May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Easter 4 - Good Shepherd Sunday
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: May 14, 2000
TEXT: John 10:11-16 - “I am the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not won the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away - and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.”
ISSUE: - Jesus is the Good (Beautiful) Shepherd.. He is sacrificial in that he lays down his life for his sheep. He is not concerned for a select group but for all people in need of a leader. He is the world’s unifying presence of God. As Christians who have The Good Shepherd we are also called upon to share in leadership and concern for a world which knows much evil. Like Peter who is often seen as a hireling, he becomes transformed and called upon to feed the lambs.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This is the Sunday after Easter that we refer to as Good Shepherd Sunday. It is surely one of the truly beautiful and poetic sections of John’s account of the Gospel. One of the things we have to be careful about when we deal with this Good Shepherd passage is that we don’t over sentimentalize it, and treat it in too saccharin of a way. We have to understand the passage in terms of what it meant to the people who first heard John and the very early church refer to Jesus as The Good Shepherd. Again, let me reiterate, that John’s Gospel was the last of the Gospels to be written. It is not likely that Jesus went around referring to himself as The Good Shepherd. It is more likely that is was the very earliest of Christians that gave Jesus that title. It was as if Jesus, his life and ministry, was likened to being a Good Shepherd that gave his life for his friends. While the Good Shepherd passage is not an Easter resurrection story, it is a post-resurrection development of the early church.
The Good Shepherd imagery was deeply rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures. The 23rd Psalm is one very familiar passage. In Isaiah it is written, “He (God) will take care of his flock like a Shepherd and carry them in his arms. In a very important passage from Ezekiel 34:15f, the leaders of Israel often failed miserably in caring for the people, and so Ezekiel writes of God, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will find them a place to rest. I will look for those that are lost, bring back those that wander off, bandage those that are hurt, and heal those that are sick; but those that are fat and strong I will destroy because I am a shepherd who does what is right.” The early church envisioned the sacrificial work and ministry of Jesus as God, the Good Shepherd who had come to his people.
The work of a shepherd was not easy. Stained Glass windows sometimes distort the image. The shepherd carried a sling, a rod, and a staff to protect himself as well as his sheep. Shepherds in this period had to contend with very hot days, and very cold nights. They lived outside away from the comforts of their homes and families. They dealt regularly with robbers and poachers. Threat from wild beasts and wolves were far greater in that period then they are today. In the wilderness places they lived in fear of invisible evil spirits and demons. Shepherding was in that time a very high risk occupation. Protecting the flock was not easy and not to be sentimentalized. The point of the passage is that Jesus dealt with many wolves in his ministry, the agitators, the Judean leadership, the Romans, the detractors of his ministry, from the evils that diminished the dignity and worth of God’s people. Yet he was seen as the sacrificing shepherd who willing was ready to lay down his life for God’s people. Jesus is the image of God who has come to protect and to save his people. The Good Shepherd image gives way to Jesus becoming The Lamb of God, who gives his life that all may know abundant life, life with God’s gracious love and forgiveness, and renewal.
The Good Shepherd passage, while it deals surely with the element of sacrifice on Jesus’ part, also deal with the importance of leadership in the church. When John’s Gospel account was being written, there were many problems for the early church. Eyewitnesses to Jesus life and ministry had all but died off. The early church was really struggling to maintain its faithfulness to Jesus Christ. Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Romans. There were heretical developments within the church that contradicted some of Jesus’ own teachings by groups that became known as gnostics. They were incorporating and mixing pagan beliefs and mythologies with Christ’s teachings. The church was facing persecution. There were threat from without and within the church community. Wolves, thieves, and robbers were within the church as well as on the outside. There was a real struggle to keep the true faith and commitment to Jesus Christ as pure as possible. Thus, John is holding up to the light and in the forefront: Jesus is the Christ. He is the sacrificial Saviour of the world. Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Keep focused on that image. Faithful people will listen to his voice, know his voice, know what he says and is about and will study that voice which is the word of God. They will remain faithful to God’s Good Shepherd. There is much more yet to be done. There are more sheep that are beyond the fold that need to be brought in so that there will be one flock and one shepherd. John emphasizes that there is still a great mission to be accomplished.
If people, disciples, early Christians are not going to be faithful to the Good Shepherd, then they are nothing more than hirelings, who abandon the sheep in need and the cause of Christ’s ministry of love, nurturing, caring, and concern for God’s world. John’s gospel here is a desperate plea for faithfulness, and for people to look to the Christ as the model of devoted unflinching leadership in a cruel and vicious world.
