No One Can Pluck Us From God’s Hand Preached on May 12th, 2019 At Wollaston Congregational Church Scripture: John 10:22-30 My earliest memories of childhood include afternoons in the St Peter’s Church Sunday School. The Victorian-era church felt very grand, and yet I always felt safe and welcome, in St Peter’s. The stained glass windows were appealing, with many images of Jesus as the good shepherd. The creaky and shiny pews with a place to kneel in prayer and the huge carved stone font at the entrance felt solid, permanent. At the back of the sanctuary the children’s corner provided a deep feeling of belonging. There were right-sized chairs, and lovingly chosen and well-thumbed books. One of my favorite hymns we sang frequently was “Loving Shepherd of Thy Sheep”: The first verse goes: “Loving Shepherd of thy sheep, Keep thy lamb in safety keep; nothing can thy power withstand, none can pluck me from thy hand.” “None can pluck me from thy hand” is the line that stuck. I didn’t need to imagine what being plucked from Jesus’ hand would really mean. I didn’t need to go there. I just needed to be reassured that it could never happen. In our gospel passage today, we hear of Jesus walking in the temple on the festival of the Dedication, what we now know as Hanukah. This holiday commemorates the re-dedication of the temple in Jerusalem following the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire. Judas Maccabeus was a Jewish guerrilla leader who resisted King Antiochus attempts to Hellenize Judea and co-opt the temple for his purposes. For many Jews of Jesus’ time, Maccabeus may well have been the embodiment of the Messiah. And so on the anniversary of the revolt and rededication, some 190 years on, some Judean religious men gather around Jesus and question him. They are getting a little irritated with the mystery around who Jesus is. They want him to tell them plainly, is he, or is he not the Messiah? They want certainty. Jesus’ response is characteristically enigmatic. His works and deeds tell the truth he says. Either they recognize him or they do not. Using the image of the shepherd yet again, he tells them “my sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me … No one will snatch them from my hand.” These are not words of certainty, but mystery. And yet there is assurance for those who believe they belong to Jesus’ flock. The sheep are safe with Jesus in the midst of uncertainty, safe to journey on and with him through whatever territory lies ahead. The safety ultimately lies in the promise of eternal life, with God and with Jesus, who are one in purpose. We would be wise to remember that the gospel of John was written for the early followers of Jesus, whose temple has been destroyed. Jerusalem has been razed to the ground. The body of Jesus, and the seemingly permanent, solid temple are gone. They must remember Jesus’ signs and works, and remind themselves that they belong to him through the darkest valleys. The Jesus movement will have a future, if they are willing to trust in these words of assurance. Recently I picked up a book called “Canoeing the Mountains” by Tod Bolsinger. This book recalls the adventures of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who attempted to explore the Louisiana Purchase in 1804. Their goal was to find the “Northwest Passage” from the Missisippi to the Pacific Ocean. The assumption of the expedition was that the landscape would continue to be relatively gentle to the west of the Mississippi. They would traverse the continent by river using canoes. After fifteen months of traveling upstream, the Rocky Mountains came into view. This was completely uncharted and unexpected territory. They had to rethink their expedition from the beginning. Canoes would not get them over this range of mountains, which was unlike anything they had seen before. The explorers hired a French Canadian trapper, Charbonneau, as a guide for the mountains. And yet it was Charbonneau’s wife, Sacagawea, a young native American woman who served as an invaluable guide and translator. She negotiated the purchase of horses for the expedition from her tribe, the Shoshone, and traveled with the party, even after she had given birth along the way. Lewis and Clark may not have expected the Rocky Mountains, but I’m quite sure they never expected their expedition to depend on the assistance of a native nursing mother. The author tells the story of Lewis and Clark as an example of the way in which our churches today are facing uncharted territory. He reminds readers that we are now living in a post-Christendom world. That what worked in the era of Christendom will be of no use in this new territory. Christendom is the long era of Christianity that was tightly bound with Western European politics and culture. In spite of separation of church and state, Christendom reigned in the US, giving us the blue laws and the ten commandments in schools; and “under God” in the pledge of allegiance. [1] Bolsinger says “In the Christendom world the dominant voices were rich, powerful, educated, mostly male, mostly white and from the ‘center.’”