Scripture Passage

Ezekiel 34:11-16

Sermon Text

Thank you, praise team. Uh, it was good to be off drums for one week. It was a nice, hearing the joint praise team play together. So it is an honor and a privilege for me to be, delivering message here today. It’s my first time preaching to the ESM congregation, so I thought the anxiety level would be similar to when the MCed the mission dinner, but not even close. So forgive me if I seem a little nervous, but, you guys are good people. Let us turn through a scripture reading for today. It’s Ezekiel 34:11-16.

“For thus says the Lord, God: I myself, will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they’re among their scatter sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I’ll rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on the day of clouds and thick darkness. I’ll bring them out from the peoples and gathered them from the countries and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel by the watercourses and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I’ll feed them with good pasture. And the mountain Heights of Israel shall be their pasture. They shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on reach a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord, God. I will seek the lost, and I’ll bring back the strayed and I’ll bind up the injured and I’ll strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I’ll destroy. I’ll feed them with justice.” This is the Lord.

Longing for Home

There’s a line from a song by the Deep Purple. It’s called “Soldier of Fortune.” I don’t it just kept coming into my head this week as I was preparing this. And it goes, “Many times I’ve been a traveller/I looked for something new/In days of old when nights were cold/I wandered without you”. I wonder how much of these words resonated with you. They express a sense of longing and searching for something new that always seems to lead to wondering. And I think it’s very human thing to long for something. Think about it. We long for a better day. We tend to long for a better relationship, for a better career for a better life. But underneath all this, I see a much deeper kind of longing, longing for home. And I don’t mean a literal home, but a place where we feel content and at peace. There’s an actual word for it. It is a German word it’s called [zenzut].

I don’t know if I pronounced that correctly, but this how it is. And it means a yearning for some place far away that is not of this earth, that one can call their home. We experienced this, something like this from time to time. It is quiet but powerful, but the irony is we can never tell what this is or where we can find it. There was a period in my life when this was the case. On the surface, I had everything. I had a home. I had a family and friends. I had a job. There wasn’t anything really I lacked. And yet I never didn’t really feel completely at peace. And I was at home yet, I didn’t feel at home. I felt as if that home was out there somewhere. So I often had this inkling to just get up and leave, leave everything behind and just go somewhere.

There was no specific place in mind, just somewhere far where I can feel at peace. And there were times that I did, it took me to different places. At one point, I even flew halfway around the world just to search for it. But each time I did not find what I was looking for. I kept running into dead end. So what is it that constantly drives us to satisfy this restlessness? The feeling that things in life are not as they should be, that they always seemed to be just less than ideal than perfect. And we see different manifestation of this wandering, either doing things or going places we think we should. For example, the Israelites worshiping golden calf in the wilderness as a way to sort of escape the reality that they face in the desert. Or the prodigal son leaving home. Although the parable itself does not really give us an explanations.

And I wonder if this is a symptom of our own brokenness. And these were the thoughts that came to mind as I was reflecting on the lost sheep in today’s passage because I think the image of the wandering sheep in the fields, not having the slightest idea of where to go, yet stubborn enough to their own thing. I think it captures how we go through life at times. And here in Ezekiel it was to show what had become of the Israelites years later. Not only had they been led further astray in their ways, by the bad leadership of Kings in Jerusalem, their land was conquered by enemies and they were scattered all over the place as a result, without their home, isolated and lonely.

God Searches for Us

To this situation. God speaks through the prophet Ezekiel with these very words, “I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.” (Ezekiel 34:11) It’s a bold statement. In fact, almost every verse in today’s reading alone begins with the words “I will”. There is no denying that God is determined to do what he says he will. And here God says he will look for his people, that he will find them from where each of them are and bring them back, back to where they belong. And I think it’s important that we understand this about God, his heart, that longs deeply for us.

For me, that the passage that best demonstrate this is in Genesis 3. After Adam and Eve had taken a bite of the forbidden fruit and hid in shame. And this is what it says, “They heard the sound of the Lord, God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord, God, among the trees in the garden. But the Lord God had called to the man and said to him, where are you?” (Genesis 3:8-9) Where are you? It is the part that we don’t remember as much from the story in Genesis. When you think about us it’s absurd question, as if God doesn’t know where they are. I mean he’s God. But when we really think about it, we come to understand how God loves. In spite of what we’ve done, God wants to know us first, like a parent, yet he does not force or impose his love upon us. Instead gives us the freedom to respond to him when we are ready. And this is the same God that pursues his people in today’s passage and longs to bring them home.

