Ss Peter & Paul, Kettering
Confidence not Self-Confidence
I’ve heard a fair amount recently about what is being called the ‘Me Generation’. We’ve had the Baby Boomers and Generation X, and now the ‘Me generation’. The trouble is that the Me generation is unlike the other two and the other different tags for generations we’ve had in the past, because it refers not to a specific time period in which people were born – like the post war years for the Baby Boomers, but it refers to all people alive now – a generation of society.
There are of course as many definitions as there are sociologists, but the basic idea is that we as a culture are now so individualist that everything we do (according to the theory) is about getting the best for me and me alone. We have lost or are rapidly loosing the sense of interconnectedness with others around us – that feeling that was the very fabric of social living in the past. We hear it all the time don’t we: In the past people had more time for each other, neighbours knew each other, everyone looked out for each other, people gathered together whether that be in church or down the pub as a community.
Nowadays much of that has been replaced with an individualism that sees us maintaining our distance even when we do come together - where individual rights are paramount and everything is geared to suit the individual. Some of this is of course good stuff. I must admit that I certainly don’t miss the old days of only having one movie to watch on a communal screen on a long-haul aircraft flight: the modern little screens in the back of the seat in front – with options for a dozen or more movies plus TV shows, cartoons and information programmes - makes a 13 hour flight much more bearable. But there is much we are loosing in all this as well and its one particular area of Me Generation thinking that I want to highlight this morning: Confidence.
We hear a lot about self-confidence these days. We all need a bit of it, but just stop and think about the effect of having too much self-confidence because it’s the ‘self’ that tends to take over. We are all expected these days to have the self-confidence to do all sorts of things – some even put it terms of rights: It is their right to do what they feel is right for them. They feel that they should be able to do what they want – almost regardless of what others might think and regardless of how it might affect others – others who would then claim to have the right not to be affected… and so it rolls on. And this attitude isn’t just an ailment of the young.
Self-confidence is a not now a socially respected attribute, but a socially required attribute. Anyone who lacks confidence in themselves is seen as weak – but that’s only because this society has raised the standards of self-confidence to a level that many will never reach. But remember, I’m talking about self-confidence.
I need now to explain then why I’m talking about it, given that my role it to expound the gospel passage for today. Jesus is sounding very self-confident as he brushes off the Jewish elders once again.
They are demanding to know if he’s the Messiah or not. His reply is that they have heard his words in the past, they have seen his works, but they don’t believe because, he says, ‘you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me.’
At first reading this almost sounds arrogant and very self-confident. My sheep: I know them, they follow me. But it’s not that arrogant for the next lines bring in a major element of Christ’s ministry and indeed a major element of his whole life and teaching; for he is not claiming that he is doing all this on his own authority, or on his own initiative, and it is certainly not for his own benefit or glory.
All this, he reminds his listeners, is of God the Father. Here is where his confidence comes from: Confidence, not in himself, but his confidence in God. God may have given him the tasks to do, God may have given him so very much, but it remains in God’s hands. Those people of Christ’s flock, as he calls them, will never perish, not because Jesus the Christ is so good, but that they are called by God, are held by God, and no one will snatch them out of the father’s hand.
This is the cause for Christ’s confidence: his Confidence is in God.
I’m sure that Jesus would have been thrilled to sing out, as we often do, the first line of that wonderful hymn ‘All my hope in God is founded’. I felt like quoting the whole hymn, so clearly does it tell out of God supremacy for those who place their trust, their hope, their confidence in him.
So what does all this have for us as a message today? In my ministry over the years I have come across folks from all walks of life. I have seen people in all sorts of conditions from the wealthy to the desperately poor, from the well connected to the socially isolated, and one of the things that is consistent with most of those who have crashed in one way or another is that they have relied upon themselves and their own confidence to get them where they think they want to be.
The most stable people I have seen are those folks who, even when things have gone desperately wrong and life is tough, hang on to the notion that their trust, their confidence lies in God no matter what.
This is a real lesson that we all should take to heart in the church.
No matter what happens, no matter where God leads us, no matter how it affects us, we should place our trust, our confidence in God as indeed Jesus himself did. For in God’s hands all are safe and no one and nothing will snatch us away from him.
As Paul writes elsewhere: Let us die to self and live for righteousness, the righteousness of God, secure in our confidence in him, secure in knowing that we are his, he calls us and will keep us safe no matter what - as a shepherd tends his flock
Robert Hill, April 29th, 2007
Office Address:
The Rectory
Church Walk
Kettering
NN16 0DJ