Revelation
21:1-8

Introduction
Elaine in our church youth group always had a pungent way of putting things. ‘I
think after a few hundred years of singing and playing my harp, I’ll get bored
with eternal life,’ she said once.

Elaine’s problem is a common one, even if we don’t put it
that way. We have a truncated view of the life to come, a limited view of
heaven the resurrection life.

Revelation 21 expands our vision of the resurrection life,
with its picture language that is meant to stimulate a holy imagination. And
John gives us this vision so that the vision of the future might give us the
hope and motive to prepare for it by the way we live today. It’s a ‘Your will
be done on earth as it is in heaven’
passage. It deserves to reading more than at funeral services, although it
gives great hope there. It’s for everyday Christianity as well as times of
grief and crisis.

1. Creation
Verse 1:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven
and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

Sometimes our expectations of heaven are not very physical.
If you want to float on a cloud, plucking a harp, fine – so long as you like
harps. We talk about leaving the body behind and just being spirits. You get a
flavour of this in old gospel hymns like ‘This world is not my home’:

This world is not my home I’m just passing through
my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
the angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door
and I can’t feel at home in this world any more
(Full lyrics here)

However, this language is foreign to the Bible. If ‘this
world’ means the values of a society hostile to Christ, it’s OK. But it’s not
OK if it implies something that lacks the physical and material dimensions. We
believe, after all, in the resurrection of the body. Since God raised Jesus bodily from the dead, we know that he
cares about his physical creation. And God promises ‘a new heaven and a new
earth’. The old earth and heaven pass away, but God replaces them, he doesn’t
do away with earth and heaven forever.

Exactly what this new heaven and earth constitutes is futile
to pursue, because this is picture language. The words, ‘the sea was no more’
give the clue that this is not meant to be taken literally. They also point to
what this new creation involves. The sea was quite a metaphor in the ancient
world. It stands for everything that is opposed to God’s ways. Earlier in
Revelation the sea is the place from which the ‘beast’ who had made war on
God’s people had arisen from (Revelation
13:1, 6-7). Isaiah had compared the wicked to a tossing sea (Isaiah 57:20). Hence, the
catalogue of wickedness with which our reading ends that God excludes from his
future. (The Lectionary excludes this verse! Is that shortsighted political
correctness?) The power of the sea made it a suitable symbol of dread and fear
for ancient people. Therefore, the new creation will contain no wickedness or
reason to fear.

What, then, does this mean for us? If God’s new creation
shows that he is interested in the physical and the material, and if it
banishes evil and fear, how might we go along with the grain of his new
creation? One simple thing is that God calls us to emulate as faithfully as we
can his concern for the physical world. So a major factor I took into account
when deciding where to cast my vote on Thursday was, which party would be best
for environmental care (or ‘creation care’, as I would call it as a Christian)?
It means concern for people’s material needs – and not privileging those closer
to us on the planet. So God calls us to care about politics, health care,
economics and science as well as our personal concern for people we know.

In addition, if God’s new creation also excludes wickedness
and everything that causes fear, then we have more reason for involvement in
public life: law making, law enforcement, the judiciary and campaigning for
justice. The list of evils in verse 8 that are God will exclude is a
wide-ranging one: ‘the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers,
the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars’. It reminds me of
a summary I once heard about the sins condemned by Old Testament prophets as
covering idolatry, immorality and injustice. It transcends left wing and
right-wing concerns. And God’s faithful church will do the same, if she is in
tune with her Lord’s new creation.

2. Community
Verses 2-5:

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out
of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a
loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’

And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am
making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are
trustworthy and true.’

The holy city, the New Jerusalem: it’s not about the
buildings of the city; it’s about the people. The holy city is ‘prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband’ and it is where ‘the home of God is among
mortals’. Salvation was never just individual: God was always about building a
new community, a people for his praise, a kingdom of priests.

Therefore, we are not a religious club (which is why we
never take up a collection but make an offering). We are God’s missionary
community. We are his alternative society. We are his vision for how he always
intended society to be. If we live up to that, we shall be a prophetic
community, whose love rubs society up the wrong way, and thus we shall earn
suffering for our troubles. That is why God promises to live in our midst and
wipe away tears, death, mourning, crying and pain.

