Saturday, April 28, 2012

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Today’s text

John 10:14-15

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.

Reflection

I am the Good Shepherd.

All that is in me … I give you. The love I share with the Father … I share with you … that you may know.

I am the Good Shepherd.

Love is not something I do. Love is who I am. I do not love when it strikes me or when it is easy. I do not love only the worthy or the beautiful. I love, and this love is for you.

I am the Good Shepherd.

Friday, I learned again what this means. I was asked to visit a prisoner at the DuPage County Jail. He is the age of my children. Already, he is sentenced to 30 years. But he faces another charge for a violent assault that will likely keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.

The last time I made a prison visit my hair was brown, so I was nervous going to the jail. I didn’t know what I would find, or whether my ministry would be rejected and abused.

But my anxiety didn’t matter. I promised to go, and I went.

The visit was not earth shattering. No great conversion of heart occurred that I could see. We talked freely and laughed on occasion. We were as serious and honest with each other as we could be, given that we were totally unknown to each other moments before.

At the end of our time, we prayed. We put our hands up against the glass, me on one side and he on the other. We prayed for his trial, for courage and strength, for comfort and peace not only for him but for those he victimized. They also face a life sentence of reliving, again and again, the worst moments of their lives.

I wish I knew them. I would like to hear their story and pray with them, too.
There is no happy ending here that I can see, not for anyone.

But driving away from the jail, I knew in my bones what Jesus is means when he says, “I am the Good Shepherd who pours out his life for the sheep.”

He doesn’t ask if the sheep are good, or deserving, or worth the trouble. He doesn’t ask if they scare or disgust him. He just loves each one, the lost and the found, the victim and the criminal, me and you.

There is no hint of turning in Jesus. He doesn’t turn away. He is always turned toward us. His arms are open, no matter what. He lays down his life. Opening his heart, he lets all that is in him pour out … to us.

He wants us to know the love he shares with the Loving Mystery of God. He wants us—you—to know this great love, to share with you loving union of hearts he shares with the Mystery he calls ‘the Father.’

2

I want to know this union of hearts. I have wanted to know this since I was a young child. Sunday after Sunday, I looked at the painting over the ancient, green-painted piano in the church basement. It pictured Jesus sitting on a hillside, staring into space.

It was a poor painting, but spiritually rich. It helped awaken a longing in my heart to share the quiet deep feeling I saw in Jesus as he sat in silence knowing God’s love flowing through him.

I wanted to know what he knew, to feel what he felt, to be filled as he was filled. And this is what he wants for you.

So seldom do we have this, though. There is no turning in Jesus. But there is in us. We turn away. We forget. We neglect and fail to care for our relationship with him.

Life gets busy. We give ourselves to everything that demands our immediate attention, surrendering to all our life and work and recreation seem to require.

Busy and distracted, we turn away from our aching need to rest everyday in the Good Shepherd. We fail to return each day to find our place in his protective love, in his receiving arms, in the quiet acceptance where we feel totally known and completely safe.

Then something happens. Life outside the arms of the Good Shepherd gets hard. Failures and disappointments whisper in the night. Grief and loss, heart wounds and future fears trouble our souls, and the empty ache within tells us we have neglected the one we most need.

We hunger for intimacy with the Good Shepherd, but we can’t feel him near because we have gotten out of the habit of putting first things first.

So we return, again, to the places where we know him, to the music where he sings his love into our soul, to the people whose voices resonate with the Love that fills him, to words of grace he speaks, to a picture or place whose beauty becomes his eyes of mercy looking into our souls and filling us with the wonder of all that is in him.

It is such moments that we know him again, feeling the love of the Good Shepherd.
In such moments, we sit on that hill with Jesus and all that he is flows into us and makes us human again. The shackles of our fear fall away, and we breathe deeply, drinking in the good air of earth. With each breath, he laughs at the joy of giving us life.

And we know … Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He invites to sit quietly with him, to chant his name, to speak the depth of our joy and pain, to open our empty hearts and hands and receive all that is in him.

And as we receive, we know … we are totally known and completely safe.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Today's text

John 10:14


I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.

Reflection: What happens inside

It happened again last Sunday. I stepped to the altar at the close of worship, bowed and spoke two words. “Thank you.”

The words are not planned or calculated. No one hears them, since the final song is being sung. But the words are always there; appearing from a part of my soul I don’t control but can only notice.

“Thank you for letting me part of this.”

For the hour of worship, I have inhabited a space where unfettered grace holds sway, where the anxieties of competition, disease, struggle and uncertain futures are washed away in the flood of a love from the boundless heart of God.

