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Belonging
A sermon by Dr. Jesse Fletcher
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, October 14, 2007
John 10:14-18
All of you at some point in time, probably by virtue of
your presence here this day, made a very personal and meaningful decision to
commit your life to Jesus Christ—to what you felt God was doing in Christ—to the
forgiveness and the promise that he held out to you. You began what is the
pilgrimage that has brought you here today. It probably included some starts and
stops, times where you had to ask for forgiveness and leadership. Times where
you looked around you and wondered if God’s people were all that special after
all and if you were. But probably again and again came to those moments where
you felt anew the presence of God in your midst and the joy of being with your
brothers and sisters in Christ.
Belong is what this sermon is about and one of the texts
that uniquely speaks of our belonging relationship to Jesus Christ is found in
the 10th chapter of John. We refer to it as the “Good Shepherd.” “I
am the Good Shepherd” John has Jesus saying. “I know my own sheep and my own
sheep know me in the same way the Father knows me and I know the father. I put
the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary. You need to know that
I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring
them too. And they’ll also recognize my voice. There will be one flock, one
shepherd.”
Probably no group of people had as strong a sense of
belonging as did the Jews at the time of Christ’s life here on earth. They were
people who constantly extolled their relationship to Abraham, the children of
Abraham—the sons of Abraham. They nurtured their stories of the Promised Land,
of coming out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, the victory of the
Promised Land. They nurtured stories of being overrun by the Babylonians and
exiled in that country and the return and building the temple and starting anew.
They celebrated especially the days of the Macabees when they were free and
powerful. And they told stories of the days when David was king and they spread
all over that part of the world. They had let it become an almost negative thing
for them, but they nurtured it almost to a fault at times. Failing to assimilate
in various places, belonging in such a way that they left other people on the
outside feeling left out. And of course, we know that at times in history the
Jews have suffered horribly because of their identification and because of their
way of pulling back from other people.
In 1492 they were expelled from Europe violently—the same
time that Columbus made his paradigm changing voyage. And again in our modern
times, we’re aware the genocide that took place in Germany as so many, many
hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed.
But in the time of Christ, this belonging was a source of
conflict between the Jews and Jesus and his followers and their message. For
instance, when they came to hear John the Baptist preach, he was baptizing them.
Now usually you only baptize people from outside coming in. It was also used as
a cleansing, but most of the time it was used to baptize proselytes—mostly
Gentiles. Here John was wanting to baptize even the leaders of the Jews. They
saw that as a huge insult, denying their role as Abraham’s sons and John would
dismiss it by saying, “Well, God can raise up sons of Abraham out of these
stones.”
They later challenged Jesus about it. He probably got
pretty close to getting under their skin when he said, “Other sheep have I, not
of this fold.” Where else would you go? We’re it, we’re the children of Abraham,
we have the promise. And it brought about a huge conflict as Jesus and his
followers begin to preach that no longer did the boundaries of God’s blessing
fall around Israel. No longer did the limits of God’s grace include only the
Jews. Jesus said, “God so loved the world.” He was introducing a whole new way
of belonging.
One of the metaphors he used was the sheep and the
shepherd, saying we belong to him. And in this process he was reaching out to
say “and there will be others and they will be gathered too.” And for the Jews
this was a huge conflict, but Jesus was trying to say it’s going to be
different. God is going to reach out from the limits of blood lines, from the
simple accident blood lines to acts of faith and to acts of mercy. And he’s
going to bring his people together and they're going to belong to him and to
each other in a whole new way.
When I’m up in this part of the world, I’m so aware of the
beginnings of this nation—young by any standard and yet for many of us it is our
whole history. But we forget sometime how influential those ideas of Jesus were
in the founding of this country. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two unlikely
allies, fought hard to make sure that this country did not reproduce the old
world with its aristocracy, with its limited share of the pie—so to speak, with
its effort to keep land and title and position and opportunity in the hands of
just a privileged few. And in the battle of our Constitution, one of the things
that we are the least aware of—we’re more aware of the battles that took place
at Yorktown and Brandywine and the places where the battles for our freedom were
fought. But we don’t realize that the battle for the American soul was fought
with ideas. It had to do with our Constitution. And the idea that here everybody
could come and stand on their own two feet and make their own way and become
what they could become.
