Ruth Lewis
May 8, 2022: Good Shepherd Sunday, Fourth Sunday of Easter, Mother’s Day
St. Alban’s
Acts 9: 36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7: 9-17
John 10:22-30
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
Today’s Gospel passage does not lay itself open to a casual glance. It requires us to read between the lines, and it presents us with a mystery head on. So while the passage itself is short, the voyages of discovery it sends us out to explore have seemed to me endless. I shall try not to let us get lost in the explorations.
The Gospel passage opens with a mise en scene, a placement in time and space. Oddly, its significance to the story would have been more visible to us had the passage used more Hebrew. At that time the festival of the dedication took place in Jerusalem. Dedication in Hebrew is Hanukkah, a word we recognize, and many of us know that the dedication celebrated was of the temple, won back from Alexandrian Greek occupiers by force of arms nearly two hundred years before the time of our story, and woven by the festival into the lived history of the Jewish people. Naturally the people looked for another leader like Judas Maccabeus to arise and free them from the Roman occupiers, and this was the way they imagined the Messiah.
Jesus, a son of David, was walking “in the portico of Solomon,” another son of David. There was an expectation, supported by Isaiah’s prophecies, that the Messiah would be a son of David. The question was both natural and inevitable, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”
I didn’t pick up the importance of these details on first reading. This is not, however, John the Evangelist being coy or difficult. His hearers in his day would have understood immediately. Words depend for their “plain sense” on shared experience. The hearer’s mind must have already in it an accurate, or at least a corresponding, idea of the speaker’s intended meaning for there to be any such thing as telling “plainly.”
Jesus in this situation was well aware that the word Messiah did not mean to him what it meant to them, so “tell us plainly” asked for an impossibility. In addition, he was aware that there were in that crowd members or informers of a group he called a den of thieves: temple functionaries, cosy with the Roman occupiers, profiteers of their monopoly control of the temple, which in turn monopolized a Jew’s ritual access to God. These folks would love to bring Jesus before the Roman authorities under a charge of sedition. To declare “plainly”, I am the Messiah would be enough to bring down the death penalty. The Romans had, or had been fed, the same military mental image of the Messiah that Jewish zealots had, though as the enemy, not the savior.
So Jesus gives the plainest answer that circumstances allow. ”I have told you and you do not believe. [He came unto his own, and his own received him not.] The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep.” The works Jesus does in his Father’s name, the works the Father does by Jesus’ agency, include the works enumerated in the twenty-third psalm. Christians read,” The Lord is my shepherd, therefor I lack nothing,” as Jesus looks after me. When it was written The Lord referred to God [the Father]. This kind of easy, largely unconscious substitution illustrates some of what is meant by, ”The Father and I are one.” But we have more to look at before we tackle that mystery.
My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. Jesus’ immediate hearers in Solomon’s portico that day are not his sheep, cannot be expected either to hear his voice or to follow him. They follow earthly power, so are more wolves than sheep.
Indeed, it can be difficult to want to be a sheep. “Sheeple” is a bad name, a stinging rebuke. Even so, let’s look at it this way: the images of religion or theology are full of paradoxes. Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive honor and glory and power. . . In our world of imagery, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the lamb becomes the shepherd becomes the king. David was a shepherd king, credited with military successes, but also credited with having written the psalms. And if the step from shepherd to king looks easy, consider that the Egyptians settled Joseph’s family in Goshen, so that they would not have to share a neighborhood with shepherds, “because all shepherds are abhorrent to the Egyptians.”
Remember that Jesus asked Peter as insistently and emphatically as possible, if he loved him, to feed his lambs, tend his sheep. In our reading from Acts this morning, we find him doing just that, most emphatically. It seems to me that any who are content to be sheeple and remain as sheeple are not following the Christian way, not making progress in it, any more than are those who refuse to be sheep at all. Jesus’ sheep follow Jesus. Sheeple follow the crowd.
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. [But to those who receive him, he gives the power to become the children of God.] John’s Gospel is the most cosmic, the most mystical of the four canonical gospels. The Revelation from which we also read this morning was authored by another John, and member of the “school of John.” These authors were up against the formidable obstacle of having to find words to convey matters that can be seen only through a glass, darkly, or in a mirror, dimly. They did not shrink from the challenge. That challenges us to try to match their words to something in our minds, hearts, sensory experience or intuition, preferably all of these together.
They will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. Jesus is putting his immediate hearers on notice, despite their failure or refusal to hear, that his power is greater than their power, and is not threatened by the prospect of death. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. Note that “my” Father has become “the” Father. Our Father in heaven. Having warmed to his subject, Jesus casts caution to the winds and tells them plainly, “The Father and I are one.”
