Easter 4 by Desiree Snyman 26th April

Most of you know that my husband and I have been fortunate to have twin sons who have been a delight to raise. Yet every parent needs a break. While we lived in Johannesburg, the twins would often have sleepovers at their grandparents’ house, and my husband and I would enjoy a date night. The parents loved it, the grandparents loved it, and the twins loved it. Until they did not. 

One night my father arrived at our home with Twin 2. He had enjoyed the presence of his grandparents in the absence of his mother, but there came a moment when he grew tired of the extra sweets, flashy toys, and extra attention. He moved from being irritated, to cranky, to weepy, until he was finally inconsolable. At that point, his grandfather knew that nothing would soothe him except the voice and touch of his mother. The child needed to hear his mother’s voice, and only his mother’s voice. No attempt to replace her, or even to imitate her, helped. There comes a time when only the mother can soothe and comfort. The disquiet disappears only when the mother lovingly calls his name. 

I wonder if this is not also true for us as adults. There are many sounds that distract us for a while, yet only the deepest Silence of the Eternal One can truly name us. We may turn to the various distractions of modern living for entertainment or to numb the existential ache within, yet there comes a time when only the voice of the Good Shepherd calling us by name will truly soothe us. 

There is an infinity to our souls. While we are finite creatures caught in time, creatures with a beginning and an end, we have been breathed into by the Infinite. It is Infinity alone that can satisfy us. There is a timelessness at the heart of the human condition. A well-used reading at funerals is Ecclesiastes. People enjoy the poem about there being a time for everything, but they often forget the sting at the end of it, that human beings are out of sync with the natural rhythms of life. The poet writes: 

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace. 

He concludes with the burden of being human: “I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” 

God has made everything suitable for its own time, but has put timelessness into the human heart, so that human beings remain out of sync with the rhythms of the seasons from beginning to end. This is restlessness. As Augustine said, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Addictions and distractions will not satisfy. 

Inside each of us there is a deep, congenital restlessness. We are not restful beings who sometimes become restless. We are not peaceful creatures who are sometimes anxious. Quite the opposite. We are restless beings who occasionally experience rest. We are always a little dissatisfied. Thoreau was right. We do live lives of quiet desperation. 

We carry a deep congenital restlessness, and the further problem is that our restlessness pushes us outward rather than inward. We try to satisfy it with excitement, distractions, and addictions. It is not so much a question of whether we are addicts, but of how we are addicted and to what. Shadow issues can lead to imbalances and addictions, from work, to busyness, to social media. Like in the opening story, distractions, flashy toys, and sympathetic voices can soothe us for a while. But there comes a time when the ache, sadness, fatigue, and jadedness can be soothed only by the primordial mother who speaks our name and brings rest to our restless souls. 

The Gospel of John is framed by the question, “What are you looking for?” At the beginning of John’s Gospel, Jesus’ first words are a question: “What are you looking for?” In the moment of new creation at the end of the Gospel, in John 20, he asks again, “Whom are you looking for?” The question frames the whole story. It is the question that opens the Gospel, and the question that opens resurrection life. Mary recognises Jesus when he speaks her name. In that moment, John 10:3 and 4 becomes real: the sheep know the shepherd’s voice. 

What is happening here? When God calls us by name, what God is saying is this: I am in love with you. I love you so deeply that I give myself away to you, and you are invincibly precious in my sight, even in the midst of the unresolved matters of your heart. In those unresolved places, I find no obstacle to your infinite preciousness. I pour myself out to you as the life of your life, the hope of your hope. 

Jesus speaks our name and says, in effect: You are beloved. That is who you are. 

You are precious to me, even in the unresolved places of your heart.

You are not your restlessness.

You are not your addictions.

You are not your disappointments.

You are mine. 

And perhaps that is what our restless hearts have been searching for all along. Not another distraction. Not another achievement. Not another voice among the many voices. But the voice that knows us before we explain ourselves. The voice that calls us out of hiding. The voice that speaks our name with love. So, the question remains, as it did at the beginning of John’s Gospel: What are you looking for? Perhaps the invitation is not to search harder, but to listen more deeply. To become quiet enough beneath the noise, beneath the ache, beneath the restlessness, to hear the Shepherd call us by name. And when we hear that voice, we may discover that the rest we have been seeking has already begun. For the One we are looking for has been looking for us.