Sermon - 4th Sunday of Easter (5/3/2020)
Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10
“Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.”
The gospel readings for the second half of the Easter season come from the long discourses that Jesus gives in the gospel of John, in which Jesus mostly talks about himself, and explains the meaning of his life and presence, especially his risen life and his continued presence in the midst of the community. These discourses tend to be a bit abstract and to use complicated and unfamiliar figures of speech, and I must confess that I often react as the disciples did in today’s reading: They did not understand what Jesus was saying to them.
So, please forgive me if I take a minute and give you some of the context for today’s gospel reading. This speech of Jesus comes, without any break of any kind, at the end of John’s story of the man born blind, which we read in Lent, back on March 22 – if you can remember that long ago! March 22!?! But the speech of Jesus makes a bit more sense when we recognize that it’s the conclusion of that particular story.
You’ll remember how it goes – Jesus is walking with his disciples, and they see a man blind from birth. His disciples ask who sinned to cause this man to be born blind – whose fault is it, who’s being punished, him or somebody else? Because it must be somebody’s fault, right? Why else are people born blind, why else are there viruses and tsunamis and hurricanes and cancers, if not because somewhere must deserve them? And Jesus says it’s no one’s fault. God’s glory is not revealed in the justice of a well-deserved punishment, but in the free gift of new creation that heals and opens eyes and restores to life and community. And so Jesus heals the man.
Then Jesus disappears from the story, as the religious authorities begin to investigate this cure. How did it happen? Who did it? Where did he come from? And because they don’t understand how this cure could possibly come from God as they understand God, they reject not only the healing, but also the man who used to be blind, who as the story goes on becomes increasingly passionate and articulate about the gracious gift that he has been given, as the religious leaders become increasingly convinced he must be thrown out. And after he is expelled from the community, he meets Jesus again, and becomes a believer. And Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”
Some of the religious authorities who had expelled the blind man heard Jesus, and they said, Surely you are not calling us blind? And Jesus replied, I am calling you blind, and stop calling me Shirley. No, no, I’m sorry, that was Leslie Nielsen, not Jesus.
What Jesus actually said was: If you were blind, that would not be a sin. “But we see,” you claim, and so your sin remains. Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not climb into the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from the stranger because they do not know his voice. … All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. … The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.”
So the thieves and bandits Jesus is talking about are the religious authorities who excommunicated the man who had been born blind. They claim to be shepherds, but they’re not. They are so attached to “religion,” so wrapped up in what they think God wants, they are unable to perceive when God is acting to give life, and give it abundantly. And so the sheep don’t listen to them, they don’t speak with the voice of a shepherd, they are just thieves and bandits, out for themselves, and not for the sheep.
All this reminds me of the vision of the prophet Ezekiel, in chapter 34 of his book, in which God commands Ezekiel: “Prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, and say to them: Ah, you shepherds of Israel! … You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them … 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 will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak. I will feed them with justice.” (Ezek. 34:2, 4, 15-16) And so in Jesus God has come to become in person the Good Shepherd of the sheep, as God promised to do in the prophecy of Ezekiel, as the psalmist longed for God to do in the 23rd Psalm.
And how do we know that Jesus is the Good Shepherd, not one more thief and bandit like the religious authorities who condemned the man who had been born blind and cast him out? Those of us who have run into a fake shepherd or two along the way might justifiably be wary, how can we know who is really the Good Shepherd? Well, Jesus tells us how to recognize the true shepherd: “The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow because they know his voice.”
The good shepherd enters through the same gate as the sheep. Not through a separate VIP entrance; the ones who don’t come in through the same gate as the sheep are not shepherds but thieves and bandits. So that when he goes out ahead of them, the sheep recognize him and follow him, because the shepherd has proven that he is with the sheep, that he goes where they go, that – as Pope Francis likes to say, the shepherd “has the smell of the sheep” and so the sheep have come to trust that the shepherd will not save himself and abandon them, but will stay with them no matter what, so that they might have life, and have it abundantly.
And that’s why Jesus is condemned and expelled by the same religious authorities who condemned the man who had been born blind. Because he accepts to go through everything that we go through. That’s why Jesus reigns eternally as Lord and king at God’s right hand, not because he got a direct path by virtue of being divine and so endlessly and infinitely alive from all eternity, but by virtue of being human and living and suffering and dying as all human beings do. He enters God’s life by the same gate that you and I do – this life with all its joys and wonders, and with all its cares and burdens, by being excluded and marginalized and rejected by fake shepherds as so many of us are. He goes through the gate of self-giving love even to the point of death, so that we won’t be afraid, so that we’ll follow him through the gate and so find life, and find it abundantly. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer liked to say, only the suffering God can help. It is because Jesus goes before us, it is because Jesus went through the gate himself, that we have the courage to go through it as well, and so discover the God who is abundant life and who shares abundant life with us precisely because God is always giving life away for free.
That’s why the first disciples, as we read in the first reading from Acts, put everything they had at the service of one another and those in need – because they were following the Shepherd who went through the gate of giving of himself for others and all those in need. That’s why Peter in the second reading praises those who do right and suffer for it – not because abuse is good, it’s not, it’s horrible. Abuse is what the thieves and bandits posing as shepherds do to people. But, Peter says, Jesus is your shepherd and guardian who went through the same thing, so if you find yourself in that situation, just follow him. Follow the shepherd through the gate; it leads to God’s pasture, God’s abundant life, a life that trusts the power of self-giving love.
Whatever you may be enduring today – and these days all of us are enduring things we could not have imagined a few months ago, some of us more than others – whatever you are going through, know that the Shepherd has entered by the same gate as you. And if he’s leading you through the gate, know that he’s not doing it for what you can give him – that’s what the thieves and bandits posing as fake shepherds do, but not the Good Shepherd. He’s leading you so that you will have life, and have it abundantly. The way that God has abundant life, life that is so abundant that God can give it away freely to others and still end up having more life, not less. God wants us to be able to do that too. God knows that is not easy for us, that’s why God came in person to shepherd us, to smell like us, to lead us through the narrow gate that leads to life abundant. Listen to his voice, calling you by name, trust him, follow him, live abundantly. Amen.