One
Flock, One Shepherd
Easter
4B
29 April 2012; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
29 April 2012; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Homily
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Anthony A. Hutchinson
at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland,
Oregon
Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
“The day after they had arrested Peter and John for teaching about Jesus and the resurrection, the rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, "By what power or by what name did you do this?" Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:5-12)
God,
take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen
We have been having a lot of funerals here at Trinity in the last weeks. At a couple of them we have used as the Gospel reading the passage from John 14, where Jesus says that in his Father’s House there are many way stations. The passage is warm, reassuring, and comforting. It ends with Jesus saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one comes to the Father, except by me” (John14: 6). One of the deacons asked me somewhat abashedly if she could read the Gospel but end the reading before that last half-verse, “no one comes to the Father except by me.” “It might be offensive to some of the visiting bereaved, who might not be Christians.”
She asked as if she were afraid my response might be “But this is the BIBLE we are talking about here, and I’ll not have a verse of GOD’S WORD edited out because it might be offensive to those who are going to destruction anyway!” But she asked it anyway, because she knew that I am no fundamentalist, and believe that in order to be understood, God’s word on occasion needs to be reframed or even rephrased.
Today’s Gospel reading, shares the same problem. “I am the Good Shepherd” Jesus says, not “a good shepherd.” And he adds, “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.” Likewise, in the Acts reading, St. Peter ends his short speech on Christ being the stone once rejected but now made head cornerstone by saying, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”
We here at Trinity Church glory in the fact that we are inclusive. One of our core values is hospitality. We believe that inclusiveness and hospitality are what God calls us to. We believe that because of what scripture teaches us.During the life of Jesus, everyone knew that one of the great images of the Hebrew scripture for God’s saving act at the end of time was that of a great banquet. Even though there were plenty of passages that said, like Isaiah 25:7, that this banquet would be for people of all nations, many of the religious teachers around Jesus taught that this would be an exclusive event limited to a few of God’s chosen only.
Jesus replies to such a stingy image of
God with parables. He points to the weather and says that God gives his rain
and sunshine to both good and bad people alike (Matt. 5:45). He says this tells
us about God’s love for all and should be a model for us in how we treat
others. Jesus points to families and notes that when children ask for bread to
eat, parents do not give them stones, or when they ask for an egg to eat, do
not give them a scorpion. “If even average parents try to give their children
good things, how much more generous will God be?” (Matt. 7:9-10; Luke 11:11-13)
Jesus’ actions matched his words. He regularly ate and drank with people that his religion told him would make him unclean. He had dinner parties with drunkards and prostitutes, much to the horror of Jesus’ “righteous” opponents. “It is the sick who need a doctor,” he would say, “not healthy people.” (Matt. 9:12)
But not everyone wanted a God as generous as the one Jesus described. They would quote scriptures that “proved” God was picky and exclusive. Jesus would reply by quoting other scriptures, where God looked more loving.
Jesus’ actions matched his words. He regularly ate and drank with people that his religion told him would make him unclean. He had dinner parties with drunkards and prostitutes, much to the horror of Jesus’ “righteous” opponents. “It is the sick who need a doctor,” he would say, “not healthy people.” (Matt. 9:12)
But not everyone wanted a God as generous as the one Jesus described. They would quote scriptures that “proved” God was picky and exclusive. Jesus would reply by quoting other scriptures, where God looked more loving.
Jesus reserved his deepest anger for
people he accused of “refusing to enter God’s door, and also barring the way to
others” (Matt 23:13). He told other parables to explain why it was that despite
God’s overwhelming goodness and generosity, some people were right with God and
others were not. The ones who were not
truly thankful for God’s generosity, and were not likewise generous to others,
were the butt of such parables (Luke 18:10-14).
When Jesus described what he believed the dividing line on the Last Day will be between those who stand and dwell with God and those who do not, he said that it was whether people had been hospitable, and whether they had cared for the marginalized (Matthew 5: 35-40).
So inclusiveness and hospitality are core to the Gospel, not just affectations of Trinity Ashland.
What, then, are we to make of the verses of the New Testament that seem exclusionary?
Here in post-modern America, with its wide diversity of religious and non-religious traditions, it is always a temptation to simply ignore these verses or deny that they hold any truth or value. In a landscape of radical diversity, all religious options seem equally valid, valuable, and true, with the exception of views that exclude or subordinate others, or claim unique truth or authenticity. This often finds expression in a consumer’s approach to religious belief: pick and choose those things of religion—any religion—that appeal to you, that suit you, and moosh them all together into your particular faith. “I’m spiritual but not religious” is a common tag line of such boutique faith. A little bit of Christianity, of Buddhism, of mystic Islam or Judaism, stripped of their authoritative claims or difficult doctrines, of their craziness, and you can arrive at a pleasant blend all your own, like some customized pipe tobacco or drug stash.
