Diversity is ... sheep??

Easter 4 (Year B)
April 29, 2012
John 10:11-18

Every year at my daughter’s school, the PTA sponsors an art contest where the kids can submit drawings, poetry or photography around a certain theme.  This year the theme was “Diversity is….”  The awards presentations were held this past week and most of the entries were just what you’d expect – very Kumbayah-ish with pictures of different colored people holding hands.  But some of the explanations the kids gave for the work, while completely well-meaning, left me feeling a little depressed. The one I remember most vividly said: “Diversity means we’re all really the same and we have to like everyone.” It’s almost the exact opposite of what I’d hope for the meaning of diversity – that our community is made up of people who are all different and yet all beloved by God. 

Now I know that God piece is unlikely to make it into a public school art contest, but the idea of our each being unique and beloved of God keeps surfacing for me as an increasingly important piece of my own theology.  Recently I’ve had the great pleasure of preparing a few people for baptism and talking to others as they think about it.  I keep returning to the Godly Play baptism story, where each child lights a candle and inserts their own name into the story and there’s mention of how important that individual name is in baptism.  In our baptisms we are unique individuals received into the household of Christ, sealed as Christ’s own, affirmed as beloved children of God.

And it’s all over the Bible.  In seminary we talked a lot in our scripture classes about the canonical approach to the Bible – the idea that when viewed as a whole, certain overarching themes can be seen as paramount.  One of those themes was described by Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who said the Torah was not really about man’s search for God, but about God in search of man.  Although Heschel was speaking of the Old Testament, it applies to the Bible as a whole just as well.  When German theologian Karl Barth was asked how he would summarize his theology, he replied with a line from that famous children’s song, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so."  That’s the heart of the Easter message that we are living into during this season – Jesus loves us and is with us and will never leave us.

            And it’s all over our readings for today, which is, probably fairly obviously, Good Shepherd Sunday. We get the most beautiful prayer of all time, Psalm 23, in which we are promised that we need have no fear because God our shepherd is with us, leading and comforting us.  We get the Epistle from 1 John assuring us that Jesus loves us so much that he laid down his life for us.  And we get our Gospel from John in which Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd who knows us and gathers us together into one flock.

            So if we are utterly known and utterly loved, why is it so hard to believe and live into?  Why do we spend so much of our time trying to hide who we are or to become something else?  Why do we put so much of our resources towards things that we think will make us happy -- clothes, cars, toys, stuff?  Why are we the most obese, addicted and medicated adult population in U.S. history?

            This week I stumbled upon a talk on Ted.com by Brene Brown who is a research professor in Houston.  (If you haven’t discovered www.ted.com, I highly recommend it.  It’s tag line is “riveting talks by remarkable people” and it really is true.) 

Anyway, about a decade ago, Dr. Brown started researching the concept of “connectedness,” which she defines as a sense of being loved and of belonging.  She is a qualitative researcher, so works by collecting stories and then delving into them for data.  She found that the thousands of stories that she collected about connectedness could be divided into two groups.  The people that seemed to be living connected lives (she describes these people as “wholehearted”) and those whose lives seemed to be isolated and disconnected. 

She discovered that the only difference between these two groups of people seemed to be that the people living connected lives believed they are worthy of love and belonging.  There was no difference in wealth, or health, or success or marital status or anything else that you might expect between these two groups.  Apparently the thing that keeps us from having love and connection is our fear that we aren’t worthy of it.

            It struck me that that might be equally true for how connected we feel to God.  Maybe the only way to feel loved by God is to believe ourselves to be worthy of that love.  To believe ourselves to be lovable. 

            I had my first child about a year after my mom died.  We had a mostly good relationship and I knew mom loved me, and knew she knew I loved her.  But it was only after I held Sophie in my arms that I had this epiphany about how much my mom had loved me.  Of how my hurts must have hurt her and my joys must have thrilled her.  

I think what our readings today are trying to tell us, what the whole Bible and all our sacraments are trying to say, is that God loves each of us even more than that – even more than my mom loved me or I love my children.  More unselfishly, more purely, more completely, and all while knowing us more fully.

            Now it’s that last piece that seems to be the sticking point with Dr. Brown’s research.  Apparently it’s that ability to let ourselves be fully known that makes it possible for us to be connected.

In the stories of disconnection, Dr. Brown found feelings of shame abounded.  The fear that there is something about us that if others knew they wouldn’t want to be with us.  We’re not good/rich/smart/thin/successful enough.  And so we hide ourselves, numb ourselves, become isolated.

But the stories of connection were full of vulnerability.  Connection was possible because people realized they were imperfect, but still had the courage to allow themselves to be really seen.  They were able to let go of who they wished they could be in order to be who they were.  Even able to believe that what made them vulnerable also makes them beautiful. 

That kind of openness isn’t easy or comfortable, but Dr. Brown found that it was the birthplace of joy, creativity, belonging and love.  People able to live into their vulnerability were willing to say I love you first, to do something that had no guarantee of success, to invest in relationships that might not work, to let go of the need to control and predict. 

            Think of what that might mean for us in the Church and for our impact on the world.  If we can just believe that we are unique and beloved of God then maybe it will free us to open ourselves up, to allow ourselves to be really seen and known, to start living with our whole being, loving with our whole hearts.

            Of course it isn’t easy.  Of course it isn’t comfortable.  Of course it’s hard work.  But that is exactly where the Church should live.  There is no such thing as an individual Christian.  If we aren’t connected, we aren’t anything.  Each of us is part of the entire flock: with the sheep we approve of and those we don’t.  All welcomed into the sheepfold; all celebrated for our uniqueness; all acknowledged as beloved.  Maybe even all frightened out of our wits but walking through the valley together anyway.  That is what it means to follow the good shepherd.  Now that’s diversity.  Amen.

Watch Brene Brown's talk here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html