The challenge comes as to whether we are allowing God to form
us into some kind of alternative community. In Christ God calls us and forgives
us; he grants us new life in his Son. Then he moulds us together so that we
live out our forgiveness together, and we live out the new life in Christ
corporately. We are creating a new culture:

But that culture is not defined by certain types of music,
liturgical practice, language etc., but by certain qualities: forgiveness,
patience, kindness, hospitality, chastity, generosity etc. That is the culture
of church – those are the values we hold to, try to inculcate and we do it
by telling the Christian story over & over because it reminds us who we are
– deeply loved and forgiven children of a heavenly father.
(Graham
Tomlin’s blog;
audio clip here)

Here is our vision – to get beyond the shallow understanding
of culture based around our tastes in style and entertainment to something much
more substantial – a community that loves and forgives; a community that cynicism,
snide comments, sarcasm and put-downs behind herself; a community that
practises forgiveness instead of harbouring bitterness; a community that builds
reconciliation. This is to anticipate the New Jerusalem, the holy city. This is
what it means to be the bride prepared for Christ, her husband, doing the
things that please him, because they are the things that he loves to do.

So out with the spite, the pride and the snobbery; in with
ongoing prayerful reflection on the ministry of Christ and the life of the
early church. It won’t be some instant, whizz-bang change, but slowly the Holy
Spirit will change our hearts and infuse in us the life of Christ as we pray
the Bible and open ourselves up to his work. Then we shall anticipate the
culture of the New Jerusalem, the beautiful bride of Christ.

3. Conquest
Verses 6-8:

Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the
Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift
from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these
things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But as for the
cowardly, the faithless,<!– +fOr the unbelieving+e –>
the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and
all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur,
which is the second death.’

Conquest is a strong word – a negative word, perhaps. It can
imply aggression and violence. However, the conquest recorded by John is rather
different. ‘Those who conquer’ (verse 7) and who will be children of God are
those who overcome opposition to their faith, who remain constant in the time
of suffering. That is not about being violent, but about enduring and remaining
faithful to Christ. It’s about patient perseverance that holds onto Christ. Loyalty
to Christ is about being the opposite of those who end up in verse 8 suffering
the ‘second death’. Instead of being cowardly it involves courage; instead of
faithlessness there is loyalty, even under pressure; in contrast to the
polluted we refuse to accept the warped values of our society; rather than
being murderers we value and uphold life; instead of being fornicators we display
exclusive loyalty and seek purity; in place of sorcery and the magic arts of the
occult we humbly trust God and the power of his Holy Spirit; rather than being
idolaters we seek to worship God alone; and instead of being liars we seek to
speak, uphold and live truth, the truth which is Jesus Christ.

This is how those who have been raised to new life in Christ
live, or at least aspire to live. It’s a tall order. It means living in
contrast to the values that surround us. How often do we look back with shame
and realise we have succumbed to society’s pressures rather than conquering and
overcoming in the name of Christ? Don’t we long to live differently?

Perhaps we get a clue from the description of those who
conquer in the preceding verse, that is, verse 6. There they are called ‘the
thirsty’, and they are promised the water of life. Thirsty people conquer. Those
who are thirsty for God receive the inner resources to overcome opposition to
their faith. Those with a deep desire for God, those for whom God and nothing
else will do, who long for him with all their hearts – these are the ones who
receive the water of life and are strengthened to conquer.

Yes, it is thirst
for God. A sip will not do. A nod of the hat to God and getting the religious
duty over as quickly and painlessly as possible do not constitute thirst. Developing
an appropriate disciplined spiritual life, pursuing him in Scripture, prayer,
fellowship and the world is thirst. As the psalmist said:

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
   so my soul longs for you, O God.
(Psalm 42:1)

Those who long like this, who – in the words of the American
preacher Tommy Tenney are God Chasers – are the ones who will
receive the water of life that gives strength to overcome opposition and
conquer evil. My thirst varies – the challenge for me is to live on the proper
Christian assumption that all my life’s longings are only truly met in Christ.
When I do, I shall be truly thirsty. And God will strengthen me.

