TEXTS: Psalm 23 and John 10:1-10
I invite you to close your eyes
and open your recall.
Bring to mind a movie you watched recently.
Got it?
Can you hear its soundtrack?
My guess is
that you can remember the visual scenes
from the movie better than the soundtrack.
Oh, maybe a theme song
with which the movie is identified,
but for the most part
the music of the soundtrack
is not what we remember about a movie.
It is in the background
almost constantly undulating –
rising and falling,
heaving and swelling,
surging and rolling
underneath the action.
Ominous and pounding
staccato music gets us prepared
for the Great White Shark:
da dunt, da dunt, da dunt.
Violins swelling sweetly
tell us a kiss is coming.
A fully orchestrated crescendo
lets us know a triumph has just taken place.
In our experience of watching the movie
we are not listening –
we hear
but we are not listening
to the music
because we are watching.
Our conscious attention is on the actors
or the special effects.
Underneath the visual
the music is cueing us all the time –
music is the language of subtext,
its individual notes playing on the strings
of our emotions.
The same can be true with words.
I am thinking of two words
with powerful subtext:
religion and spirituality.
How many people, at least in the Global North,
and yet to be considered “spiritual”
is a compliment.
We hear these words, spiritual and religious,
but our attention is elsewhere
and so, we don’t really think about
what they mean –
even though we know what is being said:
Religious is negative – spiritual is positive.
Religious means moralistic – spiritual means wholistic.
Religious means obsessive – spiritual means imaginative.
Religious means rigid – spiritual means fluid.
Religious means authoritarian – spiritual means relativistic.
Where religious is hard – spiritual is soft.
Buddhism is spiritual – Christianity is religious.
This is the subtext
playing underneath post-modern culture
(or whatever we call our culture these days).
Two little words that connotate so much.
And yet religion
is simply the communal,
even institutional way, of being spiritual.
Likewise, as used today,
spirituality is a personal characteristic
that when enacted through community –
or practiced institutionally – becomes religion.
I want to tease out
the subtext of two more words
because they have to do
with how religious and spiritual
came to be separated.
Shepherds and sheep,
the metaphors at the center of today’s texts.
If you ever read, “The Red Tent”
you know the scurvy side of Shepherds.
Whoa!
There is a lot going on
between shepherds and sheep
that I can’t talk about from the pulpit.
I know, aren’t you relieved
I actually have some limits?
It tickles me at Christmas
that includes the shepherds and sheep,
and hear the Gospel story
told in song and sermons
as if the Shepherds were natural witnesses
through which to tell that story.
But the subtext of a shepherd was
sleazy, thieving, lying,
cheating, no good scoundrel!
Yes, these are the witnesses
who are supposed to give
credibility to the miraculous birth story.
I think it is hilarious.
I mean really, it’s funny – ironic and humorous kind of funny.
But when it comes to the subtext
of Psalm 23 and John 10,
shepherds and sheep have a different profile.
In the poetic images from the psalm and gospel,
the subtext is different.
Here sheep are
helpless
vulnerable
stupid
defenseless
and scared of their own shadows.
Sheep are known
to have heart attacks and die
just from loud noises.
They need to lie beside “still waters”
because loud rushing water frightens them.
Shepherds are
solitary
distant
protective
determined
knowledgeable managers
of a difficult terrain.
Sheep only need some grass,
water and safety to thrive,
but Psalm 23 is a poem
written in a place
that has hard, dry ground
with lots of wild animals
who prey on defensive domestic stock –
wolves, lions, and birds of prey.
Clearly the sheep are human beings.
The shepherd is God in Psalm 23
and Jesus in John 10.
To the ancient people
who evoked these images,
the subtext was: You can trust God (or Jesus).
Even in the midst of a hard,
dry land where dangers lurk around every corner,
God loves and cares for you
and will bring about abundance
where there appears to be only scarcity.
In other words, the subtext is trust.
You can trust God to love and care for you.
But that subtext changed radically by 2020.
We hear something else
that evokes mistrust;
something else
that has created the difference
between religious and spiritual.
We have an additional 2000 years of history
on top of the poetry the ancients wrote.
We have 2000 years of church history
encrusting these words like zebra mussels
on the hull of a ship.
Shepherd got changed
to minister, priest, bishop, and pope.
Sure, God and Jesus are in there somewhere
but the institution told us to trust
these human representatives
of the real shepherd.
The authority figures of the Church
became the real time shepherds
that would care for
protect
and lead
the defenseless sheep
into green pastures.
The subtext underneath the words
described a passive dependence by the people
upon the protection and guidance
of the shepherds.
