Perhaps you have gone to a gathering, and didn’t know a soul? You felt so alone, so isolated, so distant. Then all of a sudden someone from across the room calls your name. You are recognized. You are known. A flood of acceptance and honor comes over you. You relax, you belong.
I have had those moments of wondering where I belong. I belong to a gym. I belong to a church. I belong to a family. And today we celebrate what it means we belong to God.
The Good Shepherd knows each of his sheep by name. The Indian theologian D. T. Niles once noticed a young Indian shepherd boy keeping a huge flock of sheep. He stopped and asked, “How many sheep do you have?”
“I don’t know,” answered the boy, “I can’t count.”
Niles asked him, “How do you know if some of the sheep haven’t wandered off when you get to the place where you’re going to camp at night?”
To his astonishment, the boy answered, “I don’t know how many wander off, but I know each one. I can’t count, but each sheep has a name, and I know their names.”
The eastern shepherds raised sheep for wool rather than for food. Thus sheep were usually with a shepherd for years and were often known by descriptive names like “Brown-leg” or “Black-ear.” The shepherds knew each sheep, every one of them. Sheep know the shepherd’s voice. The shepherd knows the uniqueness of each sheep.
Belonging. Belonging is a popular word these days with much writing that belonging is a better word than inclusion. Belonging is more than loving and even more than being known. What does it mean to be God’s own? Some suggest that a better translation for abiding in 1 John is belonging where the text speaks of abiding in Jesus and being one of his own.
According to the National Institute of Health: “Belonging is also shown to be a key support for physical and emotional health, while the lack of it is linked to ill effects on health and wellbeing. It helps us to manage stress and feel more resilient, which ultimately allows us to cope more effectively during challenging times. “
We all yearn for connection and community, but we live in a time when calls for further division along the well-wrought lines of politics, religion, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality are pervasive. This ubiquitous yet elusive problem feeds on fears – created, inherited – of the “other.” Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in many organizations are exploring the belonging language. In the words of a Latino working in a white institution talks about how inclusion feels like a foster child — welcomed, included — but not truly included. In a world filled with discord and loneliness, finding harmony and happiness can be difficult. The pressures that separate us have a common root: our tendency to cast people and groups in irreconcilable terms – or the process of “othering.”
As we celebrate Earth Day today, we also mark the interconnectedness of all creation and our interdependence on the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the trees, the seas, and the breeze. While we attempt to separate ourselves from other parts of the creation, the danger is when we fail to see how we belong to one another and the whole of creation.
The Wikipedia article on “belonging” includes these introductory words: “Active listening can help create the feeling of belonging; this is because it enables the ability to listen and respond to another person in an understanding and meaningful way.[citation needed] When the person feels truly heard, especially in a way that promotes unconditional positive regard, they can feel a significantly higher sense of belonging and acceptance.”
In the Gospel account, Jesus says: “They will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd”. Many say that even in deep unconsciousness or near death, hearing is the last sense that we lose. Why listen to the good shepherd? What is the good shepherd saying? Jesus’ mother says: “Do whatever he tells you.” What are the voices you are listening to? Jesus’ voice calls us to safety, life, and abundance. The call of the good shepherd is about being made secure as one of God’s own. And belonging brings the privileges of security, provisions, and safety as well as the responsibility to all with whom we belong.
The preschool teacher shared this past week the story of a field trip to the park where a preschool student was lost from the group and teachers for 15 minutes. The boy heard his name being called but thought they were playing hide and seek and kept hiding behind a tree. What will we do when the shepherd’s voice calls out for us? For nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus in which we truly belong.
Indeed, we are sheep-like. Yes, we hopefully experience moments when grace breaks in, when we feel this holy connectedness when we experience the truth of our belonging. And, we must know, that our attempts to represent, to embody, this holy belonging do and will come up short. There will also be times we don’t see each other, when we stray and feel pushed from the flock because, well, we are sheep and not the shepherd. Even when we just hide out from God. But hear Jesus today, in those moments of estrangement, let us not be tempted by all the Gods of false belonging. The Good Shepherd is always shepherding us, protecting us, always bringing us back to the deeper truth. Like the prodigal son and his older brother, we so easily forget that we belong in the father’s house. We try to find and earn our belonging when it has already been given to us when it lives within us. God help us cease all our efforts to generate what you have already provided. Help us feel your staff, leading us all back to where we belong.
