“Holding the Mirror”
John 10:22-30
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
4/17/16
“The Lord is
my shepherd, I shall not want.”
The metaphor
of God as shepherd is familiar to the Jews who gather around Jesus, in the
portico of Solomon, the son of the Shepherd King to whom tradition ascribes the
words of Psalm 23.
I think it
unlikely that the wisdom and gratitude of Psalm 23 belong to a young King David.
David has to live into his kingship, and he does not do so cleanly. His rise to
the throne is followed by a devastating, ego-driven fall from grace that
includes adultery, deception, and murder.
Psalm 23
reflects the heartrending process of discovering shalom. That process takes a human being through the maturing wake
of disappointments and failures which may be redeemable but which linger. David’s
awareness of God’s shepherding grace, his gratitude for the wantless abundance
of God’s steadfast Love and faithfulness follow years of spiritual discernment
and growth – and divine patience.
In that
process, David discovers that God saddles the kings of Israel with disarming
power and servant leadership. Living into such paradoxical authority requires
and creates the kind of earthy spirituality we encounter in Psalm 23.
It seems to me
that the Jews who confront Jesus on that winter day have been conditioned – by
their teachers, or by Rome’s oppression, or both – to dismiss the wholeness of faith and its mystery. They
seem to prefer the measurable certainties of totality, of the Law.
In this
context, I consider wholeness synonymous with shalom, that broad and hospitable spiritual landscape of gratitude,
generosity, and hope. By contrast, I define totality as terminal conclusion.1 Yes, that’s redundant, but I think
it describes the anxiety lying behind the Jew’s insistence: “How long will you
keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”
Release us from all doubt, they say. Set us on a track from which we cannot
deviate. Give us more law. Build a palace. Win a war. End the discussion.
“Tell us
plainly.”
The Jews, like
the young David, want the final victory of totality, but Jesus is offering the
eternal journey of wholeness.
“My sheep hear
my voice,” says Jesus. “I know them and they follow me.”
Listening.
Intimate knowing. Trustful and transforming following. It seems to me that such
things constitute the process of living into the wholeness Jesus calls “eternal
life.”
I think we are
wired to hear and recognize a holy voice. And that voice speaks into our heart
of hearts, the heart we all share in common and from which we cannot, finally,
be estranged. Our metaphor for that heart is the Imago Dei – the Image of God.
The Imago Dei lies behind such voicings as
Yahweh’s instruction to Moses: “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has
sent me to you.’” (Exodus 2:14b)
The Imago Dei is the fundamental and eternal intimacy behind Jesus’
de-cluttering promises that: “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that
can be observed…For, in fact, the kingdom of God is [within] you.” (Luke 17:20b,
21b) And: “…just as you did it to one of the least of these…you did
it to me.” (Matthew
26:40)
Reflecting on the depth of
spiritual intimacy in the Holy One-to-Holiness conversation within each of us
and within humankind as a whole, Paul condenses the entire Law to: “Love your
neighbor.” (Romans
13:9-10
While this
spiritual intimacy finds many expressions within our scriptures, insights of
wholeness are hardly limited to Christian spirituality. One of the most gifted
celebrants of what I call the Sacrament of Divine Indwelling is Rumi, a 13th
century Sufi mystic. Before quoting him, how often have you heard people say
that they feel closest to God in nature? Feeling that intimacy, and connecting
natural beauty to the Divine Beauty within himself, Rumi writes: “That which
God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to
my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.”2
Rumi expresses similar intimacy and
wholeness in human relationships. “The minute I heard my first love story,” he
says, “I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't
finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”3
The 20th
century Christian theologian, philosopher, scientist, and mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, says, “Love
alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and
fulfill them [to make them whole!],
for [love] alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.”4
I have elaborated
on all of this because I think that such insights reveal the deep truth of what
it means to follow Jesus. Following
Jesus means so much more than churchy behavior. Following Jesus means holding
up the mirror of our lives. It means reflecting the Holy One living within us,
giving us life, and connecting us to eternity within the moment, and within
each other. My dad calls that “the primary relationship,” the relationship that
animates us, humanizes us, and sanctifies us. The primary relationship mirrors God’s
presence in and Love for the creation.
“Perhaps,”
says Dad, “the purest human example of the primary relation is that between
infant and mother, especially in play, where the delight in giving and
receiving is not so much reciprocal as palindromic – each initiates the play on
her own, each responds on her own, as though they were saying the same word to
each other from both ends at once.”5
I love the
image of a palindrome – a word, a sentence, an image or a voice that is
the same forward and backward. This palindromic delight is the grateful joy of
mirroring God’s presence within us and Love for us as we mirror God’s presence and
Love in each other.
“We…become the
God we connect with,” says Richard Rohr. “That’s why it’s so important to know
the true God, and not some little, punitive, toxic god, because then [we] don’t
grow up, but live in fear and pretense…We know God and we know ourselves by
inner prayer journeys and not by merely believing in doctrines or living inside
of church structures. God’s way of dealing with us becomes our way of dealing
with life and others. We eventually love others, quite simply, as we have
allowed God to love us…”6
“The Father
and I are one,” Jesus tells the Jews. And the grace of his words warms their
hearts – with fury. They make ready to stone him for blasphemy. But he is
saying that he and they, he and we, you and I, we are all eternally one with each other and with God. We discover our true joy
as human beings by living in the palindromic delight of relationship with the
Holy One who dwells within all things.
“If you are the Messiah, tell us
plainly,” say the Jews.
And Jesus holds up a mirror saying,
Look! You’re so beautiful
Now, follow me by
Loving one another as I Love you.
1I infer these definitions from Joseph R. Myers’
discussion of the same in his book Organic Community: Creating a Place Where
People Naturally Connect, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 2007. pp. 29ff.
5From an unpublished article by Dr. Thomas A. Huff,
M.D.: “The Politics of Resentment vs. The Politics of Gratitude.”
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