Resurrection and Suffering

Psalm 23, John 10:11-18

7 May 2006

What is our image of Jesus the shepherd?

The prayer that my parents taught me to say each night as I was going to bed went like this:

Jesus gentle shepherd hear me

Bless thy little lamb tonight

Through the darkness be thou near me

Keep me safe till morning light.

Some of you may have said it too, or taught it to your children. Very occasionally, in the desperation of a sleepless night full of worry and anxiety I will find myself saying it again – hoping to find some easing of my adult anxieties in the comforting childhood memory of trust and expectation.

Jesus the Good Shepherd does generally conjure up images of fluffy lambs and cuddles – we have all seen the pictures – indeed we have a window in this church of Jesus tenderly holding a lamb in his arms. They are warm and inviting images – comforting, consoling. Sometimes people notice the shepherd’s crook and recall that shepherds used them to hook a straying sheep back onto the path, but the disciplinary nature of shepherding is usually subsumed to the caring and nurturing side.

Psalm 23 – the hospitality of God

And who doesn’t respond warmly to that most loved and well known psalm that was read earlier? It gives wonderful expression to deep human desires. If I have ever been led in meditation and asked to close my eyes and picture myself in a restful place it would come pretty close to this description – lying in the sunshine on lush grass beside a crystal clear stream – being restored in mind, body and soul. A wonderful antidote to a week of work with its overtime, deadlines and stress.

In a world of uncertainty with too many options and more information than we can process, who doesn’t long for a trustworthy guide who can show us the sure paths and whose presence takes away fear even in the dark and threatening places?

And those of us who view Babette’s Feast as one of the heights of cinematic achievement find the image of an generous table laid before us, presumably with someone else to clear up afterwards, as a very apt picture of God’s kingdom.

Probably the image behind this Old Testament psalm is that of a meal provided for a refugee from pursuing enemies. According to Semitic tribal custom anyone fleeing from enemies bent on the rough justice of the wilderness could appeal for refuge from any encampment he might happen upon. Pursuing enemies could not take the refugee while he was guest in someone else’s home. But even this image is conceived elaborately in the Psalm, with the guest being anointed with pungent oil and served an overflowing cup suggesting an exceptionally hospitable host. We perhaps don’t have the danger of physical enemies pursuing us but still the idea of a restful and hospitable respite in our busy lives is an attractive one.

Over the last week I have been reading a novel called “I don’t know how she does it” – a fairly lighthearted story about a working mother, but there are a few echoes of unease as I read of her frantic life trying to balance everything and have enough time for all that life expects of her. While the novel overplays the demands of children and husband, boss and work colleagues, in-laws and well meaning friends, there are probably very few of us who wouldn’t welcome the day when instead of all the stress, all that pursues us in life is goodness and mercy, and our response is merely to rest in the house of the Lord as a treasured and loved guest.

John 10 - I am the good shepherd


Speaking of the divine with the image of a shepherd is not unusual in the bible. I suppose shepherding was a common occupation in biblical times, so the knowledge of what that entailed: the need to care for the flock, protect them in the face of danger and gather them in when lost in the wilderness or scattered to foreign lands were tasks attributed to Yahweh. So when Jesus says “I am the good shepherd” these traditions have been drawn together. Earlier in the passage in John 10 we read of a caring, protective, safe relationship between Jesus and his own: “All who enter by me will be saved… they will come in and go out and find pasture… I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

And yet there is a dark side to this image too. As we go on in the chapter, specifically in the words that were read to us, there is danger, carelessness, threats, and even allusions to death. In his book Jerusalem in the time of Jesus, Joachim Jeremias tells us that in the rabbinic teaching of the first century shepherding was a despised trade, on the same social scale as shopkeepers, physicians, butchers, thieves and tax collectors. They were regarded as untrustworthy, more likely to steal from their master than care for the sheep. Frequently shepherds were ostracized from their community.