Conclusion
On this fifth Sunday of Easter, we may feel we are starting to get a distance
from the Easter story again and the risen life of Christ. But Revelation 21
gives us this vision of resurrection life. We anticipate the new creation with
our public life; we anticipate the new community by living the forgiven and
forgiving life; and we conquer evil as we thirst for God and he supplies our
needs. May this vision call us forward into God’s future.

Technorati Tags: heaven, resurrection, thisworldisnotmyhome, creationcare, politics, fear, church, community, GrahamTomlin, TommyTenney

Revelation
21:1-8

Introduction
Elaine in our church youth group always had a pungent way of putting things. ‘I
think after a few hundred years of singing and playing my harp, I’ll get bored
with eternal life,’ she said once.

Elaine’s problem is a common one, even if we don’t put it
that way. We have a truncated view of the life to come, a limited view of
heaven the resurrection life.

Revelation 21 expands our vision of the resurrection life,
with its picture language that is meant to stimulate a holy imagination. And
John gives us this vision so that the vision of the future might give us the
hope and motive to prepare for it by the way we live today. It’s a ‘Your will
be done on earth as it is in heaven’
passage. It deserves to reading more than at funeral services, although it
gives great hope there. It’s for everyday Christianity as well as times of
grief and crisis.

1. Creation
Verse 1:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven
and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

Sometimes our expectations of heaven are not very physical.
If you want to float on a cloud, plucking a harp, fine – so long as you like
harps. We talk about leaving the body behind and just being spirits. You get a
flavour of this in old gospel hymns like ‘This world is not my home’:

This world is not my home I’m just passing through
my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
the angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door
and I can’t feel at home in this world any more
(Full lyrics here)

However, this language is foreign to the Bible. If ‘this
world’ means the values of a society hostile to Christ, it’s OK. But it’s not
OK if it implies something that lacks the physical and material dimensions. We
believe, after all, in the resurrection of the body. Since God raised Jesus bodily from the dead, we know that he
cares about his physical creation. And God promises ‘a new heaven and a new
earth’. The old earth and heaven pass away, but God replaces them, he doesn’t
do away with earth and heaven forever.

Exactly what this new heaven and earth constitutes is futile
to pursue, because this is picture language. The words, ‘the sea was no more’
give the clue that this is not meant to be taken literally. They also point to
what this new creation involves. The sea was quite a metaphor in the ancient
world. It stands for everything that is opposed to God’s ways. Earlier in
Revelation the sea is the place from which the ‘beast’ who had made war on
God’s people had arisen from (Revelation
13:1, 6-7). Isaiah had compared the wicked to a tossing sea (Isaiah 57:20). Hence, the
catalogue of wickedness with which our reading ends that God excludes from his
future. (The Lectionary excludes this verse! Is that shortsighted political
correctness?) The power of the sea made it a suitable symbol of dread and fear
for ancient people. Therefore, the new creation will contain no wickedness or
reason to fear.

What, then, does this mean for us? If God’s new creation
shows that he is interested in the physical and the material, and if it
banishes evil and fear, how might we go along with the grain of his new
creation? One simple thing is that God calls us to emulate as faithfully as we
can his concern for the physical world. So a major factor I took into account
when deciding where to cast my vote on Thursday was, which party would be best
for environmental care (or ‘creation care’, as I would call it as a Christian)?
It means concern for people’s material needs – and not privileging those closer
to us on the planet. So God calls us to care about politics, health care,
economics and science as well as our personal concern for people we know.

In addition, if God’s new creation also excludes wickedness
and everything that causes fear, then we have more reason for involvement in
public life: law making, law enforcement, the judiciary and campaigning for
justice. The list of evils in verse 8 that are God will exclude is a
wide-ranging one: ‘the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers,
the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars’. It reminds me of
a summary I once heard about the sins condemned by Old Testament prophets as
covering idolatry, immorality and injustice. It transcends left wing and
right-wing concerns. And God’s faithful church will do the same, if she is in
tune with her Lord’s new creation.