[2] In the Christendom world, Wollaston Congregational Church and Wollaston Baptist Church served the entire white protestant Wollaston neighborhood. Church was a place to come for social cohesion, to network, and to meet one’s neighbors. It was the one place to serve, the one place to turn in times of joy and times of distress. Now, of course, the culture has changed. The neighborhood is no longer predominantly white and protestant. There are numerous places for people for to go on Sunday mornings. There are many options for meeting friends and neighbors, and many places to serve. If the founders of Wollaston Congregational Church were to come back to the neighborhood and the culture today, they may be as surprised as Lewis and Clark were when they first saw the Rocky Mountains. What seemed to our founders to be solid has turned out to be less than permanent. We face a new and different territory in today’s culture. There is still work for us to do, but it requires different skills, different leadership, and different tools. In the book “Searching for Sunday” Rachel Held Evans writes of a pastor, Kathy Escobar, who has gone “off map” in creating a new kind of church. When Escobar began as a pastor she took the traditional route of climbing the leadership ladder at a mega-church. In that role she met many Christians who suffered from pain and depression that they kept secret from their church community. This is one of the hang-overs from the Christendom era, in which church going was socially acceptable and talking about one’s struggles was seen was “airing dirty laundry.” And so Escotar decided to begin a new church community call Refuge, inspired by the Beatitudes of Jesus and the 12 steps of recovery groups. At Refuge people can be open and honest about the challenges they are facing. In this new-style church people on mental health disability, suburban moms, people with addictions, evangelicals and progressives … orphans, outcasts, and prostitutes … come together. They say, of their church: “… We’re all hurt or hungry in our own ways. We’re at different places on our journey but we share a guiding story, a sweeping epic drama called the Bible. ... We all receive, we all give. We are old, young, poor, rich, conservative, liberal, single, married, gay, straight, evangelicals, progressives, overeducated, undereducated, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving. Yet Christ’s love binds our differences together in unity. At The Refuge, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.” [3] Everyone is held, safe in the shepherd Jesus’ hand. And still, Refuge is not a place to get comfortable. Members are challenged to adventure beyond their comfort zones to a deeper place of honesty and connection. As Rachel Held Evans says “Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe and no one is comfortable.” This past week I attended an summit for the faith community titled “Healing Ethos: Substance Use and Our Communities.” This was put on by the Massachusetts Opioid Abuse Prevention Collaborative. There were a number of excellent speakers, including our own Kim Kroeger. They talked about the challenges of substance use in our communities today. The event was attended by clergy people from many places of worship in Quincy and the surrounding area. The full spectrum of Christian denominations and other faiths were represented. Many of the attendees talked of the uncharted territory we are now in, facing an epidemic of opiate and other addictions. Some of the pastors, who have been in ministry for a while, talked of how their methods for supporting people dealing with addiction are no longer enough. They mentioned biblical principles, counseling, and prayer. They admitted that the new substances in circulation are too addictive and too deadly for the former methods. The attendees were there to learn and listen to the experts. They wanted to hear from those working in the field who get alongside people with addictions. I was struck by the need for partnerships between the community and religious leaders and the need for collaboration among religious groups of all kinds. This epidemic cannot be tackled from any one approach. No single organization or religious group has a dependable solution. We must be prepared to navigate this new territory together. And so we return to the assurance that none can pluck us from the hand of Jesus. We recall that this assurance was made during a time of turmoil and change. It was a time of tearing down of the existing structures of religious power. I had received that same assurance at a time that felt permanent and secure. But that was the illusion of childhood. The structure of St Peter’s Parish Church still stands. Now they have website which reminds visitors that “St Peter’s is not an historic building, but a worshiping community.” Pictures show that the pews and kneelers are gone, replaced with comfortable and moveable chairs. The stone font no longer occupies space by the door. Instead there is a welcoming coffee area which has also taken in what was the children’s corner. Now the children’s ministries can occupy the whole space. What I thought was solid and permanent actually was not. What the founders of Wollaston Congregational thought was solid and permanent actually was not. And that is OK. We can all hold on to the assurance, in this new territory, through all the adventures and challenges that lie ahead, no one can pluck us from God’s hand. May all God’s people say Amen. [1]Bolsinger, Tod. Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory (p. 11). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. [2]Ibid, (p. 192) [3]Evans, Rachel Held. Searching for Sunday (pp. 72-73). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition
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