Fourth Sunday of Easter
FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
“… I know mine, and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” Jn. 10: 11 – 18
The United Nations issued a report recently that is stunning and scary and shameful. It reads as follows:
“More than one in three women experience sexual or physical violence in their lifetimes. One in ten females under the age of twenty is subjected to ‘forced sexual acts’. In more than thirty countries, it is not illegal for men to beat their wives. In the United States, eighty-three per cent of girls between twelve and sixteen confront sexual harassment in school.”
The report concludes with this statement: “The rate and variety of violence regularly exacted upon half of humankind is ‘alarmingly high.’”
In stark contrast to this single example of terrible viciousness, along with the worldwide accounts of such horrors as war and bombings and shootings that go on endlessly, today’s gospel presents us with the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd.
John’s gospel uses several images to help us understand who Jesus is and what kind of relationship he can enter into with each of us. For example, Jesus is presented as living water, as the light of the world, as the bread of life, as the Son of the Father, as the One who has been sent, and as the revealer of the one true God.
Today he draws another picture for us: the Good Shepherd, the shepherd who will not abandon his flock, the shepherd who will always be there to protect his flock from harm, the shepherd who “knows” his sheep so intimately that he can call each by name.
The emphasis is on gentleness and familiarity and intimate connection.
The emphasis, in other words, is on the precise opposite of what so many people throughout the world, especially women, experience in their everyday life.
But the question then becomes obvious: if he is the Good Shepherd, if his love for each of us is that intimate and that endearing, then what about all the violence that surrounds us? What about the endless wars and killing and terrible ferocity so many have to endure, especially women?
Where do we find the Good Shepherd in the world of today?
The earliest Christians clearly understood this challenge. Their answer to these questions was: we are the ones who are to make the Good Shepherd a reality by our embrace of non-violence; we are the ones who must become the grain of wheat that embeds ourselves into the soil of society and grows into a movement that insists upon the protection of the vulnerable, the proclamation of peace at all costs, the voice of protest against those who blindly want to rush into conflict, the constant challenge to always stand up for those who are weak and defenseless.
And these earliest Christians believed this because they witnessed it first-hand in Jesus himself. He showed it to them by his treatment of the poorest of all at that time, the women. He dramatized it by the way he made blind people see, and the way he made the skin of leprous people smooth, and the way he made sick people well, and hungry people full, and sinful people forgiven.
These earliest Christians believed all this because Jesus taught it to them by his words. He shared it with them in the meals he ate with them, especially the Last Meal before he died. He finally revealed it all to them by depicting God’s ultimate love and partnership with a crucified body – the total gift of himself on behalf of all.
The earliest Christians knew in their hearts that the single most important message Jesus gave them through his Easter resurrection is the understanding that the staff of the Good Shepherd was now passed on to them. They were to be the Good Shepherds to all. They were to set the example.
These earliest Christians came to believe all this because of Jesus, and because of all that they experienced through him. They came to realize that they were now different people, transformed people. All their previous fears and abandonments and denials and protests were gone. They were now people who were bold and courageous and filled with passion.
They were people who finally understood the words of the Good Shepherd: “I know mine, and mine know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father.” They were people in communion with that same God.
They now understood in a way they never did before that every single person – even the slaves, even those who were not of their faith, even women – were full children of God, and passionately loved by God.
That same shepherd staff, those same convictions, that same needed transformation is now passed on to each one of us – to you and me.
Admittedly, it’s a heavy duty. It’s a serious obligation. Because what it means is that our example, our way of treating one another will tell the world what it truly means to be a “Christian,” a follower of Jesus, a Good Shepherd.
Perhaps the Rev. Billy Graham said it best when he wrote:
We are the Bibles the world is reading;
We are the creeds the world is needing;
We are the sermons the world is heeding.
Or, the words of Martin Luther King: “I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing.”
Now it’s our turn to do that same kind of “nothing.”
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
11809194.1
4/15/2015