2. Community
Verses 2-5:

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out
of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a
loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’

And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am
making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are
trustworthy and true.’

The holy city, the New Jerusalem: it’s not about the
buildings of the city; it’s about the people. The holy city is ‘prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband’ and it is where ‘the home of God is among
mortals’. Salvation was never just individual: God was always about building a
new community, a people for his praise, a kingdom of priests.

Therefore, we are not a religious club (which is why we
never take up a collection but make an offering). We are God’s missionary
community. We are his alternative society. We are his vision for how he always
intended society to be. If we live up to that, we shall be a prophetic
community, whose love rubs society up the wrong way, and thus we shall earn
suffering for our troubles. That is why God promises to live in our midst and
wipe away tears, death, mourning, crying and pain.

The challenge comes as to whether we are allowing God to form
us into some kind of alternative community. In Christ God calls us and forgives
us; he grants us new life in his Son. Then he moulds us together so that we
live out our forgiveness together, and we live out the new life in Christ
corporately. We are creating a new culture:

But that culture is not defined by certain types of music,
liturgical practice, language etc., but by certain qualities: forgiveness,
patience, kindness, hospitality, chastity, generosity etc. That is the culture
of church – those are the values we hold to, try to inculcate and we do it
by telling the Christian story over & over because it reminds us who we are
– deeply loved and forgiven children of a heavenly father.
(Graham
Tomlin’s blog;
audio clip here)

Here is our vision – to get beyond the shallow understanding
of culture based around our tastes in style and entertainment to something much
more substantial – a community that loves and forgives; a community that cynicism,
snide comments, sarcasm and put-downs behind herself; a community that
practises forgiveness instead of harbouring bitterness; a community that builds
reconciliation. This is to anticipate the New Jerusalem, the holy city. This is
what it means to be the bride prepared for Christ, her husband, doing the
things that please him, because they are the things that he loves to do.

So out with the spite, the pride and the snobbery; in with
ongoing prayerful reflection on the ministry of Christ and the life of the
early church. It won’t be some instant, whizz-bang change, but slowly the Holy
Spirit will change our hearts and infuse in us the life of Christ as we pray
the Bible and open ourselves up to his work. Then we shall anticipate the
culture of the New Jerusalem, the beautiful bride of Christ.

3. Conquest
Verses 6-8:

Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the
Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift
from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these
things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But as for the
cowardly, the faithless,<!– +fOr the unbelieving+e –>
the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and
all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur,
which is the second death.’

Conquest is a strong word – a negative word, perhaps. It can
imply aggression and violence. However, the conquest recorded by John is rather
different. ‘Those who conquer’ (verse 7) and who will be children of God are
those who overcome opposition to their faith, who remain constant in the time
of suffering. That is not about being violent, but about enduring and remaining
faithful to Christ. It’s about patient perseverance that holds onto Christ. Loyalty
to Christ is about being the opposite of those who end up in verse 8 suffering
the ‘second death’. Instead of being cowardly it involves courage; instead of
faithlessness there is loyalty, even under pressure; in contrast to the
polluted we refuse to accept the warped values of our society; rather than
being murderers we value and uphold life; instead of being fornicators we display
exclusive loyalty and seek purity; in place of sorcery and the magic arts of the
occult we humbly trust God and the power of his Holy Spirit; rather than being
idolaters we seek to worship God alone; and instead of being liars we seek to
speak, uphold and live truth, the truth which is Jesus Christ.

This is how those who have been raised to new life in Christ
live, or at least aspire to live. It’s a tall order. It means living in
contrast to the values that surround us. How often do we look back with shame
and realise we have succumbed to society’s pressures rather than conquering and
overcoming in the name of Christ? Don’t we long to live differently?

