May 8, 2022: Belonging
John 10:22-30
Rev. Rhonda Blevins
At that time the Festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “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. 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. My Father, in regard to what he has given me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”
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Have you heard about rent prices lately? The Tampa Bay Times reported in March 2022 that: “Supply shortages last year caused average rent prices in the region to increase by 28 percent.”[1] Just this week they reported that “Tampa Bay has the 3rd most ‘overvalued’ rent prices.”[2] This is not good news if you’re a renter, but if you’re a landlord, sing with me: “We’re in the money! We’re in the money!”
You may not know this, but I’m a landlord. I’ve decided some evictions need to happen. It won’t be easy, but it has to be done. You see, I have a lot of voices living rent-free in my head. Rent-free! And that’s valuable property! I’ve been letting these voices live there for years, but I am determined to get them out of there.
Are there any voices living rent-free in your head? I going to venture a guess and answer, “Yes.”
What I mean when I talk about the “voices living rent-free in your head” is your inner critic. Negative self-talk. Hate-full thoughts that claw forth from the compost pile of shame. These voices tell us that we’re flawed in some way—that we don’t deserve love, that we’re not worthy of belonging. None of us are immune—male or female, boy or girl. These shame-based voices are often playing on an infinite loop, keeping us down, holding us back, telling us things like: “You’re not enough: you’re not smart enough or rich enough or pretty enough or young enough or talented enough. You can’t, because you’re not enough.”
But there is another voice in our heads. Sometimes we can’t hear it because the peanut gallery of negative voices is so loud. It’s the voice of Christ.
So one day Jesus was at the Temple during Hanukkah. Some Jews gathering around him asked him point-blank: “Are you the Messiah? Don’t keep us in suspense.” (You might remember that they wanted a Messiah who would lead a violent uprising against the Roman occupation.) Jesus doesn’t give them a straight yes or no. Instead, listen to how he replies: “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. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”
My sheep hear my voice.
There’s a winsome video about sheep and shepherds on YouTube. It looks like someone made it with their phone. It’s in a pastoral setting, and as it begins, you see a herd of sheep grazing in a field. A group of middle-school age kids appear to be on a field trip to a farm, and they’re testing whether the sheep will respond to the vocal commands of someone other than the shepherd. One by one, one school kid after another steps up to the fence and tries to call the sheep to come, only to be completely ignored by the sheep. The sheep just keep grazing. You can hear the kids off camera laughing at their classmate’s failed shepherding attempt. Finally, the actual shepherd steps up and begins to call the sheep. The sheep stop their grazing immediately and look up at the shepherd. And with the next command from the shepherd, the sheep run over to him at once, and the school kids are amazed.[3]
You see, the sheep know the shepherd’s voice. They trust their shepherd. They belong to their shepherd’s fold, and because of the trust, because of the relationship, because they belong to him and he to them, the sheep associate good things with the shepherd like food and protection and care. It’s Pavlovian. It’s subconscious. It’s automatic.
Jesus compares his followers to sheep. When we’re new to the fold, we don’t know the Shepherd’s voice too well, so we imitate what the other sheep do. In terms of faith, when we’re new to the faith, we imitate the Christians around us.
I remember when I was a young Christian, for instance, this imitating other Christians meant that I had some questionable tastes in music. I went through this phase where I was convinced it was less holy to listen to “secular” music than Christian music. Only (really bad) Christian music for me! In college, it seemed that the “real” Christians carried around their Bibles with them in their backpacks. So alongside my 8-pound anatomy and physiology textbook and my 7-pound English literature textbook, I had my 10-pound Bible too. The bigger the Bible the better the Christian! (And I wonder why I have neck issues today!) You get my point. This is what “real” Christians did, so I did it too. It would take me several hours to tell you all the stupid, even embarrassing stuff I did in my attempts to be pious.
But eventually I hung around the herd long enough, and I grew to recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd. And because I started recognizing the voice of Christ, I began to distinguish the difference between faith-acting and faith-living. My inner commitment became more important than performative Christianity.
I explained this once to a new Christian who came to my house years after I had grown out of my self-righteous phase. This person knew I was a minister; she was surprised that there weren’t a bunch of crosses or pictures of Jesus and whatnot all over my house. “It’s more about the person of Jesus than the props of Jesus,” I gently explained.
Jesus once warned Jerusalem’s finest about outward piety:
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matthew 23:25-28)
How can we make sure we’re not like the Pharisees? By listening to the voice of Jesus. The longer we follow Christ, the more attuned we become to the whispers of the Holy Spirit.
There’s an Old Testament story about Elijah on the side of the mountain. And a giant wind came by, but the Lord wasn’t in it. A huge earthquake shook the ground, but the Lord wasn’t in it. A roaring fire blazed through, but the Lord wasn’t in it. You know what the Lord was in? The still, small voice that followed the tornado, the earthquake, and the forest fire.[4]
It’s the voice that tells us we belong. That we are God’s and God is ours. The voice of the Holy Spirit is the voice of compassion. We must first be able to hear this voice of empathy and love directed inwardly, towards ourselves, before we can extend any kind of authentic compassion outwardly.
Brené Brown, a PhD researcher out of the University of Texas, suggests that our inner critic, the voice of shame, can’t survive once we can begin to tell ourselves that those negative, critical voices aren’t true. Brown suggests giving your inner critic a name. She dubbed her inner critic, “Gremlin.” Going with 80’s movie theme (you remember the movie “Gremlins”?) You might go with something darker, more sinister, like Cujo, or more playful like Ursula from “The Little Mermaid.” When you name your inner critic, you can tell it, “Ok Cujo or Ursula or Gremlin, you can hush.” And if you can get Cujo to hush for a hot minute, you might be able to hear and feel the voice of God.
I like to use the language, “I can find my place of compassion.” That’s where we remember love: that God loves us, that we belong to God and God belongs to us. And we can become one with Love inside us. And we can say, like Jesus, “The Father and I are one.” We can tap into great strength and power when we recognize that belonging is our birthright.
Here’s why this matters in light of what’s happening in the world, in our country and beyond. These are trying times. So much is happening so quickly—one disturbing news story after another. Stories that, in previous generations, would have been the top story running for a month straight is replaced the next day with something just as egregious and threatening. I don’t think this is going to change any time soon. It seems doubtful that we’ll wake up one day in the near future and these existential threats will have resolved. Rather, we live in a world where (metaphorically speaking) every day there’s a new tornado, or earthquake, or forest fire happening around us. It’s hard to find God’s voice in all of that because (guess what?) God’s voice isn’t in all of that.
Where is God’s voice?
Inside.
Not in the swirling, booming, raging around us. And certainly not in the negative, hate-full voices living rent-free in our heads. The voice of worry. The voice of woe.
No. Deeper.
The place of compassion. It’s in you. In fact, it’s the core of your being. The place of deep belonging and oneness. It tells you that you ARE enough. It reminds you that you are never alone, and that nothing—nothing can ever snatch you out of God’s loving hand.
The journey is not somewhere out there. God’s Spirit resides in you. That’s the place of compassion. The journey to belonging is not somewhere out there. The journey to belonging is somewhere inside.
I close with a poem by Mary Oliver entitled, “The Journey.”
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
[1] https://www.tampabay.com/news/business/2022/03/03/tampa-bay-rents-to-get-worse-before-they-get-better-experts-say/
[2] https://www.tampabay.com/news/real-estate/2022/05/04/tampa-bay-has-the-3rd-most-overvalued-rent-prices-study-finds/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e45dVgWgV64
[4] 1 Kings 19:11-13