St. Patrick: Intimacy with God

Two Worlds Have Come Together Today Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A, 5/11/14

Episcopal Church of the Ascension The Reverend Dr. Howard J. Hess

I. Introduction. Two worlds have come together today, and we are all the richer for it. In the world of the church, this is Good Shepherd Sunday in which the lectionary readings lead us to a focus upon Jesus as the Good Shepherd. In the world of our culture, this Sunday is Mother’s Day, a time set aside to honor and remember our mothers, grandmothers, and others who have mothered and cared for us in life-giving ways. Now all too often, what is happening in the church is seen as being detached and disconnected from all that is transpiring in the culture around us. I believe that the tendency to dichotomize church and culture is false and in fact damaging. You see the church, as the Body of Christ is to be leavening the culture; lifting up and re-enforcing what is sacred, while at the same time standing up against what is destructive and damaging to God’s creation.

II. This week an event took place in our culture that caught the attention of many of us. I want to lift up this event this morning. A basketball player for the Oklahoma City Thunder ~ Kevin Durant ~ was given the NBA Most Valuable Player of the Year Award (MVP). In his acceptance speech he began by thanking his coach and teammates. But it was the last three minutes of his speech in which he honored his mother that has attracted attention. Kevin was filled with emotion as he spoke. Please listen now to Kevin words in his own voice and take note of the specific things he thanks his mother for. You will hear some applause in the middle of this recording that gave Kevin an opportunity to collect himself as well as know that the audience was with him.

(Tape) "And last, [I want to thank] my Mom. I don't think you know what you did. You had my brother when you were 18 years old. Three years later I came out. The odds were stacked against us. [You were a] Single parent with two boys by the time you were 21 years old.

"Everybody told us we weren't supposed to be here. We moved from apartment to apartment by ourselves. One of the best memories I have is when we moved into our first apartment. No bed, no furniture, and we just all sat in the living room and just hugged each other because we thought we made it.

"When something good happens to you, I don't know about you guys, but I tend to look back to what brought me here. You woke me up in the middle of the night in the summer times. Making me run up a hill. Making me do push-ups. Screaming at me from the sidelines at my games at eight or nine years old.

"We weren't supposed to be here. You made us believe. You kept us off the street; put clothes on our backs, food on the table. When you didn't eat, you made sure we ate. You went to sleep hungry. You sacrificed for us. You're the real MVP."

Last, I’d like to thank God again. He is the first and the last. Alpha and Omega. I thank you for saving my life.”

III. With all that is negative, judgmental, and harsh in our daily news, I for one am grateful for the positive punctuation this news story provided to me in the middle of my week. But more than that, I see a strong parallel between the gifts Kevin’s mother has given him and the extraordinary gifts Jesus Christ, The Good Shepherd, gives us. I don’t know how many of you might be aware, but the image of the Good Shepherd was the most frequently used symbol in the early church. In the catacombs and on archeological sites there is early and very frequent use of the picture of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. It had great significance to the early Christians. I believe that is so because of the incredible, deep love depicted in this image of Jesus. One of the women in the Wednesday Lectionary Study pointed out that this Gospel image is really a very intimate metaphor.

Jesus Christ is not a distant, detached historical figure. He is alive, and he is passionate about loving and caring for us. In John, Jesus is both the shepherd and the gate. He is the way for us to enter into safe, protected space, and he is the way for us to leave that space when it is time to venture forth into the larger world. And is this not exactly what good parenting is all about ~ to provide safety while we are vulnerable and not yet able to recognize danger for ourselves? And then to open the way for us to venture forth to be fed by our growing understanding, our dreams, our discoveries, and by the love of others?

Interestingly, Jesus is both the gate and the shepherd in this reading. Now I must admit I don’t know much about the profession of shepherding. But this is what I am told. Shepherding is very hard work. The shepherd must be constantly vigilant in caring for the sheep. There are predators and there are ravines and thickets where sheep can get trapped. And then there are the “special sheep” ~ the special sheep often just don’t listen. They are more stubborn than the rest; they wander off over and over again and repeatedly require disaster prevention and, when that fails, rescue efforts on the part of the shepherd. Does this sound familiar to any of us here? Could it have been that some of us were the “special sheep” in our families? And could it have been our mothers, grandmothers, and those who cared for us whose faith in us and their interventions on our behalf ultimately kept us from falling off a cliff? If you are here with your mother, grandmother, or someone else who has cared for you in this way, just look at them now and quietly say “Thank you.”

IV. There are abundant other parallels between the Good Shepherd and good mothers. One such parallel is the willingness to sacrifice. Kevin thanked his mother for going to bed hungry so that he and his brother could go to sleep with their stomachs filled. Jesus Christ was willing to sacrifice and die on the cross for us. Another powerful parallel is the experience of “being known.” The Hebrew term for “knowing” is not primarily cognitive. It is a knowing of the heart and often used to refer to the relationship between a husband and a wife. One of the great yearnings of the human heart is to be truly and fully known ~ to be known so well that in all our originality and quirkiness we are understood. This is the way Jesus the Good Shepherd knows each of us ~ heart to heart. When affection is expressed in the Middle East, often this is the gesture ~ heart to heart.

V. Conclusion. In the deepest way, what I hope you remember about this Mothers’ Day is that you took another step in “knowing” how much God loves you. One of my professors in seminary taught us that every created being reflects, exemplifies, some aspect of who God is. Each plant, each animal, and each human being reflects God in singular profound ways. I believe that our mothers, grandmothers, and others who love us like mothers reflect the unconditional love that God has for us. This is not an abstract, theologically defined love, but a gritty day-in and day-out love that sustains us.

You know, one of the things that most moved me about Kevin’s remarks is that he made them so publicly and brought such honor to his mother for sacrifice the world often does not know or reward. Recall his words to the audience: "When something good happens to you, I don't know about you guys, but I tend to look back to what brought me here.” Today I would ask you to ponder upon who has brought you to this Mother’s Day 2014; and before the day is ended, I would ask you to write or speak a paragraph of thank you to those who have loved you into life. If that person or persons is still living, share these words of thanks with them. If they have died, tell them by saying the words out loud and reflecting upon them as you do so. We all have known God’s unconditional love for us ~ and one of the ways we know that love has been and still is, in the relationships with those who have loved us into life. Thanks be to God.