Jesus knows us.
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year C (May 8, 2022).
View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Easter 4C
Preached at Christ Episcopal Church, Jordan, New York
Edited Transcript:
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
So again, I want to say to each of you a happy Mother's Day, and I also want to acknowledge that Mother's Day can be a complicated holiday, depending on what your experience of mothering has been. For many people, Mother's Day can be bittersweet as we remember our losses, and it can also be a day where we celebrate. And I hope that today you find time for celebration of those who have loved and mothered you.
Now, I started gardening yesterday. This is one of the things I learned pretty early on as a kid was Mother's Day is the right time to start your garden. Before that, you still risk the frost. So my husband and I were out in the garden, kind of getting things ready, and my son was helping. And both of us have lost our mothers, my husband and I. My husband's mother died a few years ago, not very long after his father. And I remember that we were doing the things you do after a loved one passes. We found in her desk an envelope, and it was labeled "my will." And we opened it up, and inside was exactly what you would expect to find.
There was also a package of forget-me-not seeds, and so my husband put those in his pocket and took them home from Virginia. And he planted them in a nice orderly row, along a fence, planted those seeds, and they didn't grow. And he was disappointed. And we went into the garden yesterday, and we started digging around. We cleared some weeds, and there in the garden, guess what was growing? Yeah, that's right.
And so my husband said, "Oh, my mother, she really knew me. She really knew me because she knew that I'd put those seeds in my pocket and I'd try to plant them right in a nice orderly row. But she knew that I'd have things that ... and the seeds would be kind of falling out of my pocket as I walked around the yard." And so those seeds, planted by a son whose mother knew him so well that she trusted that those seeds would grow where they were supposed to grow ... and now they'll grow with our carrots and our tomatoes.
And it is such a joy. It's such a joy to be known, isn't it? It's such a joy to be loved by someone who truly knows you maybe better than you know yourself, because my husband, he meant to plant those seeds real nice and neat. But his mother knew what to do. And that's kind of what I want to think about today with our Gospel reading, because what does Jesus say? He says, "I know my sheep. I know my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them."
And I was thinking about this beautiful psalm, and I almost wish instead that we had Psalm 139, which doesn't mean I don't love this beautiful 23rd Psalm. But the psalm that came to mind when I thought about Jesus saying "I know my sheep" was Psalm 139. Do you remember it? "Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. Before a thought occurs to me, you, Lord, know it completely." And it's this beautiful psalm that is praising a God who knows us better than we know ourselves, and that is Jesus who knows and loves us, who knows his sheep.
Now, there's a couple of different kinds of things that might come to mind when we think about knowing. And knowing, I think, the first thing I kind of think of is when you got something right. I think our human inclination is to say, "Well, I know about that." Think about how sometimes you think about how you know people or how people have thought about knowing you. "Oh, I know Christopher. Yeah, I know Christopher. He's a real so and so," right? Or "I know her. She means well."
We like to think we know somebody or we know about a situation or we know what's right. We love to be right. We love to think that we've got the answer, and we know what something is all about. And it makes us feel good because we can put it in a nice box. We can put a label on it, and we can walk forward feeling really good. And there is that kind of knowing.
And then there's knowing in the biblical sense, which is not exactly what you're thinking(!), but it's not unrelated because that knowing that we find over and over again in the Bible, in Psalm 139 ... and I think the knowing that Jesus is talking about when he says, "I know my sheep," it's a knowing that goes deeper than, "Oh, I know about that. I know her." It's a knowing that goes down deep. It's a knowing that is intimate. That's why, when we talk about knowing in the biblical sense, we think about a marriage partnership that lasts a lifetime. There's always more to know. There's always more for us to know about one another. It's intimate. It's expansive, and the kind of knowing that Jesus knows and the way that Jesus knows us is never about boiling us down or putting us in a box. It's never about a one-time judgment. It's about the whole of our being. It's not only about the head and our head knowledge. It's the heart. It's the soul.
Think about ... if you remember the Gospel from last week (which you know I love, so you knew I was going to bring it up again!) Jesus says to Peter, after the Resurrection, he says to Peter, "Do you love me?" And he asks Peter three times, "Do you love me? Feed my sheep? Do you love me? Tend my lands. Do you love me?" And finally, Peter's like, "Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you."
That's the kind of knowing with which Jesus knows his sheep. He doesn't look at Peter at that time that Peter betrayed him only. "Oh, I know Peter. He's the one who said he didn't know me." He knows Peter as a whole person and a whole life, and he knows that when you really know Peter, you know that what Peter is about is love. Peter loves Jesus. That's the way that Jesus knows us. Jesus knows us in our love. And he says, "I know my sheep, and nothing can snatch them out of my hand." Nothing. The way that Jesus knows us is that he holds us. He cherishes us. Nothing can take us away from Jesus.
And so that last piece to me is, "My sheep hear my voice." Now, I wish, going back to our two kinds of knowing ... I wish that I could hear Jesus' voice. "Meredith, you need to get up. You need to go do this. You need to do that next." Have you ever been in a situation where you're making a difficult decision and you wish that you could hear that voice in that first sense of knowing where it's black and white, clear as day? Sometimes it is, but so often, when we're called to make a difficult decision or we're called to walk alongside with someone else who's making a difficult decision, we don't hear that voice in a neat and tidy way. And that can be scary for us. It can be hard to know, am I taking the right next step or not?
But what if the next time you have to make a difficult decision or the next time you are walking alongside someone who's making a decision for their lives, what if you remember those words of Jesus? "I know my sheep, and nothing can take them out of my hand." What if in the decision that you're making, you hear Jesus' deep love for you? What if you can come from that place as you listen for Jesus' voice? What if you can come from a place of deep trust that Jesus doesn't look at you just in one moment? There's not one time that you can get it right or wrong, but Jesus is looking always at the whole of your life as it unfolds and as you are known and loved over time and for eternity. I want to invite you in your decision making to trust the knowing that is better than you yourself are known and to follow that voice that says, first and most of all, "Nothing, nothing, nothing can take you out of my hand."