John’s Gospel account is one which is very rich in meaning, if not subtlety. In John’s Gospel there is a vivid hireling that is depicted. It is Peter. In the synoptic Gospels (Matt., Mark, Luke) Peter is usually seen as the hero of the group, and leader of the pack, even though he is sometimes portrayed as blustering and incompetent. In John’s Gospel for the most part the leading disciple is not Peter, but an un-named disciple referred to as The Beloved Disciple. Peter is seen in John’s Gospel as the hireling, he is the one who runs away.
At one point, Peter claims that Jesus is “the one who has the words that give eternal life.” (6:67-69) “And now we believe and know that you are the Holy One who has come from God.” It is a real confession of who Jesus is, Lord and God’s Shepherd.
At the Last Supper in John’s Gospel, Jesus determines to was his disciples feet (13:1f). In this action, Jesus is caring for and claiming his own in a most intimate way. Peter is reluctant to participate in this ritual which is clearly a kind of baptism taking place. Peter does not understand, although he finally and slowly consents to the washing.
But only shortly thereafter in the Gospel, Peter is seen as running away, as one who is not strong in leadership and a fellow shepherd with Christ. Once difficulty comes and Jesus is about to be crucified, Peter is seen as taking flight. He distances himself from the movement. For instance, in John’s Gospel, the noble shepherd enters by the door, through the gate (10:2). However, when Jesus is arrested and being tried before the High Priest, Peter remains outside the gate (18:15), while the other (the Beloved Disciple?), went inside the palace.
The noble and Good Shepherd knows his sheep by their names. In John’s Gospel (18:17), when Peter is finally led inside the gate by the other ( the Beloved Disciple), the girl at the gate says, “Aren’t you also one of his disciples?” And Peter replies, “No I am not. . . . (meaning: I don’t know him. I don’t identify with him. I don’t know his name of voice)”
It is after the crucifixion and resurrection in John’s Gospel, that Peter is transformed. Finally, the Risen Christ appears to Peter and says, “Peter, do you love me?” And Peter, responds, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you!” (21:15f) And Jesus says to him, “Take care of my sheep. . . . .” and goes on to tell him that it will not be easy.
This Gospel reading tells us today, that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Have faith in him and learn from him. Can we be transformed as well into be shepherds with Christ in our world. We also have our faith challenged by the secularism of the world. The wolves are there. The drug dealers are ready to snatch our children away. There are competing so called trendy “new age beliefs” and doctrines that would dilute the Christian Faith into nothing more than meaningless self-indulgent moments of meditations. Many Recreation Councils throughout the country have no compulsion about usurping the Sabbath time we use for Christian Education, instruction and worship. The Calvin Klein images, the advertising industry, popular culture depicted on TV has used children and adults in near pornographic images to sell its wares, and to promote a violent way of life that is destructive, demeaning, self-indulgent. The sheep are being led and are going astray to very poor shallow pastures. How cruel and vicious a thing it is to lead people to believe that drugs aren’t dangerous and they simply are a good time that makes you feel good. How unfortunate that we are led to believe that solutions to life are found in violence. How demeaning it is to lead people to believe that indiscriminate casual sex has no consequences. How cruel it is to lead people to think that walking out on one another is a matter of finding one’s happiness and self-indulgent satisfaction. Many of our political leaders, our athletes, our entertainers, even some religious leaders in recent years have been very poor models, very poor shepherds of what is healthy and good.
John’s Gospel proclaimed that Jesus Christ was the Good Shepherd. God himself will be the Shepherd of his people, and we find that, see that, in Jesus Christ. He lived and died and rose again to lead the way to God, to love, to forgiveness, to health and strength, and meaningful life of care and concern for one another. Interestingly, the translation of Good Shepherd from the Greek text of John’s Gospel does not mean that Jesus was merely morally good. It does not mean he was merely a moral leader. It does not mean that what we are called upon to be is good people. Christianity is not merely about being good. The Greek word in Good Shepherd means the beautiful, the noble and gracious (“kalos” not “agothos”) shepherd. The Greek culture in this period saw health and strength as one of the great virtues. Jesus was perceived by the early church as the (Noble) Beautiful Shepherd, the healthy, strong, dedicated, serving, sacrificing, gracious Lord that sought the transformation of the world from sloth, cruel power, and evil into hope, change, renewal, and a gracious servanthood among one another. We are not called upon to be volunteers for Jesus. We are not hirelings. We have a Lord, a good Shepherd who calls us into fellowship with him, that together we might face the world, reach out to the worlds’ human needs, and transform it.