Perhaps we get a clue from the description of those who
conquer in the preceding verse, that is, verse 6. There they are called ‘the
thirsty’, and they are promised the water of life. Thirsty people conquer. Those
who are thirsty for God receive the inner resources to overcome opposition to
their faith. Those with a deep desire for God, those for whom God and nothing
else will do, who long for him with all their hearts – these are the ones who
receive the water of life and are strengthened to conquer.

Yes, it is thirst
for God. A sip will not do. A nod of the hat to God and getting the religious
duty over as quickly and painlessly as possible do not constitute thirst. Developing
an appropriate disciplined spiritual life, pursuing him in Scripture, prayer,
fellowship and the world is thirst. As the psalmist said:

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
   so my soul longs for you, O God.
(Psalm 42:1)

Those who long like this, who – in the words of the American
preacher Tommy Tenney are God Chasers – are the ones who will
receive the water of life that gives strength to overcome opposition and
conquer evil. My thirst varies – the challenge for me is to live on the proper
Christian assumption that all my life’s longings are only truly met in Christ.
When I do, I shall be truly thirsty. And God will strengthen me.

Conclusion
On this fifth Sunday of Easter, we may feel we are starting to get a distance
from the Easter story again and the risen life of Christ. But Revelation 21
gives us this vision of resurrection life. We anticipate the new creation with
our public life; we anticipate the new community by living the forgiven and
forgiving life; and we conquer evil as we thirst for God and he supplies our
needs. May this vision call us forward into God’s future.

Technorati Tags: heaven, resurrection, thisworldisnotmyhome, creationcare, politics, fear, church, community, GrahamTomlin, TommyTenney

Today a friend sent me a link to a website entitled ‘Save Methodist Youth Work‘. It is an online petition asking this year’s Methodist Conference to resist making drastic cuts to national support staff for work with children, youth and young adults.

The context is a process called ‘Team Focus’: Conference has required 30% cuts in the ‘Connexional Team’ (roughly speaking, that means our national staff and representatives) by September 2008. This is of course due to church decline and reduced income.

A week ago yesterday I heard a presentation about the general plans at our District Synod. I would not wish to blame the person who made the presentation – she was not long off a plane – but it had to be one of the worst things I’ve heard at a Synod in fifteen years. And believe me, I’ve heard some atrocious stuff. It gave me little confidence in the process.

For a start, we were subjected to over half an hour of endless PowerPoint slides, all stuffed with lots of text, and every word being read out to us. Admittedly there was a lot of information to get across, but we really needed an advance paper to read to have any chance of getting to grips with it.

Then there was the content. Some of it was encouraging: streamlining the way you apply for grant aid in Methodism has to be a good thing. The way things are done at present could not have made more complicated  by medieval labyrinth designers.

But some of it was shocking. Naturally with cutting staff from 140 to 100 there will be new or re-jigged jobs. We were told that interviews would be held in November this year, but that job descriptions would be produced next January. Hands up anyone who fancies going for a job  when you won’t know for another two months what the description will be?

There was a glaring admission, too. Apparently there is to be a ‘new culture’ for the Connexional Team (which makes them sound even more like New Labour than their average pronouncements). And, you know what? That new culture will be – wait for it – ‘service’. So what in heaven’s name was it before?

One would hope that although financial constraints have precipitated the process the focus would be mission-led. This is certainly the claim in a press release quote back in January from Ken Howcroft. He said:

“although the Team Focus will sadly lead to job cuts, at its heart is a move to liberate the energy and imagination of individual Methodists in carrying forward the Church’s mission in their communities. We do not want our structures to get in the way of new ideas, and we are moving to a vision where the Team supports local churches in ways that suit them.”

I hope he’s right. But the signs right now are not good. Liberating individual Methodists could be a good and daring thing. It might set us free from the top-down structure that has so frequently inhibited mission in the past. But I suspect this isn’t about liberation at all. It’s about saying, “We can’t do it any  more, so over to you.” Traditional Methodists will see a threat here of creeping congregationalism and a loss of ‘connexionalism’ (that sense that we are all connected). I am not with them. I think it could bring new colour to a denomination that previously specialised in monochrome. I may be sceptical of what to me is the spin being put on the real reasons, but it could be a real chance. It could shake local Methodists out of the infantile dependency culture that expects things to be done for or to them (the same dependency culture that means a congregation thinks it cannot live without a minister, so we don’t have vacancy periods between appointments, during which time a much-loved minister’s departure can be grieved, and people can get ready for a new approach).