How are we to understand such sweeping claims? Only by allowing ourselves to consider a dimension of eternity. Teilhard de Chardin hs been quoted as saying, “You are not a human being having a spiritual experience, but a spiritual being having a human experience.” I have to admit that this brought me up short. It is not my habitual way of regarding my existence. Human experience tends to claim the lion’s share of our attention. Still, if we enter this world of time from eternity and return to eternity when we leave this world of time, then it makes sense for Jesus to say, “What my Father has given me is greater than all else.” Not to mention that there will be no snatching of our lives out of God’s hand.
You may have heard it said of some people that they are “so heavenly-minded that they are no earthly good.” I would like to suggest that true heavenly-mindedness does not have that effect. Those who experience, personally or vicariously, brushes with eternity in real life are, as a result, more effective bringers of good on earth, and Jesus of Nazareth is my principal instance. If or when we are thorough Christians, we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, which is not exactly resuscitation nor is it ghostly manifestation. It is a mystery, but it is a heavenly and an approachable mystery. We need to have some willingness to contemplate eternity and ourselves in eternity, to take in the full benefit, in this life, of the promise of our shared faith.
Recognizing Jesus in eternity, outside and beyond time, makes it easier for me to contemplate—if not exactly to understand, how Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of the ages. Recognizing all of creation, you and me included as also somehow residing in eternity, helps me to see that we too have works to do in the Father’s name, and as little as we may resemble Jesus, there is no unfairness in asking us to do the works God has prepared for us to do.
I would like to propose one other way, besides unity of actions, in which Jesus and the Father are one, namely in the experience in which a person is suffused by the presence and love of God. This is the experience I especially have in mind when mentioning a brush with eternity, and it seems to me inevitable that Jesus had such encounters more often than is humanly to be expected. He assimilated them into his life on earth to a unique extent, enough to justify calling him God’s only son. Paradoxically, God’s only son is actively expanding the ranks of his brothers and sisters. [To those who received him, he gave power. . .]
There is a recent book that collects what are now called “near death experiences” and explores their validity, commonalities and consequences in subsequent life. The book, by Bruce Greyson, M.D., is called After. It includes some striking descriptions of what it is like to feel oneself in God and with God in you. I will quote excerpts from the one that represents it best for me. This is from the account of Tracy, a twenty-seven-year-old agnostic.
I felt completely surrounded and taken up in an indescribably warm and loving Omnipresence of Light. The serenity and unconditional love emanating from it through me is beyond verbal description. Direct, unimpeded transference of thought, more like a shared knowingness, was washing through every cell of my being. IT was me and IT was not me. I was IT and I was not IT. I was in IT, of IT, yet still simultaneously my own individual beingness. I knew myself to be preciously priceless to this Presence of Light and Sound, as if I was an atom of IT. . . .
I did not see this Presence of Light and Sound so much as I simply, totally knew and loved IT. There was no space, no time, no separation, no duality of anything. . . .
There is more to this passage, but even this much may serve to convey that if Jesus had a similar experience and identified what Tracy the agnostic called IT as the Father, then it would make plain sense for him to say, “The Father and I are one.”
Concerning the book, After, it is also worth noting here that the culminating argument made by Dr. Greyson for taking seriously the narratives he has collected is one based on changed lives. Changed lives, as began with the Apostles and is shown in the book of Acts is the one empirical argument available to us Christians when we would like to testify to Jesus’ resurrection. Dr. Greyson reports of “experiencers” that they change their attitudes first of all toward death, which they no longer fear, nor do they seek it via suicide. As a corollary, they are more courageous in life. They find themselves to be part of a larger whole, and more concerned with and compassionate toward others. They find their lives to have meaning and value beyond what their previous attitude may have shown, and they have diminished interest in material things and status. This does not always lead to peace in the family.
Blessed, as Jesus said to Thomas, are those who have not seen and have yet believed. You and I have not shared Thomas’ encounter with the risen Christ. Some of us have experienced and can remember the all-pervading presence and love of God, but likely not a majority of us. Everyone is invited, not just “those who have seen.” Poets and prophets have caught and communicated hints of eternity. We all have, for the asking, the help of the Holy Spirit, God within, to recognize that which is of God, that which makes for the life of eternity.
On this Mothers’ Day, let me acknowledge that I owe to my mother my love of poetry, and in particular poetry that points to eternity. A favorite of hers, almost her manifesto, which she creatively misquoted with fervor, is Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life. I will give you the portion and the version I learned from her.
Tell me not in mournful numbers
Life is but an empty dream,
For he is not dead who slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real, life is earnest
And the grave is not our goal.
Dust thou art, to dust returnest
Was not spoken of the soul.While not perfectly accurate, the original spirit comes through. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. The Spirit coaches us to trust Jesus to communicate the Father’s love and wisdom and strength. Accordingly, and because my special devotion is to the Trinity, I would like to conclude with a version of a ritual pronouncement that concluded nearly every sermon of my childhood, but has fallen into disuse, hoping that with what we have said and heard here today it will not consist of empty phrases:
Now, unto God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, we ascribe as is most justly due, all might, majesty, dominion and praise, in this life and the life to come. Amen
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