Sunday, May 14, 2000
Easter 6
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Easter 6
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: May 14, 2000
TEXT: John 15:9-17 - “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. . . . .You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made know to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”
ISSUE: - Here’s a passage that is very challenging to the world today. It speaks repeatedly of ‘abiding,” which means a permanent relationship. It speaks even more repeatedly of love, which may include affection, but more accurately means ‘attachment.’ It calls the community to at-one-ment with God in friendship, and to live out the commandment of love in a broken world. Bonded in a unique family of divine love, the church has a mission in God’s world.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
John’s community that this Gospel account addresses was a frightened community. Its leaders who were eyewitnesses to Jesus work and mission had died off. The church was facing persecution from without, and uncertainty from within. It seemed to be under attack, and its foundations were shaky. So John’s gospel gives encouragement to a challenged and surrounded community. “Abide in my love” seems to be the basic catch phrase. Even in the Epistle of I John, which was read this morning and which was not likely to have been written by the same persons, there are striking similarities when it comes to the words “abide” and “love” which are repeated over and over again.
The important meaning of the word “abide” is simply to stay in a permanent, remain, dwell permanently. The poplar phrase we might use today is “hang-in there.”
The other repeated word is “love.” Whenever we hear the word love, we think of it in terms of some kind of an emotional affection. While there might be some kind of emotional meaning to the word, the real meaning of love in this context was “attachment.” Love was attachment. Remember in the book of Genesis (2:23-24) it’s written, that a man shall leave his father and mother, and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh. Even then, a man normally stayed with his father and in his father’s house. Love was bonding. The whole Biblical idea of loving God is rooted in this attachment concept. People today will say, “How can I love God when I can’t see him?” Often the issue is how can I have an emotional feeling for God. We can’t quite grasp that love of God. Rather, it is attachment to God. Again, how can I love other people. Again, the Biblical concept of love is to be attached to other human beings. That isn’t to say that affections don’t come or are irrelevant. They aren’t, but we are to be attached to one another as the common human race, and in the family that God has created.
Thus, you have Jesus saying in this passage, “As the Father has loved me (been attached to me), so I have loved you (attached myself to you.) What you see in this passage is the call to an attached, bonded, permanent family of God the Father. The family is about the Father’s business, keeping the commandment to love one another and to carry on the servanthood ministry to one another and to God’s world, as Jesus Christ had accomplished.
In this passage what’s even more compelling is that John says that Jesus called his disciples not merely slaves, but friends. They are invited into a full and complete relationship. If that isn’t the lifting up of the human race and family of God, I don’t know what is. God sends Jesus the Christ who is intimately attached to the Father. It’s a Father - Son relationship, permanently attached, to reach the world that God has created to bond with it in such away that they become family and friends, unlike subordinates. The sign of the relationship is in doing the commandment of love of attachment to the brokeness of the world in the on going effort to restore the family of God to wholeness.
The question for us today is whether or not there is much in the way of relevance for us. We don’t live in the 1st century, we live in the 21st century now. Yet, I can’t help but believe that this passage really takes on for us a kind of prophetic stance. We live in a world of significantly enormous detachments among peoples, races, and nations, even in and among our own families. In the United States today we are so caught up in our infatuation with our individualism, that the concept of attachment in a profound kind of love is becoming quite foreign to us.
We have the great detachment of the races. There was a song that Kris Kristofferson used to sing, “Jesus was a Capricorn, “ and the refrain was “Everybody needs somebody else to look down on.” Liberals look down on Conservatives, and vice versa, of course. Rich look down on the poor, and poor often unilaterally condemn the rich. There is real tension and brokeness in human relationships.
Notice that what we hear today so often is people demanding “my rights.” We hear this a lot as related to the rights to bear arms. I have my right to possess and bear any kind of arms I want because my rights are protected by the constitution. Yet what of the rights of the community to be able to sit on its doorsteps without fear of danger? I know this is a complicated issue, but we are always having to weigh what is mine, but in the light of the good of the whole.
We see the individualistic rights often expressed in the way people drive as related to road rage. How dare you inconvenience me? I have the right to the road. There are military groups that believe that government is unjust, and that it has no right over them. Thus, they are advocating revolution that is chaos, that fosters anarchy.
