Fourth Sunday of Easter

Acts 4.5-2
Psalm 23
1 John 3.16-24
John 10.11-18

Psalm 23 has been a source of inspiration and comfort for centuries. The image of the shepherd in connection with spiritual leadership is an enduring one in the sacred writings of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It appears in various parts of both the New and Old Testaments. It is an interesting coincidence that the lectionary offers us Psalm 23 and its words of assurance of God’s presence and providence as we contemplate the potential effects of an influenza pandemic and the ongoing world economic crisis.
The true historic context in which the Psalms were created is impossible to determine with any certainty, but it has been speculated that at least some of them were composed in exile. It is not difficult to imagine a poet giving voice to a desire for hope and consolation in a time of helplessness, alienation, sorrow and fear. It has been suggested that those who created John’s gospel and the three epistles of John in the New Testament also found themselves in a situation of helplessness, alienation, sorrow and fear. The image of the shepherd who offers his life for the sheep was a familiar one to the first century followers of Jesus who knew the Old Testament and it is not surprising that they wove it into their stories about him.
The passage from John’s gospel about Jesus as the good shepherd and the words of comfort offered by Psalm 23 have been taken by some as a motivation to put their troubles “in God’s hands.” I’ve never actually asked anyone who has said those words to me what he really meant by them. My sense is that one who speaks those words frequently imagines that human beings can figuratively hand over their problems to the divine with the expectation that God will sort them out and return the results promptly. Traditional teachings of the church emphasize our powerlessness to make ourselves righteous; they are filled with a strong sense of human sinfulness and the incompleteness of our nature. Such an outlook, coupled with images of God as generous and loving father have motivated some faithful people to take an outlook of moral passivity and assume that God can and will fix their lives for them. I would never say that humanity is free of sin or fully realized. But despite our imperfection, God has blessed us with the gifts of memory, reason and skill. Humanity can and has been characterized theologically as a created co-creator, doing the work that God has given us to do.
The genius of the leaders of the first century church was in transforming peoples’ perceptions of Jesus’ death. The idea of a crucified messiah was, as Paul puts it, a stumbling block for the Jews and a joke for the gentiles. Anyone who might have become a follower of Jesus was going to have to find a way to get his mind around it. The leaders of the early church made that possible by helping their contemporaries understand Jesus’ death as a noble offering of himself in support of a new way of understanding the world and as a sacrifice that renewed the relationship between humanity and God. That is the teaching that has come down to us. The leaders of the early church used the image of the shepherd – already familiar from the Psalms and the prophets to help people make sense of what they were teaching.
The descriptions we have of those early Christian communities suggest that they used Jesus’ teachings to change the way people interacted with each other. Within the community they broke down barriers that existed outside of it. Paul refers in his letters to the prohibition of eating meat sacrificed to idols. He’s talking about the ritual meals that followed the sacrifice of animals in pagan temples. The ritual of sacrifice and the distribution of meat from the animal that was killed followed a prescribed pattern that reminded participants of the social and economic pecking order in which they had a role. The rich and powerful received the most and the best along with the power to give the prescribed portion to those whose loyalty and service maintained their wealth and power. The ritual meal of Jesus’ followers was very different. At that meal the sacrifice was rememorative – it made a present reality Jesus’ redeeming death which had made new his followers’ relationship with God. The participants gathered as equals, beloved of God and shared equally the food which was distributed. That is how we come together each week.
We share equally also in the responsibility for coming to this table for strength as well as solace and for renewal as well as pardon. We may know Christ as the good shepherd whose presence strengthens and inspires, but we also know him as the one who sends us forth into the world to be shepherds ourselves as it were, to live as a people who know what it means to gather around this table.
I can’t tell you exactly how you might do that. In general I can tell you that we are called to be a people who live in hope rather than fear. In a time of anxiety as we are experiencing now, we can be realistic and intentional about taking the kinds of precautions that promote health and prevent the spread of disease. We can offer that sense of realistic precaution to those around us who tend to let their fears overcome their reason. We can also offer our time and resources as we are able to those who are in trouble – we can be the body of Christ – eyes that observe need and suffering, hands and voices that take action and inspire others to generosity. We can do all of these things with a sense of God’s presence and power – not as the one who fixes our lives for us but who empowers us to lead and offer support to others who are struggling with helplessness, alienation, fear and sorrow.
We are a people who know ourselves to be always, as the Psalmist says, in the presence of God’s goodness and mercy. As you go forth from this place, the house of the Lord, take goodness and mercy with you and offer them to the world.