It’s a mixed bag, then. The stuff coming ‘down from the top’ makes me squirm, but if this means a loosening of the grip on the local church it might be a good thing. The great shame is to wonder whether this has come too late. Methodism has lost spiritual entrepreneurs in recent years who might have relished this opportunity. It has taken the money issue to force it, not a genuine desire to liberate. At least, that’s the way it looks. I hope I’m wrong.

Have I signed the petition on youth work? At this stage, no, although I could be convinced. I’d want to be sure that if we did preserve good national support it gave something I could have confidence in. Part of me wants to sign up: my wife and children left Methodism after we moved here, because there was no viable children’s ministry in my churches, or the other nearby circuit churches. But in all sorts of areas of church life I’ve grown accustomed to finding the best support and resources outside Methodism. Is that a tragic admission or a positive one?

John 10:22-30

Introduction
For a townie like me, sheep are an unfamiliar and tantalising sight. I once
visited friends who had moved to rural Sussex. Next to their palatial mansion
was a farm. My friends observed that all weekend I couldn’t stop photographing
the sheep.

Our daughter is different. Not that we live in a rural area,
but her pre-school recently had a visit from Marsh Farm Country Park
staff. They brought with them chicks and lambs. A few weeks later my wife took
our daughter and son away for a week’s holiday on a farm. When they arrived, the
farm owner greeted them who, knowing small children were coming, brought a
couple of lambs to welcome them. Rebekah took one look at them and said,
‘Haven’t you got any kittens?’ One blasé little four-year-old, one deflated
farmer.

For Jesus and his culture, sheep weren’t just an everyday commonplace;
they were a significant religious image. Never mind the Passover lamb, the
moment Jesus described himself earlier in John 10 as the ‘good shepherd’, he
was dropping a political bomb in the Jewish religious world. Ezekiel had castigated
the ‘shepherds of Israel’ of his day, that is the religious leaders; Jesus, by
calling himself the good shepherd, was implicitly criticising the leaders of
his day.

Moreover, in this passage, it gets worse: not only aren’t
they shepherds, they aren’t even sheep (verses 25-26)! Effectively, they’re not
even part of God’s people!

So the question arises: who are the sheep? What do they look
like? How do you identify them? Jesus seems to know, and in a moment, I’d like
us to explore what he says.

However, before we do, let me note that this question is a
dangerous one. ‘Who are the flock of God?’ can be misused. Some people use it
to make self-righteous descriptions of who’s in and who’s out. For some, it’s
more about trying to keep some undesirables out than finding ways of welcoming
them in. And the descriptions of who’s ‘in’ end up looking uncannily like those
who are making the definitions! We may not know infallibly who is in the
kingdom of God and who isn’t, so we should retain a proper humility. However,
if we are going to think about the question, the most important thing we must
do is make sure we take our bearings from Jesus. In my fallible way, that’s
what I hope we can do this morning.

Here is what Jesus says:

‘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.’
(verses 27-28)

1. My sheep hear my
voice (verse 27)
You may know the story about a group of Christians on a pilgrimage in the Holy
Land. From their coach they saw someone hounding a flock of sheep, driving them
and shouting at them to go a certain way. ‘What kind of shepherd is that?’ they
asked their guide. ‘Oh, that wasn’t the shepherd,’ replied the guide, ‘that was
the butcher.’

For sheep, there’s a difference between the shepherd’s voice
and other voices. They are tuned into the shepherd’s voice. The first sign of
being sheep in the flock of Christ is that we hear his voice. We listen to him.
We take direction from Jesus.

There are whole books written on ‘Listening
To God’, so what can I say in just a few minutes? Let me focus on one area:
the most reliable way we can tune into the shepherd’s voice is to listen for
his word as we read the Bible prayerfully. In Psalm 16:8, David says, ‘I keep
the Lord always before me.’ Joshua is told in Joshua 1:8, ‘The book of the law
shall not depart from your mouth.’ But what should we do about this?