A recent article about the billionaires in the country,
talked about how many of them, even a preponderance of them had blue-collar
backgrounds, indicating this country is still a place of opportunity from that
economic point of view. But in the concept that Christ is trying to preach and
show these Jews here, there is equal opportunity to God, we can all become a
part of his intention to make us new and to bless us.
I hope you feel that belonging this morning.
There are several things about it that I would love for you
to get hold of. One thing is that it’s not a herd mentality. We’re not talking
about gathering a herd together in which you kind of loose your identity - sheep
can throw us astray at that point. If you’ve tried to move them, you see how
they try to hide in each other’s midst. They try to loose their individuality,
their identity. Christ did just the opposite. He did with one of his parables,
for instance, the ninety and nine. Where he talked about the Good Shepherd who
left the ninety and nine secure in the sheep fold and went after the one that
was missing. And in the focus of that one he points out again that kind of
belonging we’re talking about has a huge individuality about it. Christ’s
ability to recognize us, individually.
You may be sitting in a large congregation this morning but
what’s going on is between you, in your unique self, and the God who’s loving
you in Jesus Christ, who’s aware of the battles you’re fighting, who knows of
the things that you’ve scuffed your feet on and the places you’ve failed but is
ever reaching out to you, ever willing to work with you. And you’re sitting in
the midst of other people with whom he’s doing the same thing because all of us
are that one, in the midst of the ninety and nine. We’re all a part of what he’s
doing in our lives.
Secondly, we are experiencing in him the kind of leadership
that we all really long for. I know that not many of us want to be sheep; we’d
rather be the shepherd. But, in fact, there’s a hunger for leadership. It starts
in our families of origin where we look up to the leadership of our parents. We
expect to see in that little family grouping something we can look up to and
follow and feel a certain degree of security in. I’ll come back to that in just
a moment. But it’s the kind of leadership that we don’t have to worry about
being corrupt, being mislead, losing sight of the big picture, leading us
astray. It’s the kind of leadership we can let our weight down on. But more,
it’s the kind of leadership that helps us become leaders. We’ve got a model. We
see what’s it’s like to take responsibility, to differentiate ourselves in terms
of our uniqueness and our gifts and so his leadership becomes liberating for us.
Ralph Starling gave me a book a week-or-so ago written
posthumously about a man that I’ve known in my earlier life who made a great
contribution. Ed Freidman said, “When you lose leadership, you struggle. Leaders
try to emerge but you struggle until there’s a clear sense of your own
leadership. And you can begin to gather around whoever you want to follow next.
But in the meanwhile you find yourself stronger in the process.”
You’re in that role right now as you look for a pastoral
leader. You’re very fortunate that you have one of the most outstanding church
staffs, or gathering of church ministers, that I’ve found anywhere. I like their
spirit, I like the way they work together, I like their sense of God is in
charge and they’re willing to follow.
Security’s big in our lives, isn’t it? So much of our life
is about security. So much of the world we live in right now is about security.
As I walk through that Dallas Airport and see all those desert camouflage
uniforms, men and women coming and going I realize how much we’re dealing with
security. And when I get off at the airport I am immediately aware of the
security concerns. If you haven’t traveled on an airplane lately folks, it’s
different.
Even in Abilene, Texas. Now in Abilene, having been
president of the university and done a few other things around there, I’m pretty
well known. And this last week they ran a big story and picture—boy, I looked
awful—about me coming up here. They were just totally enamored with the idea
that somebody from Abilene, Texas, would fly to Richmond, Virginia every weekend
and they were kind of wondering about what kind of congregation would do that.
It was a wonderful story, they quoted David Powers—he’s far more erudite than
you’ve become aware of, if they quoted him correctly. It was a good story and I
enjoyed it. So, when I got to the airport yesterday and started through
security, here are all these home-security people saying, “Hi, Dr. Fletcher, how
you doing, heading to Richmond, huh?” It felt good, but they still made me take
my shoes off. I still had to go through the whole thing. But you know what? I
wanted to. It’s part of my security. To feel like everybody’s going through that
the same thing and their trying to make sure that’s a secure flight and that we
could let our weight down on it.