Christianity today is often based by many groups on having a personal relationship with Jesus. I’ve heard people refer to have to receive their personal holy communion. This personal relationship and self-satisfying religion of today is a fascinating phenomena in that Jesus’ teachings hardly ever addressed anyone individually. He spoke almost all of the time to the community, to “you all.” (Y’all as they say in the South.) People will be together, worship together, pray together, sing together, and still have little sense of relationship, of bonding or attachment with one another. The church today often divides and people leave out of disagreements when the church doesn’t believe what I personally think it should believe. Wasn’t it interesting how when the church went through some liturgical and theological changes how people abandoned one another. I’ve often been left brooding over the way even in church communities people leave a church community without notice. People just leave, like there’s never been any kind of relationship even though we drink from the same cup week after week.
Often in church repeatedly we can no longer function except by people doing their own individual thing, when they have time unrelated to the sense of doing things together in community. Notice that people have to do things alone, by themselves. “Loner-ism” is the trend of the time, which is kind of interesting in that we are a nation that detests totalitarianism. We cherish a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, which is becoming increasing corrupted by individual greed and grasping for personal unchecked power.
Today we even see this in many of our marriages. It is as if the personal individual self-satisfaction is the be all and end all of life. The strength that comes from bonding and union that supports our children gives way to personal satisfaction and gratification. It’s as if my only friend is me. What a lonely world. We are a crowd of very lonely individuals, and we bear witness to that rank individualistic way of life as if it were something wonderful. Maybe we are in denial?
When Moses was leading the people of God in the wilderness, it really became an enormously heavy load for himself as an individual. At nearly a point of breakdown, the Spirit of God tells Moses to select a group of 70 men to carry the load of leadership. Jesus begins his own ministry in community. When the disciples are commissioned at the end of Jesus ministry they are sent to baptize all nations, whole communities. Peter is directed to feed the flock. At the heart of the Gospel is the concern for community, for the corporate community of God’s world. For the church over the ages, it has been believed that schism is far worse than heresy, for it divides and weakens us as the people of God.
The relationship of Jesus to God the Father was one of relationship, permanent bonding in a fellowship. The relationship that Jesus brought to the world was one of relationship with God’s people, and they were called upon to bond permanently with one another. Therein we find the meaning of love, as we serve together in a permanent friendship with God and one another to see us all as God’s own unique family in which brokeness is healed and we are raised up with Christ. Reclaiming this effort at serving the good of the whole community in relationship with Christ is a real challenge for the individualism we cherish today, but it may in the long run be worth the effort, if a broken and isolated world can find its peace in God, and bear witness to the plentiful love of God.
SEASON: Easter 6
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: May 14, 2000
TEXT: John 15:9-17 - “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. . . . .You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made know to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”
ISSUE: - Here’s a passage that is very challenging to the world today. It speaks repeatedly of ‘abiding,” which means a permanent relationship. It speaks even more repeatedly of love, which may include affection, but more accurately means ‘attachment.’ It calls the community to at-one-ment with God in friendship, and to live out the commandment of love in a broken world. Bonded in a unique family of divine love, the church has a mission in God’s world.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
John’s community that this Gospel account addresses was a frightened community. Its leaders who were eyewitnesses to Jesus work and mission had died off. The church was facing persecution from without, and uncertainty from within. It seemed to be under attack, and its foundations were shaky. So John’s gospel gives encouragement to a challenged and surrounded community. “Abide in my love” seems to be the basic catch phrase. Even in the Epistle of I John, which was read this morning and which was not likely to have been written by the same persons, there are striking similarities when it comes to the words “abide” and “love” which are repeated over and over again.
The important meaning of the word “abide” is simply to stay in a permanent, remain, dwell permanently. The poplar phrase we might use today is “hang-in there.”
The other repeated word is “love.” Whenever we hear the word love, we think of it in terms of some kind of an emotional affection. While there might be some kind of emotional meaning to the word, the real meaning of love in this context was “attachment.” Love was attachment. Remember in the book of Genesis (2:23-24) it’s written, that a man shall leave his father and mother, and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh. Even then, a man normally stayed with his father and in his father’s house. Love was bonding. The whole Biblical idea of loving God is rooted in this attachment concept. People today will say, “How can I love God when I can’t see him?” Often the issue is how can I have an emotional feeling for God. We can’t quite grasp that love of God. Rather, it is attachment to God. Again, how can I love other people. Again, the Biblical concept of love is to be attached to other human beings. That isn’t to say that affections don’t come or are irrelevant. They aren’t, but we are to be attached to one another as the common human race, and in the family that God has created.
Thus, you have Jesus saying in this passage, “As the Father has loved me (been attached to me), so I have loved you (attached myself to you.) What you see in this passage is the call to an attached, bonded, permanent family of God the Father. The family is about the Father’s business, keeping the commandment to love one another and to carry on the servanthood ministry to one another and to God’s world, as Jesus Christ had accomplished.
