In the name of the One who pursues us and the One we pursue.
Amen.

"At 9, I prayed God would let me be his bride and become a nun.
At 14, I prayed the boy I liked would kiss me behind the column in the school lounge.
At 16, I prayed my boyfriend would be a good lover.
At 17, I prayed the test would be negative.
At 30, I implored God whom I hadn't prayed to in years to either help me quit drinking or let me die.
At 35, I prayed my thesis would be good enough to ensure my graduation.
At 43, I prayed my lover of 12 years could find happiness without me.
At 44, I prayed to pass the test to receive my master's degree.
At 45, I prayed that my new lover would never leave me.
At 48, I prayed that my ex-lover would forget my address.

Today I pray for a new love. I pray again to quit drinking. I pray my life can mean more than the circle I have traveled. I pray for my country, our world, this planet. I prayer because the only prayer of mine God hasn't answered was my prayer to die."

This reflection was written by Missy Casha, a woman living in Nashville, Tennessee. She added her voice to the April, 2007 issue of The Sun, a writers' journal I often read for sermon preparation because of its honesty. Missy Casha joins centuries of pray-ers, those who have known Christ and those who haven't, those who want a shepherd they can trust, and those who can trust no one, not even themselves.

Those who joined Jesus on the portico of the temple for its feast of rededication in winter wanted Jesus to be the answer to their prayer for a Messiah. For, in 164 BCE, Judas Maccabeus had defeated the Greek conquerors and moved the people of Israel from sorrow to victory. Those who gathered wanted to know if Jesus would do the same for a temple that needed cleansing, for Roman conquerors to be banished. They wanted their pursuit of justice to end or at least to see the end of the current oppression.

Jesus responds somewhat cryptically in these few verses which are really a coda to all that has gone before in the 10th chapter of John's gospel. Jesus expects his listeners to know about good shepherds, about hirelings, about sheep and voices and lives that were not to be snatched away.

We read these verses in resurrection season, where the lesson from Acts tells of a disciple raising a woman disciple to life and where we are given in Revelations a scene of heaven, where death is an opportunity to surround the throne of God, where the Lamb is at the center of it all. And we know that these have come through the great ordeal, the great tribulation. So the journey, even in light of an Easter faith, is not easy. There has been suffering and there has been death.

Jesus had been called evil and a lunatic in the passage just before the verses you have just heard and he is the object of a potential stoning immediately after he proclaims his oneness with God. And we are invited to consider Psalm 23, favorite memory passage from childhood, familiar at almost every funeral, and ask ourselves about our discipleship, about our ultimate desires. Who or what will we pursue?

Peter Gomes, author, professor and preacher in the heart of rationalism at Harvard University, suggests in his book Strength for the Journey, that we ask ourselves this question, "What is our ultimate desire?" He says that he can tell what kind of person we are by how we answer that question. "Most of us," he says, "are in church not because we have had all of our needs fulfilled" or all of our prayers answered. "We are in church because of our need or desire for God. We know enough that we desire or want our need for God fulfilled." We are here, I think, to pursue God. We want to continue our search for God, for green pastures, for still waters. We yearn for God to accompany us even in the midst of a table that also seats our enemies.

If we are led down paths of righteousness, if these paths are the paths of justice, then we need to trust the companionship with the One who leads us there. This is not the blind obedience of sheep, "baa, baa" but a radical trust that acknowledges the darkness of our lives and of our world. We have to name those things that we thought would satisfy us and do not. Gomes says, "we are not what we have, we are not what we know, we are not what we do, we are not what we eat...we are what we desire. The people of God are known by their desire for God...that is what makes us so impatient with ourselves, each other and the world, with things as they are." Like sheep whose whole lives are spent in pursuit of food and water, we spend our lives in pursuit of a sheepfold, a place where God is the companion we run after, whose voice we long to hear.

Penny Jamieson, an Anglican bishop in New Zealand, says she sees a sheepfold as a womb-space, a place whose boundaries enclose a space for growth and experience in God.¹ I am wondering how that works for you. Elizabeth Gilbert's new book, Eat, Love, Pray, is a luminous journey of her willingness to pursue God and herself after a time when everything else she had pursued came to nothing. ( I loved the book and was reluctant to put it down when it ended. It is a paperback, number 2 on the NYTimes list for nonfiction. And she grew up in the same town as my children - her sister babysat for my girls).

"Desire," someone has said, "is God's way of getting our attention by not necessarily providing what we want as spiritual consumers." God is not a spiritual vending machine into which we put a prayer and get our wants satisfied. Those around Jesus want a quick and easy answer - sometimes we want that too. But our faith asks of us patience and perseverance and ongoing pursuit. It is the fuel of the soul.

The longing of the soul after God is in itself a good thing: the aches, the hopes not fulfilled is a good thing. We are not seduced by satisfaction. That longing keeps us coming and going. It keeps us in good company, taking our time to eat together, to pray together, to love together.

I end with the 23rd psalm in the words of a woman from Namibia, whose name is Zephania Kameeta:

"The Lord is my shepherd.
I have everything I need.
He lets me see a country of justice and peace
And directs my steps toward that land.

Even if a full-scale violent confrontation breaks out
I will not be afraid, Lord, if you are with me.
Your shepherd's power and love protect me.

You prepare me for my freedom
Where all my enemies can see it.
You welcome me as an honoured guest
And fill my cup with righteousness and peace.

I know that your goodness and love will
Be with me all of my life
And your liberating love will be my home
As long as I live."²

Footnotes:

1 Resources for Preaching and Worship, year B, ed. Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild

2 Ibid.