Confronting the Fear of Loss (Fourth Sunday of Easter)

Sermons on YouTube…

Some of you may remember a program of helping people that used to be called “Christmas in April.”  Well, today’s Gospel story is kind of like having “Hanukah in May.”  In fact, it’s the only recorded instance in the Gospels of Jesus celebrating Hanukah.

And if you remember the story of Hanukah, it must have been particularly meaningful to have celebrated that festival in Jerusalem at the Temple.  That’s because Hanukah is really the celebration of the retaking and cleansing of the Temple from a horrible and devastating loss that happened about 200 years before Jesus … (a Syrian army took over Jerusalem and for 3 years had set up an image of the pagan god Baal Shamem right on the main altar in the Temple, until the Maccabeans retook the Temple, cleansed and rededicated it …)

It was a horrible event in Jewish history for the temple to have been desecrated like that, and of course a lot of people died defending and later retaking the Temple.  And I suspect that, for people in the early first century, the celebration of Hanukah in the Temple must have been filled with prayers to God to never let anything like that happen again.  The Temple should never be lost again.

And indeed, the fear that another horrible loss might happen was clearly on the minds of many people.  They were, after all, occupied by the Romans, whose main fortress in Jerusalem was actually adjacent to the Temple mount.  And later, when the plot to kill Jesus was unfolding, the fear of some of the chief priests was that the Romans might come and take away their holy place if Jesus was allowed to continue.

And while it had nothing to do with Jesus or the plot to kill him, by the time this story was written down in John’s Gospel, that unthinkable loss had happened again.  The Temple had been not only desecrated, but completely destroyed by the Romans during the Jewish revolt in 70 AD.

And the fear of loss can be a powerful thing.  It reminds me of a quote from Ron Heifetz, a well-known author in the field of adaptive leadership in the church.  Heifetz says that we sometimes think we have trouble with change because people fear change.  But Heifetz says that’s not really true.  “People don’t fear change –they fear loss”…

And I think Heifetz is right about that.  Nobody really fears change in and of itself.  If I think something is going to change and make my life incredibly better, I’m all for it!  But I don’t like losing what I have.  Fear of loss can be a powerful motivator and a powerful debilitator. 

The fear of loss is so powerful, because loss is such a universal human experience.  We’ve all suffered loss – the loss of someone we love to death; the loss of a relationship; the loss of a job; the loss of money or position; and maybe the loss of health care.

And we know that many losses aren’t things we can simply brush off and go on as if nothing happened.  Many losses require deep and adaptive changes in our lives, and many leave lasting scars.

And so most of us don’t like to dwell on losses we’ve experienced in the past, or contemplate the losses we might face in the future.  And we try to do everything we possibly can right now in order to minimize the possibility of losing anything else. And that’s particularly the case in times of great change, upheaval and chaos in the world around us.

So I’m telling you all of this on “Good Shepherd Sunday”, when we traditionally talk about fluffy sheep and caring shepherds, because  Jesus talks about sheep and shepherds for all of chapter 10 in John’s Gospel, but it isn’t until we get to verse 22 (the first verse of today’s Gospel reading) that John tells us the context in which Jesus is saying these things:  It’s during Hannukah and Jesus is in the Temple.

The fear of loss was clearly an undercurrent on the day that Jesus spoke the words of today’s Gospel reading.  And it was even worse for the first readers of the Gospel, who had already lost the Temple again.  They were often under persecution and probably wondered what else might be lost?  And could they themselves be lost from God?

So it’s in the context of this fear of loss that Jesus makes this promise that no one can snatch us away from God.  “What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.”

That is, Jesus confronts loss – and the fear of loss – by promising us that:

• We can never be lost from God – not even death can snatch us out of God’s hands; that would have been a wild and unbelievable claim, except for Jesus’ Resurrection showing us that it’s actually true. That’s part of why we always read the sheep stories during Easter.  But even when it’s not Easter, it’s important to keep in mind that God’s promise of life for us is never cancelled out by the losses. And while Jesus’ promise doesn’t insulate us from the pain of loss, what he was saying to his followers then and now was that

• Loss is not the most significant reality in our lives, even though it surely seemed that way when people lost the Temple, and in our own lives when we’ve experienced a particularly deep and significant loss or when it looks like significant losses might be ahead.  But part of dealing with the fear of loss is remembering that God’s gift of new life is actually more powerful than the events which snatch things from us; God got the early Christian and Jewish communities through unimaginable losses and part of getting through the fear of loss is remembering that God will continue to help us through our losses; and

• Therefore, Jesus is saying these things about sheep and shepherds not to give us cute, fuzzy sheep and shepherd pictures, but to give us courage to live forward in spite of the losses we face and the losses we fear. Even after the Resurrection, the disciples were probably still dealing with a sense of loss, because things had changed and Jesus wasn’t going to be with them in the same was as he was before.  But part of dealing with that loss was to move forward by doing the things Jesus called them to do, because it was in that way that the disciples would continue to experience the reality that Jesus was still with them and moving them forward beyond the losses …

That day in the Temple, Jesus stood with people in the midst of the remembrance of a great loss, and the fear of a future loss.  He didn’t tell them that they had nothing to worry about, or that loss would never happen to them again.

But what he did do, for those ancient people and for us, was to promise his active and living presence in the midst of our losses and our fears.  He showed them, and he shows us, that God’s power to give and restore life is actually greater than any of our fears and our losses.  And he promised them, and he promises us, that no matter what happens, absolutely none of us will ever be lost from God.

Amen.