Ephesians 2:11-22 Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
It is rather daunting to think about the main human task. It is to make the case for what is highest and most valued in the human experience.
The Bible is a book written by different people at different times throughout quite a span of time who believed that God was the supreme value of life. There are people who have happened upon the experience of Plenitude and who have found such experiences esteem building, affirming, caring, friendly, and loving. People have experienced a Plentitude out of their control or ability to manipulate and have been made to feel loved and welcomed in mere existence itself.
Such experiences have made them wax poetic and they have wanted to share and they have wanted to generalize this warm experience that they have had with existence itself to as many people as possible. They have used the words that pertained to their immediate experience.
A famous poet, the Psalmist wrote about the warm experience of existence itself in the personal and pastoral language of the experience taking care of sheep. The Lord, or the Personal Mastering Experience of Existence itself, is my Shepherd, and I shall not be in want.
The great Existential One of Existence itself takes care of me and helps me feel at home and cared for in my environment.
St. Paul used political vocabulary to speak about his experience with the great Existential One of Existence itself. St. Paul said that he, and we, were citizens of the household of God. The metaphor of the great Existing One as a Presiding Householder who has given to all who dwell in this household citizenship rights. This Household requires the reconciliation of all human differences in order to live as a citizen. One cannot retain pride of ethnic identity, religion, or any separatistic attitude to live as a citizen in this great House of God, the Great Existent One who offers us the hospitality of a great generous Host. The only requirement is that we endeavor to also share in this reconciling spirit of God as the great Host who accepts us as citizens of the great Household.
As wonderful and poetic the many accounts of people who professed God are in the Bible, the biblical writings also show the contrasting failure of people who have lived having never or not yet discovered the reconciling love of God as the loving Host of a Great Household.
When Jesus lived, his comment upon the masses of people was, "they were like sheep without a shepherd."
In the time of Jesus, as in every time, masses of people live alienated lives from the sense of being loved and cared for? Why? Because the people with great knowledge, great power, and great wealth, use such gifts to exploit the vulnerable masses who are kept from knowing that Existence in the Great Existing One is blessing, love, acceptance, provision, and citizenship in the Household of God.
Jesus came to model what good shepherding means. It means using the gifts of knowledge, power, and wealth to create the truth of being shepherded in loving ways by the Great Existing One, who is our loving Shepherd, who lets us dwell in the Household of the Lord forever.
May each of us be granted the experience of being shepherded by the Great Existing One in our very existence, and when we know the gifts of power, love, knowledge, wealth, and blessing, may we also shepherd and let people know that they too are citizens of the loving Household of God. Amen.
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