15 May 2011

“Warm, cuddly love … sometimes”
4 Easter A
John 10:1-10 / Acts 2:44-47 / 1 Peter 2:19-25
15 May 2011

”Jesus used these figures of speech with them ... but they did not understand what he was saying.”

Forget they … we may not understand what Jesus is saying … with all these “figures” before us in today’s Gospel reading:
• Sheepfold
• Gate
• Thief and bandit
• Gatekeeper
• Shepherd
• Sheep

Yes, it’s once again the fourth Sunday in Easter … annually known as “Good Shepherd” Sunday … much beloved by worshippers but received with, well, less than enthusiasm by most preachers I know.
What can one possibly say new and different about sheep, for the seventeenth time in a row, anyway?
But this year’s offering of Gospel text provides us with more than the usual warm fuzziness … while also bringing some treacherous footing for both preacher and hearers.
Jesus is painting a multi-layered, many faceted word picture in these ten short verses of John’s gospel. For concrete thinkers … Biblical literalists … these verses can be nightmarish.

Jesus is a shepherd.
No, no, he’s the gate.
So then, who’s the shepherd? Is Jesus the gatekeeper?
Who are those thieves and bandits?
And what about the sheep?
Baaaaaaa!

Jesus’ words to his disciples here in chapter 10 come right after chapter 9’s drama surrounding the man born blind … if you were in worship on the fourth Sunday in Lent, you heard this story … if not, I recommend chapter 9 to you for reading, a salvation play of several short acts, all contained in one chapter of John’s gospel.
Jesus heals a blind man, and as that man grows in faith, “seeing Jesus” clearer and clearer … those around him … the religious leaders of the day, the crowds, even the man’s parents … they grow increasingly “blind” to God’s truth, God’s reality of goodness, mercy and grace in Jesus, even as he’s standing right before them.
And so, as we continue over into chapter 10, and try to understand the “figures” in which Jesus is speaking … well, if we’ve been paying attention in chapter 9, the answer to one of our questions, “who are those thieves and bandits,” well, Jesus makes this perfectly clear for us.
The thieves and bandits, they are those who, when it comes to matters of faith, stubbornly cling to their own wrong-headed ways … those who feel they must mold and shape God over into their own image of what God is to be like … those who refuse to hear the call of God’s Spirit, through Jesus, to surrender, to lay down their own sin and selfishness … those who must micromanage and control every aspect of faith, God, church, belief, so that it all goes their way, filling their wants, their needs, their desires, their always having to be in the spotlight, in charge, number one, getting their way …
Those are the thieves and bandits, Jesus says. The ones who end up with their pants ripped on the fence, ripped and torn from climbing over, trying to get in, trying to get to the sheep in the wrong way.
Thieves and bandits. Robbers of the pure, sweet word of the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone, robbing that word from those who would faithfully hear and follow it.
Thieves and bandits.
They will always be in your midst, Jesus says. So pay attention, be on guard, and don’t be afraid to call them as you see them … keep them in their place … keep them from harming the flock.
Keep them from harming the flock. In that story of the man born blind, the religious leaders tried to put a stranglehold on religious faith. The blind man, now healed of his blindness a chapter earlier … his own parents refused to believe him for fear that, if they did, they might be put out of the synagogue. They had Jesus right there before them … and yet, they were blind to the light and truth of God … even as their son, now healed, now under attack by those “thieves and bandits” … even as he, disowned by his parents … he saw clearly.
Jesus saw that his flock … his flock of poor, defenseless sheep-people – they were at risk of being carried off by the thieves and bandits – those who wanted to remove them from the place of faith and hope, peace and new life … and so he started to “speak in figures” to his disciples about this threat .
Through those figures, Jesus puts himself in a few different places in this story.
Yes, he is the shepherd of the sheep – that warm, fuzzy, familiar image we hold dear on Good Shepherd Sunday, as we hear and read and sing the words of the beloved 23rd Psalm, “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.”
But Jesus also says he is the gate for the sheep.
And a gate … a gate means that there is a fence, too.
Now maybe we don’t like fences. Maybe to us, fences feel un-Christian … fencing off people from people. Fences … such as … you’re saved and you’re not; you’re going to hell, I’m going to heaven; you can come to the table of the Lord, but you can’t ... you can be a pastor in this church, but you can't.
