What’s been stolen from you? Has a thief visited? Did they take what is precious?

Some of us, many maybe, may know what it is to have had your home broken into.  It’s trespassing in its’ truest form.  Intentional: and it can destroy a sense of safety and our reality of security.  It destroys where our trust lies.  It betrays where we think we place our trust.

What’s been stolen from you? Has a thief visited? Did they take what is precious?

A thief, a bandit… climbed in; breached a boundary; opened a gate; even breaching a gate.

“Very truly I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate, but climbs in another way is a thief and bandit.” (John 10: 1)  Bandit: yes, a good name for a Dad in Bluey.  But no, a Bandit in its true sense: a member of a gang of robbers.  Hooning around Port Melbourne, having out of cars, hunting down other youth to bash, bludgeon, kick and stomp upon, in a public street, at 3.30pm in broad daylight.

• Stealing community safety.
• Thieving neighbourhood confidence
• Seeding online forums for other copycat behaviours.

“The Thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” (John 10:10)

Like, in the dark of the pre-dawn: “Hope is like a bird that senses the dawn and careful starts to sing while it is still dark.”  Yet hope is lost in the cowardly actions of childish, racist and dehumanising “boo-ing”, while respectful people gather under the darkness of tree canopy to honour the fallen, the broken, the ones who survived, and the ones who serve. 

“But anyone … who climbs in by another day is a thief and a bandit.” (John 10:1)

What’s been stolen from you? Has a thief visited? Did they take what is precious?

Did they, in that verbal action under the cover of dark,  snatch respect, honour and our very Nationhood, before our ears and eyes in such a petty and powerful, cowardly sounds, under the guise of the pre-dawn Night?

What’s been stolen from us? What’s was stolen  in that moment? Did they take what is precious?

They didn’t steal your listening for the Good Shepherd.

They didn’t steal your following of the Prince of Peace

They didn’t take our salvation, our life, our peace, our hope our trust.

We have been given life, and we have been given life abundantly. (John 10:10)  Not that we have life to hold on to it for ourselves: we are not a church for ourselves; we are a church for others.  The abundance is given, with an open hand and into our open hands, so that all things can be shared in common. (Acts 2:44)

Sharing what we have;

breaking bread together, in our homes with much time together.

With much time together;

in the teaching and learning of the presence of God.

Time together observing, with thanksgiving, the signs and wonders being done through us.

With much time in fellowship.

With much time in the prayers.

And all with Glad and Generous hearts.

What has been thieved from you?

time in fellowship?

time in prayer?

time in teaching and learning together?

time in Church worship together?

What has been thieved from you?

Sharing things in common?

Sharing our homes with one another?

What has been thieved from you?

time in awe?

time in wonder?

time in the spirit within us?

time with the Spirit amongst us?

And which one of these has been thieved from you?

Which one, in our self importance, or self assessment,

have we listened to and then said “Yeah, Nah?”

Because, that voice is a thief.  One who has breached the gate.  And one who is set on destruction, or worse.

But that is not us.

We hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. This is the Christ we follow The voice that names us, calls us by name.

The One who knows us, loves, and yearns for us to follow and find salvation: our human wholeness;

that our lives and living might be undertaken abundantly: not for ourselves, but for others:

here in fellowship and beyond.  Amen.