The great spiritual writer Dallas
Willard has said in his recent book ‘The
Great Omission’.

‘Bible memorization
is absolutely fundamental to spiritual formation. If I had to – and of course I
don’t have to – choose between all the disciplines of the spiritual life and
take only one, I would choose Bible memorization. I would not be a pastor of a
church that did not have a program of Bible memorization in it, because Bible memorization
is a fundamental way of filling our minds with what they need.’
(page 58)

So take time to memorise a Bible verse. Also, take time over
passages of Scripture. Do what the great ancient technique of ‘lectio divina’
suggests: take a passage, read it, reflect on what strikes you, decide how
you are going to respond, and rejoice at what God has said to you.
Read, reflect, respond, and rejoice.

Alternatively, do what Ignatius
of Loyola recommended in his ‘Spiritual
Exercises’: having stilled yourself in the presence of God, read a Bible
story and ask yourself, if you were present at the incident, what would your
five senses tell you? What would you hear, taste, smell, touch or say? Read it
again and imagine yourself as one of the people in the story. Get inside their
thoughts, feelings and actions. Read it more and imagine yourself as another
character – even as Jesus, if it is a Gospel narrative you are reading.

Bible memorisation, lectio divina, the Spiritual Exercises
of Ignatius and others are all ways tuning into God. Whether these techniques
are ones that work for you or not, the crucial point is this: the true sheep of
Christ’s flock make sure they hear his voice. What is each of us doing in that
respect?

2. I know them (verse
27)
I struggled with these words at first: ‘I know them’ – doesn’t Jesus know
everyone? In what sense does he know his sheep that is different from the way
he knows all people?

I concluded that ‘knowing’ is not just about knowledge, as
if it were just a collection of information; knowing is also about
relationship. When Jesus says he knows his sheep, I believe he is referring to
intimacy. You may recall how older English Bible translations used the verb ‘to
know’ for the intimate relationship between a man and a woman: ‘Adam knew Eve’,
and so on.

Now before anyone worries I am not suggesting that there is
anything sexual between Jesus and us, but I am saying this: he desires a close
relationship with us. He is always making advances towards us: he speaks, he
acts, and he woos us. He is calling us in the church and in the world. And this
will be especially apparent if we have taken the trouble to listen to his
voice.

Being aware that Christ knows us intimately is a matter of
time and of awareness. A survey
published on Thursday by Sheila’s
Wheels, the company that specialises in car insurance for women, claimed
that millions of women only manage ten minutes a day talking to their spouse or
partner. Forty per cent consider a car journey the best opportunity for a
conversation; one in five sends text messages; one in ten relies on Post-It
notes; and one in fourteen emails her loved one. When they do talk, the least
likely topic is the state of their own relationship. It’s a mark of the way
constant pressures bombard us, and a reminder that relationships need nurturing.

I am sure you can see the parallel with the spiritual life:
it, too, needs nurturing, and not just squeezed out by the pressures of
contemporary living. I say that as one who knows his own relationship with
Christ oscillates between the reasonable and the perfunctory. He knows us: how
can we not respond? How can we not carve out time, even if it isn’t regularly
hour upon hour?

Let’s connect, then, our listening that I spoke of in the
first section to this truth, that Christ knows us intimately. Let one inform
and inspire the other. Let us no longer say, ‘Lord, be with us,’ because he is
with us. Instead, let us be aware that he is with us and respond.

