They Heard His Voice - Kanyini, Ubuntu & The Good Shepherd

Rev Dennis Ryle - 3/5/2020

John 10:1-10

A little over a month ago, the virus was causing panic – unseemly brawls over the last packet of toilet paper, long lines outside Centrelink as thousands of workers faced abrupt unemployment for the first time, anxiety over schooling and childcare, dropping the drawbridge on the nation’s treasure house to meet millions of reduced household budgets – seismic changes in our everyday living evoked a kind of prehistoric “survival of the fittest” mentality. TV crews introduced the pervading visual phenomenon of persistent serial crowded supermarket raids that left the old and weak bereft of buying their daily needs. 

Where we live, social media came to the rescue. One plaintive voice on an online community platform beseeched, “What is happening to us? Why can’t we look out for each other and not just ourselves? If anyone here wants me to shop for them, I’m available.” Other voices chimed in with variations of “Me too!” It spread to other social media platforms and suddenly, community was reborn. Neighbours met for the first time, even if only virtually. Burdens were shared. Streets identified elderly and vulnerable without online access and letter dropped them. Systems were established to make sure no-one went without help.

When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

We are so used to hearing the words of John’s gospel in a binary way. It’s “either/or” rather than “both/and.” It is significant that The Good Shepherd theme features in this season of Easter on the journey towards its culmination at Pentecost. We are reflecting on what it means to be living as Easter people, those who live not only with an orientation towards empowered death-defeating life, but with the dynamic presence of the Good Shepherd within community in its gathered state and in its scatteredness.  This means the voice of the Good Shepherd can be discerned in you, me and the stranger.

We know his voice.

The thief comes only to steal and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. 

A binary approach to John’s Gospel has led us to believe that the Shepherd’s voice can only be heard within the four walls of our centuries of Christian tradition. A wholistic approach opens our ears to hear the Shepherd’s voice throughout the cosmos. This is the overall eucharistic celebration throughout John’s gospel. It is a thanksgiving. It is gratitude for the ability to discern the core understanding that “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved [made complete, whole].”

Where else then might we hear the Shepherd’s voice? Dare I suggest “Wherever there is caring community.” 

Throughout the ages the church has always been at its best where it has carried the basin and towel of service, promoting and enhancing community. Sometimes initiating and planting community from its very beginning. At other times entering existing community and celebrating and enhancing it. In such ways the Good Shepherd becomes known and his voice recognised.

Many have come to recognise the Good Shepherd’s voice in Kanyini.

'The word Kanyini means responsibility and unconditional love for all of creation and it envelops the four principles of aboriginal life:

Tjukurrpa - Creation Period (or what non-aboriginals call ‘dreamtime’)

Kurunpa - Spirit, Soul, Psyche

Walytja - Family, Kinship

Ngura - Land, Home, Place or Mother

Kanyini is best expressed in English as the combination of the two words ‘responsibility’ and ‘love’, but it is actually a relationship; it is an enormous caring with no limit - it has no timeframe: it is eternal. 

Our purpose is to live with the Kanyini principles of unconditional, unlimited love. 

(Visit https://www.sharingculture.info/kanyini.html for more information.)

Do we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice in Kanyini?

It strikes me that the ancient wisdom of many First Nations peoples around the world carry something of the Kanyiniprinciple. It pulls on a yearning within Western civilisations for something known yet lost and elusive, the experience of real community.

I recall the story of a teacher on a mission station in Africa tearing his hair out at a children’s sport meeting. He was attempting to organise races. In something like the 100 yard dash, the children would persistently cross the finishing line together. No one was first, second or third. No one was last. They all crossed the lined together. Ubuntu. “I am because we are!” The thought of competition and individual superiority was impossible for them. If the task is to run and cross that finish line, we do it together and we don’t leave anyone behind.

Do we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu popularised the word in the Truth and Reconciliation quest: “A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.”

There are variations of Ubuntuthroughout the African continent.  I encountered its humble presence when visiting remote rural communities in Zimbabwe a few years ago. The care for one another in circumstances of extreme poverty and privation, the sharing of meagre resources, was an affront to the predatory and self-serving forces that prevailed in other parts of the country and indeed, which is the hallmark of our own society.

Where do we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice in our own communities?

Parker Palmer speaks of the “Hidden Wholeness” in a broken world, referring to Thomas Merton’s reflection that our discerning eye can detect it beneath the damaged surface of things, whether it’s a broken political system, a broken relationship, or a broken heart.

Or maybe a broken community? Did our suburb, through social media, discover its hidden wholeness as it confronted the supermarket wars?

Merton observes, “There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura Naturans”

Dare we add, the Good Shepherd’s voice?