One of the great tendencies we have as human beings is to take things for granted. Sometimes, we have to do that because we couldn’t get through life, or even a day of life, unless we took things for granted. We take it for granted, for example, that the world isn’t going to end today, or tomorrow, or at any time in the near future. And it’s just as well that we take that for granted because could you imagine what life would be like if we thought that the world might end at any moment? We plan our futures and build our lives because we take it for granted that there is a future to plan for. We know that our individual lives will come to an end one day, but we take it for granted that our loved ones, especially our children and grandchildren if we have them, will still have a future even if we’re not here to share it with them. Can you imagine the quandary we’d be in if we didn’t take that for granted? What would be the point in making plans? What would be the point in saving for our future, or making a will for our loved ones’ futures? Who would we choose to spend our time with if we thought that each moment might be the last moment we could spend with anyone?
So life would be very difficult if we couldn’t take some things for granted. But we can also make life difficult by taking for granted things that we shouldn’t. And when it come to that, perhaps the very worst thing we can do is to take people for granted.
There’s a well-known song that says, ‘You always hurt the one you love’ and whilst it might not be true to say we always hurt them, it is very true to say that we can and do hurt the ones we love. Of course we can hurt people whom we don’t usually think of as loved ones, strangers, acquaintances, neighbours, colleagues, all sorts of people. But it is perhaps the ones we love whom we do hurt more than anyone else. In part, that’s because we spend more time with them than we do with anyone else, but it also happens because we can and do take those we love, and perhaps especially the love of those who love us, for granted.
How many times, for example, have we decided to do something, or actually done something, thought for a moment about what someone else will think about it, or how it might affect them, and then just shrugged any doubts or concerns aside by thinking “Oh, they won’t mind” when, in fact, we don’t really know whether they’ll mind or not?
We know that happens because how many times have we been on the receiving end of that kind of thing?
How many times has someone we know and love, and trust, done something that’s affected us badly and we’ve simply said to them, “It’s OK: it doesn’t matter.” When it fact it’s not been OK, it has mattered, and we’ve been hurt and upset by what they’ve done?
So we know that we can hurt people by taking them for granted, and we often hurt those we love, and who love us, because we take them for granted. But we can actually be encouraged, in a sense, to take those we love for granted by the uncomplaining, forgiving way they respond to us when we’ve hurt them. And that is something we see in our relationship with God and with Jesus.
As Christians, we believe that God loves us unconditionally, that is, no matter what we do, God will still love us. God has shown this unconditional love for us by sending his Son into the world to lay down his life for us so that we can be saved from our sins and be raised to eternal life. But how do we respond to God’s love and Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross? Isn’t it true that we tend to take these things for granted? Because, far from showing our appreciation for what God and Jesus have done for us by living the kind of lives Jesus taught us to live, isn’t it true that we simply go on sinning? And isn’t it true that when we go on sinning, we’re expecting God to forgive us again, and again, and again? And taking it for granted that God will forgive us again and again and again, and will always forgive us because he loves us and because Jesus died for us so that we can be forgiven?
But, if we do take those things for granted then I think, in part at least, it’s the Church’s fault because of the way the Church tends to portray Jesus and the events of his life and ministry. We see that, for example in the words of a hymn that many Christians would regard as one of their favourites; My Song is Love Unknown.
My Song is Love Unknown is a very beautiful hymn, but in the fifth verse of the hymn, we find these words:
Yet cheerful he to suffering goes,
that he his foes from thence might free.
How do we reconcile that image, of Jesus going to his death cheerfully, with his Agony in Gethsemane? We could say that Jesus went to his suffering resolutely, but cheerfully?
I think that gives the impression that Jesus was happy to die, or at least that he didn’t really mind dying for the sins of the world. And if we’re given the impression that Jesus didn’t mind dying for our sins, what encouragement are we given to truly appreciate his sacrifice? If we’re given the impression that it was no big deal for Jesus to die for our sake, what encouragement are we being given not to take what he did for granted?