3. They follow me
(verse 27)
Here’s the problem, as I see it: we have scaled down the Gospel. In rightly
saying that we are forgiven by grace through faith and not works, we have
sometimes reduced Christianity just to being forgiven now and waiting for
heaven. Because we rightly resist the idea that any divine blessing comes from
our good works, we may slip into another error, and it is the error of being
passive. ‘Let go and let God,’ say some Christians. However, Dallas Willard, in
the book I mentioned earlier, has an important corrective to this:

‘Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.
Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action … the gospel of the entire New
Testament is that you can have new life now in the Kingdom of God if you will
trust Jesus Christ. Not just something he did, or something he said, but trust
the whole person of Christ in everything he touches – which is everything … If
you would really like to be into consuming grace, just lead a holy life. The true
saint burns grace like a 747 burns fuel on takeoff. Become the kind of person
who routinely does what Jesus did and said.’
(pages 61 and 62)

Steve
Chalke has recently taken to saying that Jesus never called anyone to
become a Christian; he called them to follow him. The flock of Christ are those
transformed by the forgiving grace of God in Christ, but who are then
transformed more and more into the likeness of Christ. It’s embarrassing when
we realise, from either research or personal experience, that the lives of
Christians are often indistinguishable from those who do not follow him.

Why are we not different? Some don’t want the effort: they’re
happy to receive what Dietrich
Bonhoeffer called ‘cheap
grace’. Instead, he claimed, ‘only he who believes is obedient’ and only he
who is obedient believes’.

Others want to be different, but don’t break the chains. This
is where the spiritual disciplines of Jesus come into play. Is it possible that
this following Jesus is the fruit of prayerfully reading the Bible, as I talked
about in the first point? Dallas Willard gives a great example of what happens
when we fill our minds with the ways of Jesus:

‘You will remember that Jesus said, “I am among you as one
who serves” (Luke 22:27). And he also said, “Whoever wishes to become great
among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:44) … Being a servant shifts one’s relationship
to everyone. What do you think it would do to sexual temptation if you thought
of yourself as a servant? What do you think it would do to covetousness? What do
you think it would do to the feeling of resentment because you didn’t get what
you thought you deserved? I’ll tell you. It will lift the burden.
(page 60)

This doesn’t happen instantly. We expect too much instantly
in a technological society. But as we pray over the Scriptures and they begin
to transform our thinking, so they will play a major part in transforming us
into followers of the Good Shepherd.

4. I give them
eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my
hand (verse 28)
What does eternal life have to do with the shepherd/sheep image? The preceding
thoughts can all connect: sheep hear the shepherd’s voice, the shepherd knows
his sheep and the sheep follow the shepherd. But eternal life?

I suggest it’s to do with protection. When Jesus talks about eternal life here, he talks
about his sheep never perishing, and not being snatched out of his hand. It has
nothing to do with the possibility that I can stray from the fold, but everything
to do with the truth that Jesus defends and protects his flock from those who
would cause them spiritual danger. He is utterly committed to our eternal spiritual
well-being.

But how is this so? For one thing, it implies that Jesus is
stronger than all the forces that come against us. John was to write in his
first Epistle,

‘You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them,
because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.’
(1
John 4:4)

We are not caught in a battle between two equal and opposite
forces of good and evil. The life and ministry of Jesus shows that his love and
goodness is supreme. He is able to protect us from eternal loss.

But how he does it is a different matter. It is not by
cosmic violence that Jesus overcomes those who would try to snatch us from his
hand. It is the opposite. Earlier in the chapter he has said that the good
shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (John
10:11). He protects at the cost of his own life. The Cross, in other words,
is not only about the forgiveness of sins, it is about providing all that we
need to keep us secure in the love of God.

How so? For a start, because forgiveness is a guard against
the wiles of the enemy. It answers accusations with God’s verdict of justifying
us by faith. But also, because the Cross and Resurrection are the key to living
a new life. As Christ died for sin, we die to sin, and as he was raised to new
life, we are raised to a new lifestyle. And the Resurrection shows God’s
verdict on the Cross. It makes possible the old adage, ‘When the devil reminds
you of your past, remind him of his future.’ Jesus, in his life, death and
resurrection does all in his power to guard his sheep.

Conclusion
So who are the flock of Christ? They are those people who listen to his word,
respond to his overtures of intimacy, but do not simply lie back and wait for
heaven: instead, they follow their shepherd’s voice and example. Christ the
shepherd draws near to them and protects them with his very life.

Now, on that basis, am I ‘in’? Do I want to be?

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