Once more I have received what I need lest I forget who I am, where I come from and for what I am made.

Sometimes, often lately, the hour of worship feels like a bubble in time. Together we step into a space that is not just physical but profoundly spiritual and liberating.

Inside this space things happen that don’t or cannot happen outside this space. Words are spoken that feel forced and awkward elsewhere. People touch and hug struggling friends they haven’t seen all week. Sorrow can be named and prayed, and sufferers can be blessed.

The flurry and worries of daily life may control our time and minds outside this space, but not inside.

When we come inside we enter a realm, a physical and spiritual space where the love of God holds sway, where gentle grace pours healing oil on wounds, whether old or fresh, and human hands reach out to bless.

Inside, laughter at human foibles and frailties sparkles in the air because we know our failures and fears are held in Love Immeasurable. Inside, we know that we are welcome and loved, treasured and delighted in by the Loving Mystery whose grace shines in the face of Jesus--and in the faces around us who know and love him.

Inside this holy space, babies grab my glasses when I take them from their fathers’ arms to baptize them.

Inside, faces are named as they file forward and open empty hands to receive a food that fills the heart with the awareness of that Love who welcomes every part of them. Inside, arms encircle the shoulders of those whose eyes are still moist at the pain of goodbye.

Inside, children hug me, talk back to me, make fun of me and become sacraments of a Love far greater they--or I--can possible understand.

Inside, we sing to the mountains and the seas, lifting our voices, raising our hearts to proclaim the day blessed, a day when all the world rejoices in the gift of life and the truth of Love.

Inside, we take the hand of the person next to us, hold it up and pray an old prayer that has crossed billions of lips, “Our Father … .” Praying together, we feel oneness with another human soul and all those other souls who breathe and need, who fear and laugh, who live and die knowing there is One from whom we come and to whom we go, One who is Love Unbounded.

Inside, our hearts fall open again, and we are able to forgive (or at least to try) the failures and sins of those who have hurt us, recognizing that we are as human as flawed as those who sin against us.

Inside, we become human beings again. The shackles of our fears drop away, and we breathe deeply, drinking in the good air of earth. And with each breath, God laughs at the joy of giving us life.

Inside, we know. We know the Love God is, the Love for which we are intended, the Love we are privileged to share, the joy of that sharing and the hope that the grace that fills our gathering will, in God’s time, thoroughly fill us and all that is.

Until that day, we need to come inside, to step into this space where grace holds sway that our hearts may again be made human and learn to say, “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

Pr. David L. Miller







Thursday, April 26, 2012

Today’s text

John 10:11-12

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. The hired man, since he is not the shepherd and the sheep do not belong to him, abandons the sheep as soon as he sees a wolf coming, and runs away, and then the wolf attacks and scatters the sheep.

Reflection

There are things we do and things we are. Jesus is the good shepherd, the one who is unconditional commitment, unfettered love for his friends.

Love is not something he does. Love is what he is. It is his nature, his truth, the center of his being. It is not what he chooses to give here or there when the notion strikes him, but the essence of who he is.

So, too, it is the essence of our relationship with him.

There is no turning away for him. He is always turned toward us. His arm are always open, no matter what.

We turn away. We forget. We fail to care for our relationship with him.

Life gets busy, and we cut back where it is easiest. We give ourselves to everything that demands our immediate attention, surrendering to all that life and work seem to require of us.

Busy and distracted, we turn from our aching need to rest everyday in the One who is always good, in his protective love, in his receiving arms, in the quiet acceptance where we feel totally known and completely safe.

Life outside the arms of the good shepherd gets hard. Failures and disappointments whisper in the night. Grief and pains, heart wounds and future fears trouble our souls, and the empty ache within tells us we have neglected the one we most need.

We hunger for intimacy with the Good Shepherd, but we can’t feel him near because we have gotten out of the habit of putting first things first.

So we return, again, to the places where we know him, to the music where he sings his love into our soul, to the people whose voices resonate with the Love that fills him, to words of grace he speaks, to a picture or place whose beauty becomes his eyes of mercy looking right into our souls and filling us with the wonder of all that is in him.

Then, again, we know you, Jesus, and we know you are always good, a word which also means beautiful. You are the beautiful shepherd, whose beauty is the love you are, the love that beckons us to come and rest, to come and know the goodness of a peaceful heart where we are safe, totally safe.

In awareness of such safety, we know you, Jesus. We know what we need to know.

Pr. David L. Miller