To those who might find boutique religion attractive, it is important to remember wise words from the Dalai Lama. He says that if you take a little of this faith and mix it with a little of that one, you have neither the one nor the other and cannot be properly formed by either. You never will sink your roots deeply enough into a single tradition to truly grow and mature spiritually. It is only when you sink your roots deep, with an open heart and mind, and acquire some spiritual maturity that you can “branch out” and truly enjoy the fruits of another tradition. “If you are Christian it is better to develop spiritually within your religion and be a genuine, good Christian. If you are a Buddhist, be a genuine Buddhist.” (H.H. the Dalai Lama, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus, p. 46).
Historically, the Church has read these verses and taught that
Christ is the sole savior. This usually
entails claims that other faiths are deficient, and are only true or valid in
the degree that they copy or agree with elements of Christian faith. The most exclusionary form of this for the
Roman Church has been the doctrine of extra
ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside of the Church, there is no
salvation”). Protestants have their own
form of the doctrine, based on Romans 10:9.
Paul’s “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” in this view
becomes, “unless you declare this
with your mouth and believe this in your heart, you will not be saved.
But this exclusionary doctrine has undergone a great shift in the last 40 years, primarily due to the work of Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, who developed the doctrine of the Anonymous Christian. The idea is that a person can live in God’s grace and attain salvation through Jesus even outside explicitly constituted or stated Christianity. If a person, say a Buddhist nun or a Muslim imam, tries to do the right thing, be right with whatever God they conceive of, and follow his or her conscience, that person might be considered an anonymous Christian and be saved through Jesus’ victory over death and sin. They would not have to explicitly accept Jesus or Christianity, or might even, because of circumstances and constraints, have rejected these explicitly. But God’s universal salvific will and the greatness of God’s grace would save them too.
The idea of the Anonymous Christian was promulgated as official Roman Catholic doctrine in the documents of the Second Vatican Council.
The idea is also found among Protestants. The final book of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, has the character Emeth, a Calormene prince who had fought against Aslan and Narnia and served his own god, Tash. He has done his best to live uprightly within the traditions he as raised in. In the end, Aslan receives him as one of his own with these words, “I and [Tash] are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.”
The doctrine is also found in our Prayer Book, where we pray, “Remember all who died in the peace of Christ, and those whose faith is known to you alone; bring them into the place of eternal joy and light” (p. 375).
Some have criticized this effort at Christian inclusivity saying that it is condescending. “I’m Jewish, thank you very much, and do not want to become Christian, even anonymously” expresses the idea. These critics say that a tradition is truly inclusive only when it recognizes that other traditions have truly separate paths and confesses that these too are valid, without need for any “anonymous” adoption into our tradition.
There is, however, a prior issue here. The verses that Christians use to endorse exclusivist claims, when examined carefully, don’t actually teach the doctrine of exclusive, brand-conscious religious truth. They are concerned, rather, with something else. Remember that Paul in Romans did not write, “if you don’t confess and believe, you won’t be saved.”
Take also the verse at the end of today’s Acts reading: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” That phrasing should strike you as odd if indeed what Peter had meant to say was “there is no other name by which we can be saved.” The problem is starker in the Greek of the passage, which says “by which it is necessary for us to be saved.” The context of the verse provides the clue necessary for us to see what it is actually trying to say: Peter is answering the authorities’ question of how, or under whose authority (“by whose name”) he has performed a miracle. In verse 9, Peter says he is explaining “how this man has been healed.” The word healed translates the verb sosthenai, “to be saved,” the same verb he uses when he says “there is only one name given under heaven by which we must be saved.” The logic of the argument in the passage requires that the verses in question mean something like this: It is through Jesus’ name that we healed this man. Such healing does not come from just anywhere. For Jesus is the only one God has ever raised from the dead. Thus, if you use his name, you just have to be healed. You can’t say that about any other name that I know of.”
Similarly, when Jesus in John says “I am the Good Shepherd, … and there will be one flock and one shepherd,” this is more an affirmation of the reliability of Jesus and an exuberant expression of how good this is, not how deficient others might be. Though the text contrasts this model shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep with other “hireling” false shepherds, it chooses the Greek word for “one” that means “one among many” (heis) rather than the Greek word for “one and only one” (monos).
We often lose the point of the image of the model shepherd: shepherds, to be effective, need to establish a caring relationship with their sheep, being attentive to their various wanderings, bad choice of plants to eat, and the first signs of sickness. It is the quality of the relationship with Jesus experienced by the believer that is at heart of the Good Shepherd image, and lies behind all the passages that might be construed as exclusionary.
This is why we should not ignore these verses or believe they have nothing to teach us.
We who have experienced the joy and sweetness of being shepherded by Jesus are bound by the quality of that experience of faith to share it with others. But this is sharing, not sales promotion or brow beating, and must be based in the joy of our experience and our love for others, not some silly and misdirected fear that somehow they won’t be saved or blessed by God if they aren’t like us. And this joyful sharing to which our experience and God calls us can only be cheapened if it is linked to a looking down our noses at the experience and faith of others as deficient or inadequate.
Bishop and theologian Krister Stendahl once said that Christ calls us Christians to be the kind of people that others want to be around, not to constantly harp at others to become like us. We must so show the joy of the good news that others will wonder at and want what we have, whether in their own tradition or by adopting ours.
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