And the image of shepherding that we have from our own experience is not anything like that window over there. When we think of sheep herding here in Australia, we tend to think of dusty stations, tough men on motor-bikes, and dogs running this way and that keeping the sheep in line then being locked away into wire cages themselves in the farmyard so they don’t contract diseases from the sheep. We are more likely to think of hot dry landscapes with thousands of flies: a scene of tough work done by hard men in a formidable environment. And in the reading from John 10, the tough shepherd seems even more to be what the text is asking us to see. When we start at verse 11 as the lectionary suggests we are even told straight away that “the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Right up front we are talking about life and death situations, not just cuddling cute lambs. When John chose to talk about the church community as a flock of sheep it is an image of a group in danger. There are wolves prowling about in the darkness waiting for an opportunity and there are thieves who will steal sheep if the shepherd lets down his guard. The only hope for the sheep in the midst of all this danger is a good and tough shepherd.

It would be nice to be wrapped up and cuddled and put to sleep in safety each night, but we know that for most people life is not as easy as that.

Suffering – part of life


If we take time to listen to the news of the world we hear of danger and pain every day. Political unrest in the Pacific, continuing slaughter in Dafur showing that we have learned no lessons from Rwanda, blasts in the middle east, refugees fleeing from all sorts of oppressive situations, increasing AIDS and the underlying knowledge of the effects of poverty, terrorism and natural disaster. This week I received a letter from Rev Simon in the Mae La camp on the Thai-Burmese border. In it he says “I am sure you are well informed about what is happening in Burma… fighting is going on in many places and many internally displaced people are running for their lives with many coming to seek refuge in the camps in Thailand. We need your earnest prayer that the Lord will have mercy upon us and intervene and stop the evil civil war that has been waging for more than 57 years now. We thank each individual donor for their love, kindness and generosity shown to us during our time of suffering and difficulty…”

So we are well aware of suffering in the world. But in our own personal lives we face challenges too: debilitating disease, the loss of a loved one, threatening illnesses, the agony of depression, family members who succumb to addictions, for some a daily struggle to make ends meet. In other words, we are well aware of suffering amongst our own community and even ourselves.

A big part of the pain of experiencing suffering in whatever form it takes is that it involves aloneness – the sense of being cut off from others. It seems that while I struggle with my pain, for the rest of the world it is business as usual. And there is also a truth that suffering is individual – no-one can really understand what you are experiencing because everyone suffers differently. Theories of suffering are little use because our suffering is individual, personal, immediate. Even asking the question “why is this allowed to happen to me?” does not often bring a satisfactory answer. Suffering must be endured.

In this season of Easter, what can the message of the resurrection bring to the reality of suffering? Is our image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd a helpful one in this context?

Resurrection and suffering

I want to respond to those questions with two answers, but I am fully aware that for some of you these answers will be of little help and comfort at this point in time. There is a time in the midst of suffering when there are no explanations. But resurrection is a reality that is best understood as miracle – in other words, resurrection is not an explanation or theory. And so I do hope each one of us is able to experience the miracle of resurrection within our own lives, wherever our life’s experience has taken us.

We are never alone

  1. The first answer we can take from the bible passages we have heard today is that despite how we feel we are never alone. Undergirding our sense of aloneness can be the deep knowledge that God is there. Do you remember the suffering of Job? Nearly forty chapters of questions and anwers about the problem of innocent suffering. The forward in my bible speaks of the various theories offered: retributive, disciplinary, probative, eschatological, redemptive, revelatory, ineffable and incidental. But at the end of the book, even without answers, it is enough for Job to know that God is there.

And in the person of Jesus we can be even more assured of God’s presence. The incarnation is the knowledge that God has come to be with us, in all the experiences that life brings, including suffering. The unique feature of the John 10 passage that adds something to the Old Testament picture of God as a shepherd is the statement “the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” The shepherd becomes the Lamb who is slain. But while some people argue that Jesus embraces this role gladly, I don’t think that is consistent with the way he lived his life. He knew that we must try to prevent suffering. He cured disease, and raised the dead, and when his own suffering drew near he asked to be spared from it.