In fact, if we look at many images of Scriptural stories, what we see are images of serene people that really bear very little relation to way they’re described in the stories themselves. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus was in agony in Gethsemane, yet how many images of Jesus in the garden show him looking calm and serene, looking up to heaven while an angel hovers at his shoulder? The Scriptures tell us that when the Archangel Gabriel visited Mary to announce the birth of Jesus, Mary was terrified. But what do we see in images of this story? Not a young girl who’s terrified, but a young woman with a look of complete serenity about her. And, for me, one of the worst kind of examples of this kind of misrepresentation of reality is in the image of Jesus, The Good Shepherd.
We all know the traditional image of Jesus, The Good Shepherd. It’s a lovely pastoral image of Jesus, looking calm and serene, either holding a white lamb in his arms, or carrying on one his shoulders. But, if we compare that image with the image Jesus gives of The Good Shepherd in this morning’s Gospel, we see some striking differences. Jesus speaks about The Good Shepherd as someone who’s there to defend the sheep against wolves and who’s prepared to lay down his life for the sheep. We know that the life of a shepherd in Jesus’ time wasn’t an easy one. The shepherd lived outdoors with the sheep (we know that from the story of the shepherds in the fields around Bethlehem). The shepherd was expected to defend the sheep against predators, and there were lots of them. As well as wolves, there were lions, bears, foxes and jackals, birds of prey and snakes, and possibly leopards, cheetahs and hyenas too. And, as we know, many of these animals don’t hunt as individuals but in packs. So the shepherd’s life wasn’t an easy one and it could be very dangerous. In reality, a good shepherd may well have carried a lamb in his arms or on his shoulders, but he would have been a weather-beaten man who probably bore the scars of many encounters with predators.
And of course, the reality is, that Jesus would have been the same kind of man. Years on the road as an itinerant preacher, which is what he was, would no doubt have left him with a weather-beaten complexion. The kind of predators Jesus faced were human ones, but they were just as deadly as any other kind. And we know that Jesus fought with them, in fact, he went into their lair to save the sheep; to preach to and teach the lost sheep of Israel and to save them from these human predators. And, in the end, he laid down his life to save them, and to save us.
So, when we think of the kind of life a good shepherd led, and the life Jesus led, we get a very different image of The Good Shepherd than the one we’re usually given. Far from the serene figure, walking upright with a white lamb in his arms or on his shoulders, the true image of Jesus as The Good Shepherd is one of a shepherd who is bowed down under the weight of his load and staggering along the road. It’s an image of a shepherd who is bruised and beaten and bloodied from his battle with those who preyed on the sheep. And it’s an image of a shepherd who doesn’t carry a nice white lamb in his arms, nor on his shoulders, but one of a shepherd who carries the heavy wood of a cross on his shoulders. It’s not the image of a shepherd walking in the sun, in the countryside, but one of a shepherd who is actually in the process of laying down his life for the sheep as he walks the road to the place of crucifixion.
The traditional image of Jesus, The Good Shepherd, is a nice pastoral image. It does portray Jesus as the one who cares for us and seeks us out and finds us to bring us home when we’ve lost our way, but it’s not really in keeping with the image of The Good Shepherd Jesus gives in this morning’s Gospel. The traditional image of Jesus, The Good Shepherd might be nice and cosy, but because of that, it doesn’t really give us a true appreciation of just how costly God’s love for us and Jesus’ love for us was and is. And if we don’t appreciate the true cost of their love for us, we’ll always have a tendency to take it for granted.
We always have to remember that, although Jesus has now ascended back to his rightful place at God’s side in heaven, he was raised in his humanity. He still bore the scars of The Good Shepherd when he was raised from death and he carried those scars with him into heaven. They’re an eternal reminder in heaven of the cost of our salvation. So let’s not let our sanitised imagery of the story of our salvation cause us to lose sight of the harsh reality of how our salvation was won, nor the price Jesus paid for it. Let’s not take these things, nor God’s love for us nor Jesus’ love for us for granted but appreciate them and show our appreciation in lives that are increasingly free from sin.
Amen.
The Propers for the Fourth Sunday of Easter can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 