding a flock of people who are--who share with us common meaning and a sense of belonging.
A couple aspects to this business of our attempt to find a flock--and they may seem obvious, but it's important to pick them apart. First as we try to find belonging in the flock, of course, we try to find a flock with people like us. Or people we want to be like: a flock of people who are good at playing kickball--that's the flock that I wanted to be a part of when I was a kid. But being part of a flock requires that we find folks who are like us. Maybe they share the same blood, and familial ties are the means through which we find a flock. Or the same nation--a nation can be a flock. But it requires that there's some shared value, or sameness involved. So that's thing one; a flock requires that people be alike.
Thing two is: to find a flock in which we belong requires that the flock have boundaries that demarcate who's "in" and who's "out." And let's face it: there's something about our belonging that requires others to be "out," so that we can be "in." We find our sense of belonging, let's face it, because sometimes we want things to be exclusive. Right? We're "in" because others are "out." Woody Allen, in I think it was in Annie Hall, is famous for having said, "I would never want to join a club that would have me as a member." I've always loved that line. It really points out the irony of this attempt to find belonging in places where not everybody can get in. And so I feel my sense of self-worth because of the exclusiveness of my flock, so to speak.
And maybe all of this analysis seems a bit simple, but I think you can't really understand the New Testament unless you have this sort of very basic anthropological lens through which to look at the scriptures. And if you look at the scriptures through that lens, then you start to see just how radical Jesus of Nazareth is. Because Jesus exploded the idea that belonging requires that we draw boundaries for the purpose of keeping others out. Jesus ushers in a different kind of belonging.
For example, in the first century, in the time of Jesus and in his culture, it was a huge deal who you sat at table with. And you think today it's not a big deal who we sit down to table with. But then, especially if you were a pious Jew, you couldn't sit down at table with just anybody. They had to follow the same rules; they had to be in your flock. They had to wash their hands in a certain way, and eat a certain kind of food. And the scandal about Jesus was--everyone thought of him as a holy man--but he ate with anybody. He ate with prostitutes! And the most notorious people in that culture: tax collectors. And sinners. And all manner of folk! He wasn't following the rules. In a certain sense you could say that Jesus, in announcing the Kingdom of God, which is what we as a church try to pattern ourselves after, that way of being together was kind of the anti-club. Jesus sought out the non-belongers in that culture: people who were on the fringes. He wanted to be in the clubs that nobody wanted to be a part of. And that is the basis for community, if we're living in the Kingdom of God (which is how Jesus refers to this type of community not in John, but in the other gospels).
Jesus ushers in a sort of radical belonging, where you don't have to do anything, or be anything, to get in. You don't have to be of a certain race or clan. You don't even have to be a certain religion. (There's a big one--we can talk about that one some more later.) You don't have to be of a certain income level, or sexual orientation; you don't have to play kickball well, to get in. In Paul's words, as he was celebrating this radical spirit of belonging, the church is characterized by the fact that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, in Christ, for we are all one in Jesus Christ. The metaphor in John 10 communicates that this community consists simply of those who follow the voice of the shepherd. And so in a certain sense it's not about how we belong, what we have to do to belong to this club--but to whom we belong. This community of motley folk simply consists of those who say, "I belong to this shepherd. The good shepherd."
The Heidelberg Catechism, which I think was written in the 16th century, that FAQ of the Christian faith--one of the questions, one of the most famous questions, is, "What is your only hope in life and in death?" And the answer given, "That I belong body and soul not to myself, but to my faithful savior, Jesus Christ." So it's not about how we belong; it's about to whom we belong.
And you may be surprised to hear me say that the Christian community is a gated community, if we can use the language of John 10. I want to play around with that metaphor a little bit--the gate. There are boundaries around this community. But the important thing to say is they are boundaries not to keep other people out, but they are there simply because not everyone is willing to hang out with us yet. Not everyone is willing to "throw in" with a community of folk that includes: prostitutes and homemakers; bankers and homeless folk; alcoholics and perfectionists; cheaters and saints; where everyone finds oneness through this common shepherd. Not everyone is "in" yet; there are boundaries; and there is a gate. But the thing is, we can forget that we're not in charge of the gate. We get confused about that. In the words of this text, we read that Christ is the gate. I want to pick apart that metaphor just a little bit.
In the first century, if you're a shepherd, usually what you do at night is you'd get the sheep into the enclosure. And often the shepherd would literally sleep at the threshold where the sheep went in and came out--to protect the sheep from wolves, and wild animals. That's the image we have of this shepherd, who is there not to keep people out, but in fact to gather people in. One of the lines in this scripture text, if you were listening closely, is the following, "There are other sheep not of this fold, and I must bring them in." To me, I think that's one of the most radical statements in the New Testament, because it calls into question, "Who's going to get in?" That was the thing that people nailed me on when I came before this Presbytery before I was installed. "Is everybody going to get in?" And I said, "If we're going to follow the trajectory of grace all the way out, we have to say that Christ is powerful enough a shepherd to shepherd everyone."
And we don't know who's getting in. Our job as a community is simply to say that we're in this community of people who've been called together by this shepherd, and our job is trying to get everybody in here to share in this spirit of love, characterized by a shepherd who's willing to give up his life for the sheep.
I think that that's our job as a community. To try to, in an imperfect way, be the community that practices that kind of love. And to shepherd people in that same kind of way. In a certain sense, if we are to hear that voice together, we need not to base our sense of community on the fact that people here are alike; we need, in fact, to be like the shepherd, and try to invite everybody in.
I want to speak to the elephant in the room now. The elephant in the meetinghouse. In the--in the congregational self-study report that you did before you called me, one of the things that occurs several times in that document is the notion that it's a pretty diverse crowd here, in terms of perspective. Democrats and Republicans worshipping together; and a there's a true spirit of invitation and welcome here. But it's also, in that self-study, indicated that people are troubled about the fact that it's somewhat monochromatic here in this church. People refer to this as the "big white church in the middle of town." And I'm saying that with some levity, but I don't know that we want that moniker! We need perhaps to pay attention to what it would mean to incarnate that kind of love that has gathered us together, that is always seeking to bring others who are not like us to be part of this motley crew, this community. How do we base our sense of community not on sameness, but on our sense of shared grace, and a common shepherd?
I once heard of a church that had a very simple mission statement, one that I really like. Their mission statement was this: "we love everybody." I love that. It's very simple. And of course, they didn't fulfill it perfectly, I'm sure. People bug us. We don't ever love people perfectly. But it describes what we're about, and what we attempt to do, and what they're shooting for. It seems to me that that might be something for us to consider, as our mission statement. First to be loved by the one who loved everyone--the good shepherd who gave up his life for the sheep, that we might know life abundant. Perhaps our church might do well to try to reflect that same kind of love that includes and invites everyone.
So, apropos of the youth sermon last Sunday, I'm going to end on a question today. My question is: do you hear that voice of the shepherd? And who will you be sitting next to, this week?
Amen.
April 29, 2007
Jeff Vamos
e-mail