Easter is for other sheep (Sermon from April 25, 2021)

 Reading: John 10:11-18  

The Gospel of John was the last of the Gospels to be written – around 90 to 100 of the Christian Era, showing the fruit of decades of reflection about Jesus.  One feature of the Gospel is seven “I am” statements in which Jesus says he is the bread of life; the light of the world; the door; the good shepherd; the resurrection and the life; the way, the truth and the life; and the true vine. 

The “good shepherd” saying in John 10 is actually a number of sayings about Jesus as shepherd, that the gospel writer has gathered together – kind of like a shepherd gathers sheep.

The first hearers and readers of these sayings were familiar with shepherds, and would have known their share of reliable and unreliable ones.  They counted good shepherding of the people as one of the marks of a good king or other leader.  They knew also that God aspired to be their shepherd, with all that it entailed and demanded. 

I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep.  She when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the flock and runs away.  Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it.  The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cared nothing for the sheep.

I am the good shepherd: I know my sheep and my sheep know me – just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep.  I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also.  They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.  The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.  This command I received from my Father.

Meditation  

Some people just don’t retire.  Ever.

Not because they need the money and need to keep working.  But because they love what they are working for so deeply, and it’s so much of who they are and want to be, that they can’t imagine ever stopping.  They would die and just not be themselves anymore if they did.

 

When David Suzuki – the noted environmentalist, turned 80, he was asked why he was still speaking, writing, documenting and advocating.  By that age and with all he had already done, surely, he had earned the right to retire, relax and just enjoy himself.  His answer was that he was enjoying himself – and enjoying being himself as fully as he could.

What began years earlier as an interest in the natural life of Earth became a job.  The job grew into a career.  The career, a commitment.  And the commitment – to help celebrate and nurture good life on Earth, and to highlight threats and risks to it – had long since become a passion and a reason for being.  On the one hand, life-consuming; on the other hand, life-giving, life-enriching and life-deepening. 

And how do you walk away from that?  Especially when now, because you can do it for free if need be, you can do it more freely than ever before?

So just when you think you’ll start seeing less of someone, and hearing less of their message, they keep coming back and keep preaching what’s dear to their heart.  And not just repeating themselves like an old rock band on a reunion tour, but doing what they love and speaking the truth they know in new ways and more widely and unconditionally than before.

I wonder if this is one of the things Jesus is saying about himself in the good shepherd “I am” sayings in the Gospel of John. 

“I am the good shepherd,” he says.  “I know my sheep and my sheep know me … and I lay down my life for the sheep.” 

In three years of activity in and around Galilee, like a good king – even though he had no throne, and like the God he embodied – even though this is called blasphemy, Jesus came to know and love the people around him, served them and saved them, gathered them into a new and gracious community of God’s love for all, and in the end laid down his life for them.

Surely, that’s enough, we might think.  As Jesus says on the cross, “It is finished.”  As he cries out to God in the song “Gethesmane” in Jesus Christ Superstar,

Listen, surely I've exceeded expectations,

Tried for three years, seems like thirty.

Could you ask as much from any other man?

Time now to be able to retire.  Whether it be to the realm of the dead to await the final resurrection of the just, or directly to heaven to return to the holy, who would deny Jesus his golden handshake and his commemorative plaque of appreciation? 

Except Jesus himself. 

“I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen,” he says.  He has in mind more than just the gaggle of Galileans he’s managed to gather.  “And I must bring them also.  They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”  

Beyond those already gathered, are others he also loves with all his heart and who are waiting as much as the Galileans were to hear his voice.  And not to be with them, not to speak to them where they are, and not to bring them along on the journey of new life would be a greater death and a more real end to him as good shepherd than the cross of Calvary ever was.

So, he comes back.  He is raised from the dead – actually decides to be raised, he says, to pick up where he left off, and continue what gives him life – what is his life.  To be bringing more and more of God’s sheep into gracious community, and to do it more widely, more freely, and more unconditionally than he was able to before.

Peter Woods, a minister of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, makes the provocative comment that in this Jesus reminds him of a Buddhist Boddhisattva.   

A Boddhisattva is one who spends his life cultivating supreme moral and spiritual perfection in order to be of service to others, and does not rest from the task until all beings are enlightened.  In other words, in the Buddhist frame of reference, a Boddhisattva keeps re-incarnating until they have helped every other being attain Nirvana ahead of them.

“Kind of like a shepherd,” Woods writes, “who won’t go home to rest until he knows all the flock have entered into their rest.  A shepherd, who even when he is dead tired or just plain dead, gets up and continues seeking and calling until all the sheep are home.”

This can be hard on the followers of the shepherd.  After all, we are only sheep and hired hands at best.  We don’t see the big picture the way the shepherd does; we don’t feel the same relation to all the other sheep that he does.  We get kind of attached to our own little flock and the sheep fold we’re gathered safely into.  And we might think our being safely gathered in, is a happy enough ending to the story.

But the shepherd has other ideas, and isn’t finished yet.  In the context of The Gospel of John, the next step the risen Jesus is taking is to reach out to the Gentiles to bring them in and establish open and welcoming community with them as well. 

It’s upsetting at first to the Galilean and other Jewish followers of Jesus.  Peter especially has a hard time accepting Gentiles as equal brothers and sisters in Christ.  But that’s the mission the risen Jesus reveals to Paul, and of course it prevails because it’s what the risen Jesus is doing.  What’s first experienced as an upsetting infusion of new ideas, experiences, customs and assumptions in a very short time becomes the new lifeblood, energy and creativity of the community.  The sheepfold is only enriched as it expands to include sheep previously left out.

And isn’t this part of our history as church and community of faith?  Step by step, the risen Jesus keeps reaching out to other sheep and calling to those inside to open up to those still outside. 

It’s often a bit of a struggle – but as men and women, black and white, European settlers and First Nations peoples, straight and the LGBTQ communities, traditional Christians and seekers of other faith traditions, and even just individual brothers and sisters at odds with one another, come together in openness to how each hears the voice of the Shepherd, step by step the community of God’s people in the world is only strengthened and enriched.

“I am the good shepherd,” Jesus says, “and I’m not about to retire.  I live and I die and I live again for the sake of going out to all the sheep, and gathering in those still left out to bring them all into one flock.  To ever stop doing this would be a greater death and a more real end to my being who I am, than any cross and tomb I might suffer along the way.”

That’s who our shepherd is.  That’s why he is good.

And as sheep and hired hands of his flock already gathered in, I imagine we have some part to play in this.   

I wonder what it is.