The Good Shepherd
Easter 4B
25 April 2021; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass in the Parish Hall (due to rain);
10:00 a.m. Sung Mass livestreamed from the Chancel
Homily Delivered by the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. In the Gospel, Jesus says he is the good shepherd, whose flock is larger than we think. The beloved 23rd Psalm describes God not only as a loving shepherd, but also as a gracious host.
These images run counter to how we often, unconsciously, think about God.
Good Shepherd is not an image of an accountant, keeping track on a ledger of all the little lambs, of who is in the flock and who is out. It is not a powerful defender of property, some Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone he-man armed with incredibly deadly weaponry to fend off all attackers, wolves, and false sheep. Good Shepherd is not a law enforcement officer, not a judge, not a prosecuting attorney.
We are creatures of words and images. We tell stories, draw comparisons. We think and feel in metaphor and simile. We define ourselves in large part by the stories we choose to tell and not to tell, and by the images we choose to describe our world.
The Bible teaches all sorts of things, often at odds with each other. There are plenty of passages where God is seen in militant, nasty, and even petty terms. Should you take these as the heart of the Bible, and understand that when it speaks of God as love that this applies only to a few chosen people? Or should you take the less frequent passages where God is seen as love as the central, most important parts of the Bible, and understand in light of them the Bible’s pictures of a mean and nasty God as flawed expressions of how we damaged people at times experience God?
Jesus gave us a clear example in this. There are plenty of passages in the Psalter that say “keep away from the wicked,” and “hate and avoid sinners.” But instead of these, Jesus comes upon obscure passages in the Psalms that give glimpses of a gentle and loving God, and uses these to interpret all the other harsher, nastier descriptions of God.
He reads in Psalm 50: “I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds. For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine (Psalm 50:9-11). And he ends up saying things like, “God counts the sparrows, so how could he not care about you?” “God clothes the wild flowers and feeds the birds, how could he not care for you?” “God has compassion and equanimity, sending the blessing of rain and sunshine on both good and bad alike.” He ends up thinking that joy, good, and justice are contagious, not impurity and wickedness.
Some people use the Bible to support images of a judgmental, peevish Deity. They ask, “how does the Bible define love? How does it tell us our love should be?” And then they condemn people whose love does not meet up with the standard they have thus established. They use the Bible to understand what love means. But Jesus gave us an example, again and again, of using love to tell us what the Bible means.
When you read the Bible, does it
lead you to the loving and compassionate God that Jesus called Abba or Papa? Does it convince you that violence is evil,
and that justice and compassion are basic requirements for human life? Or does it lead to you to a condemning,
jealous, vicious, and violent deity, distant and inhuman? In a very true way, the Bible, in all its
diversity, serves as a mirror on our own hearts.
Though our tradition has been generally to use the metaphors “father” and “son”
to speak of God, we mustn’t take this literally. There are a few passages where God is
described in feminine terms: a hen gathering her chicks, a mother nursing her
child. Blessed Julian of Norwich,
following Jesus’ example of taking a rare glimpse into the love of God and
letting it form all other expression, takes these rare images and boldly writes
in one of our beloved canticles: “God
chose to be our mother in all things…
Christ came in our poor flesh to share a mother's care.”
Trusting God is at the heart of allowing love to drive our understanding, not
our understanding drive our love. This
means accepting our fears and sufferings: embracing them, not being in denial
about them or trying to minimize them.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People,
says the twenty-third Psalm is the answer to the question, “How do you live in
a dangerous, unpredictable, frightening world?” Right after 9/11, many people
asked him “How could God have let such a thing happen?” His answer was “God’s
promise was never that life would be fair. God’s promise was, when it’s your
turn to confront the unfairness of life, no matter how hard it is, you'll be
able to handle it, because He’ll be on your side. He will give you the strength
you need to find your way through. … “Though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” [does not mean],
“I will fear no evil because evil only happens to people who deserve it.”
[Rather,] “This is a scary, out-of-control world, but it doesn’t scare me,
because I know that God is on my side, not on the side of the . . . the
terrible thing that [has] happened. And that’s enough to give me the
confidence.”
Trusting God, especially in times of woe, makes us realize that we all are in God’s hand. We realize the truth of the saying, “there but for the grace of God go I.” And if we all are the people of God’s pasture and the sheep of God’s hand, then certainly we ourselves must reach out our hands to all.
So Jesus in today’s Gospel says that the good shepherd cares not only for the sheep already safely fenced in his secure pasture. This good shepherd has “other sheep, not of this fold.” He cares for them too. That means our conceptions of us and them—who’s Christian and who’s pagan, who’s orthodox and who’s a heretic, or who’s righteous and who’s wicked, who’s naughty and who’s nice—must go by the boards. There are more people in Jesus’ care that we in our tribalism and self-interest can conceive of. And Jesus loves them, and died for them too.
Jesus’ death was for all of humanity, not just part of it. Jesus may say, “the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many” Mark 10:45; Matthew 20:28). But 1 Timothy 2:6 explains that this multitude is not just a few chosen ones: “Christ Jesus… gave himself as a ransom for all.” And John 1:29: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Again, he is a good shepherd, and he has other sheep who are not in this flock.
The surest way we can demonstrate our trust in this loving shepherd is by loving. The most direct way of showing our gratitude for our gracious host is by being gracious to others, especially those most unlike us.
May we all so partake of the feast our gracious host offers. May we share the feast with others. May we all let our shepherd gently lay us on
his shoulder as he carries us home, and may we gently carry others.
Amen.
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