In this passage what’s even more compelling is that John says that Jesus called his disciples not merely slaves, but friends. They are invited into a full and complete relationship. If that isn’t the lifting up of the human race and family of God, I don’t know what is. God sends Jesus the Christ who is intimately attached to the Father. It’s a Father - Son relationship, permanently attached, to reach the world that God has created to bond with it in such away that they become family and friends, unlike subordinates. The sign of the relationship is in doing the commandment of love of attachment to the brokeness of the world in the on going effort to restore the family of God to wholeness.
The question for us today is whether or not there is much in the way of relevance for us. We don’t live in the 1st century, we live in the 21st century now. Yet, I can’t help but believe that this passage really takes on for us a kind of prophetic stance. We live in a world of significantly enormous detachments among peoples, races, and nations, even in and among our own families. In the United States today we are so caught up in our infatuation with our individualism, that the concept of attachment in a profound kind of love is becoming quite foreign to us.
We have the great detachment of the races. There was a song that Kris Kristofferson used to sing, “Jesus was a Capricorn, “ and the refrain was “Everybody needs somebody else to look down on.” Liberals look down on Conservatives, and vice versa, of course. Rich look down on the poor, and poor often unilaterally condemn the rich. There is real tension and brokeness in human relationships.
Notice that what we hear today so often is people demanding “my rights.” We hear this a lot as related to the rights to bear arms. I have my right to possess and bear any kind of arms I want because my rights are protected by the constitution. Yet what of the rights of the community to be able to sit on its doorsteps without fear of danger? I know this is a complicated issue, but we are always having to weigh what is mine, but in the light of the good of the whole.
We see the individualistic rights often expressed in the way people drive as related to road rage. How dare you inconvenience me? I have the right to the road. There are military groups that believe that government is unjust, and that it has no right over them. Thus, they are advocating revolution that is chaos, that fosters anarchy.
Christianity today is often based by many groups on having a personal relationship with Jesus. I’ve heard people refer to have to receive their personal holy communion. This personal relationship and self-satisfying religion of today is a fascinating phenomena in that Jesus’ teachings hardly ever addressed anyone individually. He spoke almost all of the time to the community, to “you all.” (Y’all as they say in the South.) People will be together, worship together, pray together, sing together, and still have little sense of relationship, of bonding or attachment with one another. The church today often divides and people leave out of disagreements when the church doesn’t believe what I personally think it should believe. Wasn’t it interesting how when the church went through some liturgical and theological changes how people abandoned one another. I’ve often been left brooding over the way even in church communities people leave a church community without notice. People just leave, like there’s never been any kind of relationship even though we drink from the same cup week after week.
Often in church repeatedly we can no longer function except by people doing their own individual thing, when they have time unrelated to the sense of doing things together in community. Notice that people have to do things alone, by themselves. “Loner-ism” is the trend of the time, which is kind of interesting in that we are a nation that detests totalitarianism. We cherish a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, which is becoming increasing corrupted by individual greed and grasping for personal unchecked power.
Today we even see this in many of our marriages. It is as if the personal individual self-satisfaction is the be all and end all of life. The strength that comes from bonding and union that supports our children gives way to personal satisfaction and gratification. It’s as if my only friend is me. What a lonely world. We are a crowd of very lonely individuals, and we bear witness to that rank individualistic way of life as if it were something wonderful. Maybe we are in denial?
When Moses was leading the people of God in the wilderness, it really became an enormously heavy load for himself as an individual. At nearly a point of breakdown, the Spirit of God tells Moses to select a group of 70 men to carry the load of leadership. Jesus begins his own ministry in community. When the disciples are commissioned at the end of Jesus ministry they are sent to baptize all nations, whole communities. Peter is directed to feed the flock. At the heart of the Gospel is the concern for community, for the corporate community of God’s world. For the church over the ages, it has been believed that schism is far worse than heresy, for it divides and weakens us as the people of God.
The relationship of Jesus to God the Father was one of relationship, permanent bonding in a fellowship. The relationship that Jesus brought to the world was one of relationship with God’s people, and they were called upon to bond permanently with one another. Therein we find the meaning of love, as we serve together in a permanent friendship with God and one another to see us all as God’s own unique family in which brokeness is healed and we are raised up with Christ. Reclaiming this effort at serving the good of the whole community in relationship with Christ is a real challenge for the individualism we cherish today, but it may in the long run be worth the effort, if a broken and isolated world can find its peace in God, and bear witness to the plentiful love of God.
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