But the security I’m talking about is the security we have
in Christ, that he cares about us, that he knows us, that he loves us, he’s not
going to let us go, there’s nothing that can happen to us, no kind of calamity,
no kind of problem, no kind of threat, that he is not going to be with us and in
us and be willing to provide us what we need in that moment. The kind of
security we have in Jesus Christ is something you need to affirm anew this day.
He brings that kind of individuality that lets us be ourselves and know we’re
loved. He brings that kind of leadership that brings out the best in us. And he
gives us that kind of security that lets us really let our weight down.
Another interesting thing that some of you may have seen on
television this last week had to do with the DNA studies. In this story they
were talking about a burley Missouri rancher who had followed this up, found
that he had a perfect match in Harlem (of all places) and next thing we know, he
has invited his perfect match out to meet him. She’s a black writer from Harlem
and this white rancher greets her and hugs her because the DNA has proved they
belong.
Now there’s a lot more belonging than we realize. You and I
only have to go back eight generations to have 256 contributors to who you are.
That’s not very far back. And one 256th, that’s not a whole lot for
any one person to give you. All 256 go back eight generations and they’ve got
256. In fact, if you get to thinking about it you’ve got four grandparents and
eight, go on back. Pretty soon there’s more people than ever lived.
But that’s not the kind of relationship Jesus is talking
about, he’s not talking about the DNA which is so inter-involved all over the
world now and as increasing globalization makes that more of a common pool we’ll
see even more of that. He’s talking about something else.
This past week we had a call from a friend, a beautiful
young lady, named Chris and she had just been widowed for the third time. But it
brought back some special memories for us because Chris’ first husband was one
of my best friends, when we lived in Austin, Texas. And the way we got to know
each other was we were in a pre-natal school. We went to a school where they
train the husband and wife to know how to handle their new baby and how to work
together handling their new baby. I don’t know if any of you have ever done
that, but it can be quite an emotional experience. And this was, actually, our
third baby. Our first child was still-born. We lost our second in the first
week, both little girls and this one was going to arrive safely. That’s Scott,
the young man I went to see in Maine a week ago and who has blessed our lives
so. But sitting in this class you couldn’t help but notice Bill and Chris and
later on, I found out an awful lot about him.
She was a campus beauty Bill had been an all southwest
conference half-back and was finishing his Masters in pure mathematics. A
brilliant young man, in fact, he was president of the Austin National Bank by
the time he was 29 and head of the John Conley Presidential run back in those
days. Bill died when he was in the 29th year of Hodgkin’s disease and
I lost a great friend and so that was one of the memories that came back. But
what I really remember was a little incident that happened during that class. We
were being taught how to bathe the baby that night and I’d come in late, as
usual. And I think the nurse instructor, more-or-less, wanted to make an example
of me. So, when it came time to demonstrate she called on me and I just made up
my mind I was going to get up there and do it. I was going to do it right and I
did. You could almost feel the class ready to break out in applause and if I
hadn’t pulled that baby’s head off, accidentally. (obviously, it was a doll) I’m
sure they would have applauded. Instead they did what you just did - laughed.
Bill Long used that as an opportunity to come up and talk
to me. And he started asking me a lot of questions and he’s an engaging fellow
and so we dialogued about where we were from and what kind of ties we might
have. And he said after a time, “Well I thought we might be kin.” And I said,
“Well I’m from West Texas, you’re from East Texas. Names, I don’t recognized
any.” And then is suddenly dawned on me and I said, “Well Bill, we might be. Are
you my brother?” And that grin went all the way across and he said, “I thought
we might be kin.” And he became one of the closest Christian friends I’ve ever
had.
We prayed, we shared things together; we talked about what
we had learned about our efforts to follow Christ together. And that sense of
belonging that he taught me has permeated my life ever since because like Bill,
I’ve been looking for kin-folk. And one of the reasons I’m enjoying being with
you so much is I’ve known many of you in the past and I’m meeting others of you
now—but I’m with family.
You see, in Jesus Christ, we belong to him and to each
other.
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