May 7, 2006

Clay Nelson

Fourth Sunday of Easter     
Psalm 23     
John 10:11-18

On Palm Sunday I tried to remind us that Jesus was just a man with an enormous capacity to love in the face of the ultimate human fear, death. And if he could overcome death, so could we. But today's Gospel challenges my view of Jesus in no uncertain terms.

Now four weeks into Easter John's gospel has Jesus saying he is the “Good Shepherd.” Does that mean he is just a man who tends sheep for a living? No, not anymore than he is a loaf of bread, a grapevine, or glass of water. All images Jesus applies to himself in this Gospel.

No, this beloved image of Jesus that is frequently used at funerals and is commonly captured in lovely stained glass, even here at St Matthew's over there in the Charles Tailby window, has a much more important purpose for John.

John is echoing the 23rd Psalm. “The Lord is my Shepherd.” By the time John wrote this some 60 to 80 years after Jesus' death, Jesus has gone through a remarkable transformation in the mind of the church from an itinerant Jewish rabbi and teacher, to messianic leader in the line of David, to an adopted son of God, to the Son of God, to a Greek concept of being the incarnate Word of God, one with the Father, through whom the world was made. The Doctrine of the Trinity is still several centuries away, but the groundwork for it has already been laid. In having Jesus say “I am the Good Shepherd,” John is identifying him as God. The same God who keeps us from want, lays down with us in green pastures, and walks with us even through the valley of the shadow of death.

Not only does John say God and Jesus are all but the same, he goes further. Jesus has shown us that God will not only walk through the valley but has died for us as well.

Kiwi's are more than familiar with sheep. Even in this high tech world they are an important part of our economy valued for their wool for manufacturing and meat for food. But the beginnings of animal husbandry were not originally for food and clothing. Animals were first raised to be sacrificed to the gods, to please and appease. When John describes Jesus as the Good Shepherd, that is God, he has him go further to say the good shepherd lays down his life for the flock. By implication Jesus in his crucifixion was the lamb God sacrificed to appease God. Jesus is both the sacrifice and the one to whom it is offered. A concept that is hardly helpful to our modern minds.

For John, the early church, and up until about 200 years ago that was everyone's view. Jesus was very definitely not just a man.

That is when scientific knowledge made it challenging to understand God as a being on a throne in heaven who intervenes on occasion to deliver us from evil and give us today our daily bread. The world had matured and moved on, but our understanding of God was trapped in scripture and remained stuck in a time frame not our own. Many have decided God is no longer relevant. Even dead. And if God is no longer meaningful, neither is Jesus who was seen to be one and the same. Some have held on to Jesus just barely by appreciating only his teachings and wisdom. Still others reject and revile the modern secular culture and suspend their minds and disbelief to hang on fervently to a literal understanding of the God of the Bible and his son, the divine Jesus. They are like the Queen of Hearts who tells Alice that she believes “as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

I think Jesus the man would weep that it has come to this. 

Jesus was not exempt from his time in history. God was still a being residing in heaven, just above the stars. He was a Jew. Like most he did not believe in an afterlife. Sheol was the place of the dead, who stayed dead. To be a good Jew you had to live this life well. Jesus as a Jew believed in one God, and would never have conceived of himself as the second person of the godhead. The most he would've agreed to is that we can choose life or death in how we live. His message and example was to choose life. When we do, we reveal the nature of God that is within us and that's cool. But more importantly we spread the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom was a state of being fully human where we lived fearlessly and abundantly and loved wastefully. It was a place where sin no longer separated us and all were welcomed to the party he called the wedding feast.

Jesus might have asked John, “Why do you spend so much time trying to explain me? Is it to avoid doing as I have done?” But he might not have minded being described as the Good Shepherd, but not for the reason John did it, which would have mystified him.

Shepherds by Jesus time were not much admired. They were barely above tax collectors in the eyes of respectable folk. Shepherds were the dispossessed, the lowest rung of society. No longer owning their own land, then losing their sheep, they often ended up as the hired hands of the Rome-oriented wealthy urban dwellers -- those absentee landlords of Jesus' parables.

These hired shepherd-servants depended for their livelihood on work that required them to be out in the fields and away from their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, whom an honorable man with the means to do so would have stayed home to protect. As a result, shepherds were considered the epitome of questionable honor among men -- unreliable at best, borderline bandits at worst. In such a context, a good shepherd was a contradiction in terms. As the author of the Good Samaritan, Jesus would've appreciated the irony and smiled with amusement at his portrayal as the gentle Jesus with the lamb in our window.

But it was not always thus. When Hebrews were nomads, shepherding was a noble profession. Shepherds moved daily into the unknown trusting God that there would be manna from heaven and fresh water from stones. They looked for God in the journey. Life was hard but they moved through it. It had to be lonely under the desert stars but they found comfort in community, in keeping their flock together. They understood that they were a partnered people. Partnered with God and each other.

When cities appeared not only did the nomadic life disappear so did their trust in the journey. Transition was no longer accepted as normal, it was feared. But transitions did not go away. We are still born, reared, schooled, employed, unemployed, partnered, unpartnered, care-givers and given care, bereaved, and eventually we die. Death though is not simply the end of the life of our bodies, it is the passage of each moment of experience as it fades into the next, each day as it darkens into the next. We are always moving, always walking, in the valley of the shadow of loss.

Fear is often the defining quality of our journey. But unlike the nomadic shepherd we have not been formed in the wilderness. We rarely experience community. To trust in the midst of our fear seems naïve in this brutal world. For many of us we no longer have John's God and John's Jesus to protect us. We are left to ourselves and the black hole of anxiety in our gut that threatens to suck us into oblivion. We resist it by hanging on to anger at feeling this way or by denying its reality or by offering it sacrifices of alcohol, drugs, work, food, or relationships, But nothing appeases it or at least not for long.

Jesus the man knew the same feelings, scripture, probably with some embarrassment, even records it. Once in the Garden of Gethsemane when he sweated blood and begged to be spared his apparent fate and once on the cross when he quoted a psalm, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus the man would accept the title “Good Shepherd” only as an opportunity to show us the nomadic way and to invite us all to be good shepherds. Don't fight it, don't deny it, don't appease it, he might say, we are all in continual transition and we are all in this together. It is both the blessing and the curse of our humanity. 

Life is letting go in order to receive - one moment to the next. We can be either fearful of that journey, or trust the power behind it. If we hang on in fear, our lives close in on themselves, leading to death. If we let go in trust, our lives open up to new life. Trust God's power which is found in love, life and our very being to transform us.

Resurrection isn't about resuscitated bodies it is about transformation, he might tell us. It is about experiencing that which we call God in every moment of our lives. Entering into those moments fully, be they difficult or joyous, gives us the possibility of living life to the fullest. Doing it with love assures it.

I, a man did it, he might remind us. You don't have to believe six impossible things before breakfast to do as well. The capacity is within us because God is there. We don't have to fear the journey because God is there as well. God goes before us and I have shown the way. Let go and be on your way.