Suffering is a threat to the goodness of creation, to the abundant life God wills. In this context Resurrection means turning the threat into a promise, so that what otherwise threatens to destroy us becomes instead the means to enlarge and enrich our lives. And so suffering, while not welcomed, can be embraced and transformed. As I emphasised last week, the resurrected Jesus still bears the marks of suffering – resurrection does not negate suffering. But it is possible to move on. I’ll come back to this in a minute.

The church community has an important role in this assertion that in suffering we are not alone. I heard someone say recently that a good definition of the role of Church is for it to be subversive of anything that is not life giving. And Christians have always tried to alleviate suffering. In a Matthean parable the followers of Jesus are affirmed as those who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, healed the sick and visited the prisoners. In fact, they are called sheep and are welcomed into the flock. At a book group Tracey Noble and I attend together a discussion came up about the lack of support for young fmailies when there are no extended family living in the same town. Tracey and I looked at each other and both thought precisely the same thing – that in the church community there is support – we don’t have to struggle on alone through difficult and challenging times in our lives.

Suffering can be transformed

  1. The other suggestion I want to make as to what the message of the resurrection bring to the reality of suffering is that suffering can be transformed and transforming.

I read a children’s story some time recently about a beautiful delicate porcelein teacup that could speak, and as it told the story of its formation it mentioned the painful and challenging process of being thrown onto the potter’s wheel, moulded, pulled into shape, fired, painted and glazed. All of those steps in the process, although the means of great suffering at times, contributed to its final beauty. We know the image of the potter too from Jeremiah 18, where the prophet sees in the work of the potter the transforming power of God’s hand over his people.

Another image from the Arts are the four scultures that Michaelangelo carved for the tomb of Pope Julius, where the seemingly incomplete figures are striving forth out of the marble: as one writer puts it “being torn out of non being into being by the hammer blows of experience” (JA Williams, True Resurrection p 145). The final creation is not in spite of the blows, but because of them. The hammering and chiseling did not result in a pile of meaningless bits and pieces, but rather created a fine form with meaning and value that otherwise would not have been there. Suffering can be an essential part of who we become.

Suffering can also show us new sides of ourselves: reserves of strength, insight, courage, love and compassion that we didn’t know were possible: in this the destructive power of suffering becomes creative; what was not on the side of life becomes life-giving. Suffering is not negated, nor is it celebrated, but is integrated into who we are, and for that we can be thankful.

God comes to us in our suffering

Resurrection and suffering belong together. Suffering is an inevitable part of the Mystery of life. Resurrection reminds us of the mystery of love which undergirds all of life when God is at the centre of it. Because of that Love, God does not leave us alone in our suffering. Jesus said “I lay down my life for my sheep.”

There is a profound poem that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote while he was in prison – it has been set to music and I think we have even sung it in this church before. The language is old fashioned but the meaning is clear:

Men go to God when they are sore bestead

Pray to him for succour, for his peace, for bread,

For mercy for them sick, sinning, or dead;

All men do so, Christian and unbelieving.

Men go to God when he is sore bestead,

Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread,

Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead;

Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.

God goes to every man when sore bestead,

Feeds body and spirit with his bread;

For Christians, pagans alike he hangs dead,

And both alike forgiving.

Just as Jesus came to Mary at the tomb, and the disciples in the closed room, and his followers when they had given up hope and gone back to their old lives, he comes to us today and says our names too. His voice is full of love, acknowledging our suffering, but offering to transform it so that our lives have meaning and value. Hear the voice of the resurrected Jesus as we join in the next hymn. We haven’t sung it very often but it is a simple tune. I/the choir will sing the first verse and then I invite you all to join in.

Hymn – How are you broken?

Where are you lost and in pain?

I am your hope and your healing,

I am your starting again.

What does it cost to survive?

I am the whole of your ransom,

I am your coming alive.

Whose is the body you seek?

I am your love and your laughter,

I am the gospel you speak.

When did your travelling start?

I am your source and your ending,

I am the home of your heart.

Spirit on whom I depend,

Jesus, I’ll come at your calling,

Name you my lover and friend.

Elizabeth J Smith