Rethink Life
“Rethink Life” Acts 4:1-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:1-16-24; John 10:11-18
I am the good shepherd, says Jesus, I know my own and my own know me, and I lay down my life for the sheep.
We know love by this, we read today from the letter of John, that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”
That Jesus shows his love for us by laying down his life for us is a familiar theme for us in Scripture, and yet it is difficult for us – I know it’s difficult for me – to contemplate the corollary that John’s letter adds – so we ought to lay down our lives for one another. I’m not particularly anxious to lay down my life for anybody.
My own inclination, to be honest, is to follow the advice not of Jesus or of the apostle John, but of General George Patton, who is reported to have said: Nobody ever won a war by dying for their country. You win a war by making the other poor fellow die for his country. (The actual quote from Patton doesn’t say “fellow,” but you get the idea.)
And yet Jesus does not say, I am the good shepherd, I kill any wolf that even looks sideways at one of my sheep. I am the good shepherd, I put the fear of God into anyone who would harm one of my sheep. I am the good shepherd, I build the highest fence around my sheep and protect them from the outside world. No, Jesus says, I am the good shepherd, I lay down my life for my sheep.
Now, General Patton’s approach may well be the best way to win a war. And Lutheran tradition has always held that sometimes it’s necessary to use force against people who do harm to their neighbors and the community, in order to prevent even greater evil. And those who engage in that type of service to their neighbors, whether in the police or in the military or in other types of law enforcement, can fulfill a vocation that’s as noble and proper as any other.
Of course, the kind of power over one’s neighbors that comes with these vocations can be a great temptation for many in these professions, as the news makes clear just about every day at the moment. And the laws people are called upon to enforce may not always be just. So it’s complicated, and people can in good faith draw different lines and come to different conclusions about specific questions and particular incidents. And there are times and places to discuss those questions and incidents, to listen to people with perspectives that are different from ours and to offer our own experiences and insights to others.
But even though Martin Luther and Lutheran tradition have agreed that, in principle, the use of force to protect neighbors and communities can at least do the good thing of preventing even worse violence and harm, they have been equally emphatic that God does not work in this way. God is not a giant general or police commissioner in the sky, using divine power to smite enemies and protect the chosen sheep.
No, Jesus says, I am the good shepherd, I know my own and my own know me, and I lay down my life for the sheep. Nonviolent resistance and sacrificial love may sound beautiful, but if General Patton were to say that this is not the most practical way to protect the sheep, that this is not the safest way to care for the sheep – neither for the shepherd nor for the sheep – I think he might have a point. Yet when Jesus says he is the good shepherd, I don’t think he’s promising that he will die to make sure that, at all costs, we his sheep will never be attacked by wolves.
I saw an interesting quote this week from Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who works with young people involved in gangs in Los Angeles. During his ministry he has buried more than two hundred kids who were killed in gang violence, more than two hundred of God’s beloved children who have been murdered. He says that he has come to “believe that God protects me from nothing, but sustains me in everything.”
God protects me from nothing, but sustains me in everything. Jesus, no doubt, felt something similar – Jesus knew that God would protect Jesus from nothing, not even the cross. Yet Jesus also knew that God would sustain him in everything, even in death. This is the message of Easter: God sustains Jesus even in death, raises him to a life that is not untouched by death but that is victorious over death. That’s why Jesus says toward the end of the gospel reading today, “I lay down my life in order to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.” Jesus our shepherd shows us, by laying down his life, that even if God will not protect us from anything, God will sustain us in everything, no matter what.
And isn’t this what we are called to do for one another? Not so much to die for our neighbors – as General Patton would be the first to tell us, that rarely does our neighbor any practical good at all. But to approach our neighbors with a perspective grounded in faith that, even though God may protect us from nothing, God sustains us in everything and so we don’t really have anything to fear. We might well lose something by helping a neighbor in need, we might well be rejected, we might even be called upon to die. And even if God won’t protect us from any of those things, if we know God will sustain us even in loss and rejection and even in death, if loss and rejection and death are things we do not need to fear, then perhaps we can love, as John says, not just in “word or speech,” not just in thoughts and prayers, but in “truth and action.” And loving in truth and in action is, in the end, very practical indeed.
And there is another thing Jesus says in the gospel today that demonstrates the practicality of his approach. It’s when he says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Jesus has other sheep besides us. Jesus is already the shepherd of these other sheep too, they will listen to his voice too, just as we do. Jesus is not asking us to go and recruit more sheep; Jesus already has these other sheep that we don’t know about yet. And the goal of Jesus is to bring us and these other sheep together as one flock.
And who is to say that the one we perceive to be the wolf, the one we perceive as a threat to our little flock – who is to say that this one is not also one of the Lord’s sheep? Who is to say that God’s aim is to protect us from them, or to protect them from us, and not rather for all of us together to realize that the same Jesus laid down his life for both of us – that Jesus can become the shepherd of one flock?
That is not to say that people can’t be real threats to us. And sometimes the most loving thing to do is to recognize that threat and restrain someone, even against their will, from doing harm. For a community, through its government and prosecutors and courts and prisions, to tell a police officer, for example: You may have thought you were protecting the community from a greater harm, but you were wrong. You have caused a great evil, you have killed someone whose death was totally unnecessary, and you are a danger to this community. Convicting and imprisoning such a person may save lives and prevent even more such incidents in the future. But confronting someone with the reality of their deeds and holding them accountable may also be the best path to repentance and perhaps, even, to making amends and seeking reconciliation.
Love “in truth and in action” doesn’t always feel tender and sentimental – sometimes it seems stern and uncompromising. (The shepherd of Psalm 23, after all, has both a rod and a staff, and both of them are meant to be comforting, if in different ways.) Sometimes people harm us so much that, until they are truly repentant and ready to make things right, we can only love them from a distance. These are difficult choices and decisions we need to make, and we make them best by listening well to one another. But ultimately God wants to set all of us free from fear, free from danger, free from harm.
And God’s way of doing that is to be made flesh in Jesus and to lay down his life for our sake, so that we might come to know that God sustains us in everything no matter what, so that we can be free enough to love others in truth and in action, in whatever way we are called. For, as the ancient hymn for Maundy Thursday tells us, whenever we experience this self-giving love, in receiving it or in giving it, we experience the presence of God.
Our hymn of the day is a modern translation of that hymn, #359 in our hymnal, Where Charity and Love Prevail. Let’s sing it together.