A Good Shepherd (Easter 4B)

 

A Good Shepherd

Easter 4B
26 April 2015; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

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

One of the great blessings of saying or singing Daily Morning and Evening Prayer is that you get to know the Psalter well.  The daily prayer office, after all, is based on the monastic Liturgy of the Hours or Breviary, and the main part of this prayer practice is the recitation of the entire Psalter each month.    This last week I was struck by the words in the Psalm appointed for Tuesday morning, Psalm 26 (vv. 3-5):

… I have walked faithfully with you [O God].

I have not sat with the worthless,
nor do I consort with the deceitful.

I have hated the company of evildoers; 

 I will not sit down with the wicked.

Jesus’ opponents probably quoted these very verses when they criticized him for being “a glutton, a drunkard, a friend of traitorous swindlers and sinners” (Luke 7:34).   They rejected his practice of open table fellowship with the marginalized: he could not be righteous, since he mixed with the wrong sort of people.  He replied to them by saying that “traitorous swindlers and whores go into the Kingdom of God before you do” (Matthew 21:31). 

I have been following the discussion going on in our country about marriage equality.  Some of my more politically conservative friends and family members have said to me that they cannot support same sex marriage even by so much as baking a celebratory cake for them.  To do so for them would be endorsing what they believed the Bible teaches is gross wickedness.  One asked pointedly, “What would Jesus do—bake a cake for a gay wedding, a cake that celebrates sin?”   

What would Jesus do?   Hmmmmm.  I am not sure that such a question is very helpful, since we usually just create an image of Jesus doing what we think we should do.  But if you take such a question seriously, you have to remember that turning over tables in the temple and chasing people out with a whip is in the realm of possibility.   As is having dinners and parties with whores, drunks, and crooks, and ignoring the religious righteous people who criticize you for it.  I told my friend that I suspected Jesus would indeed bake such a cake, though, again, this may be just me creating an image of Jesus doing what I think we should do. 

The problem, of course, is that the Bible teaches all sorts of things, often at odds with each other.  No matter what, you have to start picking and choosing which verses you are going to use to interpret the others.   Some people calling themselves Christians and styling themselves as biblical literalists point to a mere six “clobber” passages in the Bible that they think condemn same sex love per se.  They take these as a center and limit the scope of Jesus’ grace and welcome in other passages accordingly.   I tend to look at the passages of Jesus reaching out to people condemned by society for a guide here, and see those six passages in light of the larger truth of God’s love and welcome.

I think this is what Jesus himself did.  Instead of those “keep away from the wicked,” and “hate and avoid sinner” passages of the Psalter, Jesus took as his center for understanding life its other passages that talked about the love of God for all his creatures.   And he tried to define wickedness in the way this very psalm did:  people whose “hands are full of evil plots and bribes” (26:10).  I find it very interesting that Jesus gave the cold shoulder and tongue lashings only to the brutal oppressors of others, not to those failing to measure up to some purity code.    He won’t even say a word to Herod Antipas, and says little to Pilate. 

Jesus comes upon obscure passages in the Psalms that give glimpses of God, and interprets all the harsher, nastier descriptions of God in light of them. He reads:  “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).  He knows all the bird….  this minor detail and others like it buried in the Psalms and Isaiah become for Jesus a center point that spins off other ideas and reflections about God.   Jesus ends up saying things like, “God counts the sparrows, so how could he not know about you?” “God cares for the wild flowers and 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. 

Do you avoid reading the Bible because it offends your sensibilities?  Or do you read only the “good parts?”   Or do you read it with an open mind, realizing that some parts correct and remedy other ones, and that the general drift is one toward forgiveness, nonviolence, kindness and compassion?  Again, one of the blessings of Daily Morning and Evening Prayer is that you actually read the Bible, both the “good” parts and the “bad.” 

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? 

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday.  The readings are about the love of God for us his creatures, and the love of Jesus for those put under his care.  The image is of a good shepherd, one who loves those he cares for to the point of risking his own life. 

It is not an image of an accountant, keeping track on a ledger all the little lambs, and 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.  In today’s passages, we see a loving shepherd, not a powerful gatekeeper; a loving shepherd, not a hero that will win through force and violence.  

And here’s the thing:  the passage from John says that the good shepherd is loving and cares not only about the sheep already fenced in his secure pasture.  This good shepherd has “other sheep, not of this fold.”  And 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—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.  A good shepherd.  

Some of you may have noticed that in the Eucharistic prayer I make a slight modification to the phrase in the Prayer Book, “this is my Blood of the New Covenant which was shed for you and for many,” I often say “shed for you and for all.”  This alternate language is authorized by the Episcopal Church:  it is how the phrase shows up in Enriching our Worship.  The language here comes from the Greek of the Last Supper story in Mark’s Gospel, where Jesus says, “this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many” (Mark 14:24).   The use of Greek word polloi “many” here is the Gospel writer’s effort to represent an Aramaic word that Jesus would have used, that has the sense of “the many” without necessarily having the limitation of being only part of a whole.  The point is that Jesus died for a multitude, not for a few.   

Jesus’ death was for all of humanity, not just part of it. In Mark 10:45 (Matthew 20:28), Jesus says, “the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many.” But 1 Timothy 2:6 explains that this multitude is not just part of creation:  “Christ Jesus… gave himself as a ransom for all.”   And remember John 1:29, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin (singular!) of the world!”  So I use the word “all” here in the prayer to avoid giving you the misunderstanding that the “many” referred to here is intended to suggest that some are excluded from Jesus’ grace.  Again, he is a good shepherd, and he has other sheep who are not in this flock.   

This week, I invite us to look at how we use scripture, and what images we use of God and Jesus.  What do they tell us about us?  Are we stingy with God?  Do we think God is stingy?  Is our view one of abundance and generosity, or one of crabbed scarcity?    Do we try to break open scripture, like Jesus breaking it open for his disciples when he breaks open the bread at an inn on the road to Emmaus, even as we break open our own hearts?  

Jesus is a good shepherd.  And there are sheep put in his charge that are not in any pastures we recognize as ours.  But he’s still a good shepherd.    Not just for a few, but for all.  

Thanks be to God.