At Peace With Ourselves

So I thought to myself, what is this home for us? What is this home where we can to borrow the words from today’s text, lie down in good grazing land and feed on rich pasture, where it can truly say what David said in the beginning of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” (Psalm 23:1) I had no idea first. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what it was. I knew the feeling of it, but I just could not put it into words. So I waited. I prayed, I waited. And then it came to me. That home is where we find peace with ourselves. Because when we aren’t at peace with ourselves, it is hard for us to be even content with the simple things of life. Instead, we blame the things around us and outside of us as the source of all our problems. But when we’re at peace with ourselves, we are able to see things more clearly and therefore have the courage to face whatever problems we have instead of running away from them. In other words, we can then be at peace with everything else. And I believe that we can truly be at peace with ourselves when we know God in a meaningful way.

And that is when we respond to God’s longing by bringing our own to him. Because what is a relationship. Relationship is when two people who long to be with one another come together as one. And in relationship one person’s identity is affirmed by the love of the other person. And this allows them to be who they really are. And I’ve been seeing the glimpse of this in this community as well, especially serving the Hi-Cs. Especially when you go on March break or summer retreats, and I see them just playing around, hanging out, playing together, and the little things that they do for each other, they’re very inclusive. They welcome each other. And even the quietest kids, just all of a sudden blossom. And you really see just sort of how much of an impact and the power it has when you affirm somebody just even a little bit. And through one another, you can totally see their true and authentic selves emerge.

In the same way it is in God, I believe, that our God given identity is restored and we begin to live our lives authentically. It is only when we abandoned that identity for something else that we grow restless and wander off on our own. That was precisely the case for the Israelites I think. It was only when they forgot about their own identity, as God’s chosen people that they began to go astray their ways and experience many troubles. And sometimes even the process of embracing our God given identity is not easy because that includes all of our imperfections and complexities.

Our True Identities

And it will be almost a year since I’ve been here at St. Timothy just over a year since I’ve answered a call to go into ministry. And in a way it’s strange to think about it when I look back at sort of how the past year and a half has been, because before I actually, I come from a film background. So, I started filming in my undergrad and, and that was sort of, you know, just the, within the fine arts, that realm was sort of my forte. So when I got the call to go into ministry, it would puzzle me because things that seem to, all the skills that seem to, you know, be required for ministry was really not, I didn’t think that it was part of my skillset. So especially after coming to Saint Timothy and starting the Hi-C ministry and whatnot, I think it really, those experiences that I had brought me face to face with a lot of my imperfections, more, what I couldn’t do than what I could do.

And it was difficult at first to kinda deal with that experience, but with something, but something strange that no matter how difficult it was that beneath it all, I felt that peace with everything. But which wasn’t what I necessarily felt before when I was doing something else. When I was in film or when I was doing what I thought I should be doing, because there in that field, I was playing to my strengths, my weaknesses, I could hide them. I don’t really need to address them. What I was good at, I only did that. But going through ministry, it’s sort of the opposite case. Kind of your, you do things that you’re not good at, or you do things and you realize your limitations right away, such as preparing for the sermon today.

I never realized, when I’m speaking with the Hi-Cs, that my preparation usually goes from like, sort of the pointers, but to have to write out a full manuscript. I didn’t realize how hard it would be. I think really raised my respect for Moxanims lot more, but through this experience of being in ministry, I think it was through those things through seeing my imperfections, through seeing my limitations, think I was able to finally embrace my true identity, not my idealized identity, but what it truly was.

And I think what I hope is that people even in, especially when I look at my students, I wish that they could just be who they are, be as they’re made to be. And I see that, especially when I interact with them and I really wish that they don’t lose that when they get older. Albert Camus, a French philosopher once said this, which I thought was very profound, “But above all, in order to be, never try to seem.” There’s a typo there. It’s: “Never try to seem.” It’s a very simple remark, but it’s very deep. Isn’t it true that most of the times we try to seem rather than be? And it’s tiring. It’s exhausting to do that.

So my hope for all of us today is that we will come to know this kind of peace. Sometimes it takes going through a journey of our own and getting lost in order to be found. But I believe that God will never forsake us. And as we saw today he will wait for us. And I believe he’s faithful and will bring us home. So let us see the longings that we have within us as an invitation to draw near to God. I’m sure there will be a day, you’ll answer the question: Where are you with here?, with: Here I am. Let us sing together.