Alas, as all humans and human institutions do,
the Church failed
and failed
and failed.
So now the subtext
of the sheep and shepherd metaphor is mistrust.
That is why the word religious
is imbued with negativity.
To be religious
is to follow shepherds.
To be religious
is to trust ministers, priests, bishops, and popes.
To be religious
is to be abused by shepherds.
To be religious
is to be fooled by shepherds.
To be religious
is to be misused by shepherds.
To be religious
is to be bilked and manipulated
and taken advantage of by the shepherds
who are in it for themselves
or their top-heavy institution.
So now it is better to be spiritual.
Better to be on your own
where you don’t have to trust anyone
who is going to abuse or fool you.
Better to be spiritual without a shepherd.
Better to be spiritual
where you’re not a sheep in a flock.
Better to be spiritual
where you’re not a sheep period.
Better to be spiritual
where you can find it on your own.
This is the subtext
of religion and spirituality today.
But as we know,
a subtext can be just as deceptive
as the shepherds have been.
We have to ask
where or who
the subtext is coming from?
As community organizers like to say,
follow the money
and you’ll find out who the special interest is
directing the show.
The subtext in 2020 is that we have been betrayed
and abused by every institution
and central authority in our lives.
Trust, real trust, seems like stupidity
and no one wants to be a lamb.
The Presidency
Legislatures
City Halls
Corporations
Front Offices
Banks
the Churches
the Unions
the Generals
Boards of Education
Red Cross
Boy Scouts
the Media…
There is not one office of authority
in any institution
that has not broken the bonds of trust.
The subtext of both shepherd and sheep
may have been damaged beyond use.
Even God, for crying out loud!
Given the horrendous suffering from natural disasters and pandemic,
some of which pale in comparison
to the evil we have imposed upon one another,
how can we even trust God
to lead us beside still waters
and give us life more abundantly?
The subtext of our lives in 2020 is mistrust.
Whether in a flock
or out standing in a field all by ourselves,
we are sheep
aware of the dangers
and in search of greener pastures.
Which, in a very ironic way,
places us in the same movie
as those ancient people –
especially those ancient peasants –
from whom much of our sacred wisdom
has come.
You see, even with all our technology,
even with all our knowledge,
even with our medicines and surgeries,
even with our space travel and missiles,
even with our laptops and digital devises,
we are still quite vulnerable sheep
shivering before a fierce and indifferent universe that can eliminate us in an instant.
Honestly, that is the subtext,
the soundtrack playing underneath our lives
in 2020.
I am going to be up front with you,
I do not have a nice neat answer.
The subtext of mistrust is a problem that is real,
complex,
thorny,
and rooted in our actual experience.
We should not dismiss it or papered over it.
Addressing it – healing it –
begins with asking ourselves
about the content of trust.
What is it we trust,
or want to trust,
when committing ourselves
into the trust of another?
For instance, if our trust in God
is based upon the assumption
that God can
and should
and will
protect us and those we love
from harm’s way,
then the natural course of events
will erode that trust
and we will ultimately feel betrayed by God.
But if we cannot expect God
to protect us and those we care about,
then what can we expect from God?
Ah…now we are getting underneath the subtext.
The answer to this question of trust
and what we can expect from those we trust,
whether it is God or one another,
is not neatly reducible
to one little thing
upon which we can rest.
But there is a beginning.
We can expect God to be present –
present in our suffering
present in our joy
present in the ordinariness of everyday life.
We can expect that God
experiences our pain.
We can expect God not to be removed
or unaffected by what hurts us.
We can expect that God
is not indifferent to our suffering.
Maybe that does not sound like enough to you,
but if we remember the times we have been
in greatest pain or grief,
knowing we are not alone –
that we are not standing out there in the pasture all by ourselves –
is powerful.
It does not take away our pain
or the hurt that has inflicted us,
but it does make it tolerable.
Trusting God to be present
is the beginning of faith.
Trusting God to be present
is the beginning of healing.
Trusting God to be present
is ground we can walk on
and the place we can begin recovery from.
That is also true when it comes to
trusting one another.
Knowing that the other will be present
even when it is awful and difficult and scary,
is the beginning.
We can change the subtext of our lives
which is currently mistrust.
Changing it to trust is rooted
in what we expect from God and one another.
What I expect is a loving presence that is with me
to share in magnificent sunsets
as well as lonely pandemics;
is with me during scary dangers,
and also in the many lovely moments
of tenderness.
We don’t have to fix one another’s problems,
or make promises to protect us from all dangers,
or miraculously transform the world
into a better place.
Presence, simple presence,
is the beginning of trust.
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