Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” (John 10.27-30)
In Delia Owens’s heartbreaking book, Where the Crawdads Sing, she tells the story of the marsh girl Kya who, abandoned by her mother at age 6 and by her four older siblings soon after, is left to fend for herself in a cabin with her alcoholic dad who disappears for weeks at a time. Left alone, she finds a way to survive in the marshlands of the Carolinas, bonding with the birds on tree limbs and learning from the minnows in the stagnant waters.
Owens describes tersely the girl’s growing connection with the marshlands, writing, “Months passed, winter easing gently into place, as southern winters do. The sun, warm as a blanket, wrapped Kya’s shoulders, coaxing her deeper into the marsh. Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn’t know or jumped from lightning too close, but whenever she stumbled, it was the land that caught her. Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.”
Few writers can express with such precision the longing for connection that is entwined with the fibers of the human heart and fewer still can describe with such poignancy the desolation that assaults the human spirit when such connections are denied or are lost. Without another to assist and to aid, the human heart slowly breaks apart, shattered pieces falling to the ground until nothing remains but a cavity in the chest and shards of flesh in a trash can.
One who understood better than most the human need for connection was Rabbi Jesus, the Galilean Teacher who keenly read the human heart with precision and who gathered up the broken pieces of shattered hearts wherever he found them, gently and lovingly gluing together jagged pieces, fitting them in place, until the heart again beat in the chest of the man and the woman once broken and beaten by life, but now restored and resurrected to new life.
If we are to understand the text that the evangelist John offers us today, then we must understand its backstory, a story that John provides for us painstakingly through seven signs and seven discourses presented over the many pages, this text taken from the last of the discourses, known today as the Good Shepherd discourse. Through these magnificent signs and with these lengthy teachings, Rabbi Jesus brings to the broken hearted and to the beaten down a flesh and blood rebuttal to their sense of aloneness and lostness.
Found in Chapter 10 of John’s gospel, the Good Shepherd discourse provides the venue for Rabbi Jesus to assure the lonely and the forsaken that his Father in heaven is with them now and always, never abandoning them, always keen for their well-being. Using the image of the shepherd–borrowed from the everyday experience of the people of the time–the Rabbi evokes the bucolic life of the good shepherd whose love for his sheep never wavers or weakens, but stays strong, even if the shepherd must lay down his life so that his sheep will survive.
Speaking of the thieves and marauders that threaten the well-being of the sheep–an obvious allusion to those who have power and prestige, specifically the political and religious leaders of Jerusalem–Rabbi Jesus assures those without power and without prestige that they are carried through the storms of life in the loving arms of his Father, invisible to the eye, but visible to the heart.
Hence, his words that we hear today, when he says, “I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” In a short while, he will state the same sentiment in another context, saying this time to them, “I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you.”
That image of the loving shepherd, borrowed from the Good Shepherd discourse and presented to us each year on this Fourth Sunday of Easter, aptly labeled “Good Shepherd Sunday,” brings solace and comfort to us now as much as it did to the listeners of Rabbi Jesus then, as he stood in the Temple precinct, his presence on those sacral steps offering the weak and the weary living proof that the Divine Presence would not be found anymore in brick and mortar, but would be found always in flesh and blood.
Never surpassed despite the passing years, that pastoral image remains the standard, even in our age of asphalt streets and speeding traffic. Still, for those who have never laid eyes on a shepherd or seen a herd of sheep, perhaps the image that contemporary writer Kent Nerburn provides in his book, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace, resonates, even if it does not rival. He writes:
“An old man and woman wait at the corner. They are incalculably old: white hair and bent over, with shaking hands and unsteady limbs. They move cautiously toward the curb, then step down together. The man takes the woman’s arms, holding it closely and tightly as she shuffles into the street, despite his own unsteadiness.”
“The light changes before they complete their trek across the street. Cars begin honking. But the man never wavers, never takes his eyes or his arm from his wife. He carries her and supports her, even though his own legs can hardly stand. And she leans on him with total faith and confidence, as if he were the very rock of safety itself. Together they maneuver through the traffic, buoyed up by each other and their faith in each other’s love.”
Situated not in hilly pastureland, but on hectic street corners, the image serves the same purpose as Rabbi Jesus’ pastoral reference, both reminders to the broken and beaten and beggars in a world hellbent on showing them nobody cares that, in fact, somebody cares. And that somebody is the Most High God, whose love stays through the storms of life. Or as Father Gregory Boyle beautifully states in these words, “Our God is utterly reliable in this unconditional love that does not waver. It has pleased God not to be God without us. God never has second thoughts about loving us. Never.”
Similarly, Episcopal priest and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor likes to say, “When everything you count on for protection has failed, the Divine Presence does not fail. The hands are still there–not promising to rescue, not promising to intervene–promising only to hold you no matter how far you fall.” Her words only repeat what we have already heard today from Rabbi Jesus, who tells us, “No one can take you out of the Father’s hand.”
Of course, in the background, we continue to hear the mutinous cries of those with power, prestige, and privilege, who continue to belittle, bully and badger the broken, the beaten, and the beleaguered as they did Rabbi Jesus, only because the nobodies of the world contest and challenge and contradict the somebodies of the world whose hands clutch onto worldly power, but not onto the hand of the Most Powerful God.
That Rabbi Jesus’s promise of a shepherd that stays with his sheep through all the seasons is still relevant on our street corners as much as it was on the cobbled streets of Jerusalem is without dispute, a promise that provides the only hope for too many in a world that turns a blind eye to them, that breaks bodies and spirits, and that sweeps the broken pieces into garbage dumps and refugee camps.
In a world where Kya Clark lives not only in the marshlands of North Carolina, but in the back alleys and sideroads of places large and small, the words of Rabbi Jesus speak comfort, provide hope, give promise that a hand reaches into the darkness of a world that desires to drown and to destroy the desperate and the despised, taking their hand into his own, leading them from death to life, from destruction to rebuilding, from desolation to connection.
It is not without purpose, then, that this passage from the Good Shepherd discourse of John’s gospel is given to us during the Easter Season, a time of resurrection, restoration and renewal. While the Easter story does not promise a life without darkness, it does promise a light at the end of the tunnel, a moment in time when the hand of the Almighty reaches behind the boulder that has us buried, takes our weakened hand into his own strong hand, and steadies out feet as we walk together out of the tomb.
If an old melody from a bygone age replays in our mind as we reflect on Rabbi Jesus’ words to us today, it may be with good cause, the words of that song reminding us again that we are not alone, all evidence to the contrary. All we have to do is reach out our hand, or as the song urges us, “Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water. Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea. Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently. Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee.”
Clearly, the song echoes the story of the Good Shepherd. But one other point must be made. For those of us who want to follow the ways of Rabbi Jesus in this world, then we must take his place, providing the downtrodden and the desperate the same hope that he offered, extending our hand to theirs, offering proof in flesh and blood that unbelievably, incontestably, finally somebody cares
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 