Ah … but this fence … this gate … this is Jesus … not us … nor our human sin getting in the way of relationship between Jesus and us …
… and just as important … please note that the whole point of the fence, the sheepfold, the gate, the shepherd … this is all about the sheep being led out, to follow the shepherd.
The gate … Jesus … is the way the sheep are led out.
So much for warm cuddly fuzziness.
The whole point of having a shepherd, having a gate, having a sheepfold, being sheep … Jesus says … is not that they … we … get to stay in some soft, cushy, protected, “safe” place of comfort … no, but that we are led out by the voice of our shepherd … the voice of God, in Jesus Christ … leads out into the world.
“The sheep follow him because they know his voice.”
And so … just as Jesus placed himself in multiple places in this story … the shepherd, the gate … so there are multiple places for us as well … we who hear Jesus’ call to follow him.
Sometimes … yes … we are the sheep.
And sometimes … we are the gatekeeper.
The gatekeeper … the one who keeps the thieves and bandits from slipping in among the sheep, as they, we, follow Jesus out into the pasture of the world, to work, to proclaim, to serve.
Being a gatekeeper is an important job.
We have seen, and heard, and experienced what happens, when we let thieves and bandits in, to run with the sheep, to take over the flock, and proclaim their hate-filled message of fear and death … falsely stating that they are speaking for the Good Shepherd … when what they really are, are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The Good Shepherd needs good gatekeepers, too.
But how are we supposed to know when to open and close the gate? How do we know what’s “gate-worthy” behavior?
There’s where our two other New Testament readings come in.
There’s our reading from 1st Peter … words that are difficult … for they speak of the place of suffering in walking the way of Jesus.
“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”
The Way of the Cross … the way of denying ourselves and living for others … it is not popular … indeed, thieves and bandits will do everything in their power to badmouth self-denial, giving and living to and for others, putting them first without regard for our own reward or place.
And yet … the Way of the Cross is most certainly “gateworthy” behavior for us. When we see it … when we encounter in, through the humble words and actions of those who have heard their Shepherd’s voice, his call to follow him … we can open the gates, open the gates of our hearts, open our arms in love and care for our neighbor, open our hands in loving service for the sake of those who most especially need us to live out the love and abundant life of the Good Shepherd, so they may have it in their hearts as well.
Then there’s our reading from Acts.
These words have taken substantial heat lately because, as some have said, “the liberals are using these words to try to prove to us that Jesus wants us all to be socialists.”
It sure does sound that way.
“All who believed … had all things in common … they would sell their possessions and good and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
But let’s cut to the chase here. Acts is not an instruction manual laying out actions for government programs … nor is the author recommending societal laws, to be mandated and enforced by executive fiat … no, what’s being described here is, the organic behavior of Spirit-led believers … in these verses coming immediately after the Pentecost story, God’s Spirit, having come upon these new Christians … that Spirit, God’s Spirit, is guiding them to give and share, voluntarily, willingly… as the Holy Spirit would lead and guide us, too.
These are verses pointing toward an idyllic community … “on earth as it is in heaven” … where believers live and share in the love and light and truth of God’s Spirit, filled with the love of Jesus, filled to overflowing; filled, to give and share.
Was the church really, ever, this way? If it was, how long did life remain like this, because it’s surely not like this now …
That’s true … but our sin and selfishness today need not make us throw these verses out as “pie in the sky” perfection which we’ll never be able to achieve. They remain as a description of “gateworthy” behavior for us … helping us who follow Jesus be good gatekeepers for his flock … when we see and hear that Word of God in action, faith lived out among people, spoken of, commended … we can open the gates, most surely, and let that Word of abundant life come into our faith communities, and into our hearts.
Don’t let the figures of speech throw you. All you need to know, all you need to hear, all you need to see … is the love of Jesus, lived out, acted out, spoken of, around you. And when you do … open wide the gates of your own heart, to welcome in the Good Shepherd of your soul … and be made ready to share him with others.
Amen.