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Thursday, 04 May 2006
Easter 4 Year B
Acts 4: 5-12 NRSV text
Psalm 23 NRSV text
1John 3: 16-24 NRSV text
John 10: 11-18 NRSV text
What a gift these texts appear to be! Psalm 23 – we’ve known that since childhood. Good! That’s the children’s slot taken care of! Peter and John before the Sanhedrin, defending the healing of the crippled beggar – chance to wheel out Silver and gold have I none! And get the congregation singing and doing the actions! Then there’s the epistle – all about love and abiding and the Spirit. Very comfortable, hovering on the edge of sentimentality (it’s always good to be able to give the heartstrings a tug, isn’t it?) and finally the gospel passage itself – Jesus the Good Shepherd! And of course, if you live in this part of the world, it’s lambing time – and Cumbria is awash with fields of newly dropped lambs. Great chance to show some pictures of cute, woolly little wobblers taking their first tentative steps …
That just shows how thoroughly we’ve domesticated the gospel. Images of shepherds were hardly “cute”. Shepherds were pretty cut off from human society, spending all their time (as they did) out on the hills with the sheep. At night time, they herded them into pens and, if they were seriously committed to their task (in the manner evoked by Jesus in the first 11 verses of this chapter), they slept out on the hills, too – usually across the gate of the pen. Their job was to find water and grazing for the sheep (cf Psalm 23:2) – not an easy task in the semi-desert. Most importantly, they had to be kept safe from the predators that lurked in the rocks and caves where skittish or complacent sheep walked in “the valleys of the shadow of death”. Leading, feeding and protecting. Shepherding was not a job for the weak. It was one of the most powerful images used to describe Israel’s experience of Yahweh as protector and provider.
And Jesus, in John 10, picks up on the “frontline” aspect of shepherding: “I am the gate” (10:7) and, in our text this week, “I am the good shepherd”. Note that this follows on immediately from the verse, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly”. Jesus then moves immediately into the image of the shepherd whose “goodness” is seen in laying down his life for the sheep. Jesus is not saying, “I am the good shepherd because I am prepared to lay down my life for the sheep”. This is not about risk-taking. Jesus is the shepherd who will give abundant life to the sheep at the expense of his own life.
This is one of the Johannine “passion predictions”. If Epiphany is about revealing the meaning of the Incarnation, the Easter cycle is about discovering the meaning of the crucifixion and resurrection. As the first disciples only came to understand the meaning and significance of Good Friday after Easter Sunday, so we contemporary disciples are led by the lectionary readings into the meaning of Easter during these post-Easter weeks.
We must not forget just how shocking and meaningless the crucifixion renders all of Jesus’ ministry. We have had 2000 years of faith and preaching about the cross. We write sentimental songs and hymns about “The Old Rugged Cross”. We wear crosses around our necks as items of jewellery. And yet the cross, as Jurgen Moltmann reminds us, can never be loved. It was an instrument of torture. It was reserved for the dregs and the most dangerous – it was a political death machine. Those who died in this way were cursed and regarded as sub-human. How was it remotely possible that this would be the fate of God’s Messiah? It was unthinkable. The cross was the final verdict on Jesus: he was a messianic pretender; a blasphemer; a political agitator. He was a sham – and moreover, a deadly sham, because he had so many people fooled into thinking that what he said and did was blessed by God. And the source of his power? People’s gullibility, Jesus’ own personal charisma, and demonic possession. That was how any good Jew had to see Jesus when they looked at the cross. It was a sign that triggered revulsion.
And for those who believed in him? The cross was the nadir of all their hopes. Jesus did not deliver! All his promises proved worthless. The incredibly powerful vision of the kingdom turned out to be a pipe dream and a hallucination. And all the promises of liberation – of smashing the powers that bound human beings? Well, so much for the great “Rumble in the Jungle” (or in this case, in Jerusalem). Jesus just didn’t even feature. And at the end of the day, he wasn’t worth following – not worth putting one’s own life at risk for. What a waste of 3 years! What stupid, gullible fools they had all been! And now, how were they to live, not only with the death of Jesus but with all the unrealised hopes that he had stirred up and failed so spectacularly to deliver on? How does one live with standing on the edge of the Promised Land, seeing it laid out, and then have it all taken away? How can one ever live with what is when one has been made so utterly dissatisfied with it – and yet with no alternative? Hardly abundant life, eh?
Jesus’ point here in the gospel is that it is precisely through his own death that abundant life will come! Far from the crucifixion undermining any hope in Jesus’ promises coming to be realised, it is, ironically, the guarantee of those promises! The “abundant life” that Jesus promises was the lived experience of the post-Easter community: life in the power of the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.
“You crucified him; God raised him!” (Acts 4: 5-12)
There is a clear link between the raising of the crippled beggar to his feet and resurrection. That much is clear to the priests, the Saducees and the captain of the temple (v1). They are “highly annoyed (frothing at the mouth!)” because the apostles were teaching and proclaiming “that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead”. The Saducees, of course, are particularly incensed, because they differ theologically from the Pharisees over precisely this question. They object to the preaching of the resurrection, and haul Peter and John before them. Yet their question is not “Why are you teaching that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead”, but rather, “By what power or in what name did you do this?” It’s the same question! Peter is “filled with the Holy Spirit” (v8) – resurrection power – and declares that it is “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth”.
And here’s the point: this is Jesus, the one “whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead!” (v10). It’s the same formula that appears in Peter’s Pentecost sermon: “You crucified and killed [him] .. but God raised him up” (2: 23-4). You did one thing, but God did another! You killed him, God raised him; you declared him to be a false prophet and messianic pretender, but God declared him to be both Lord and Messiah; you declared him to be a blasphemer, but God declared him to be the Son of God; you rejected him like a stone unfit for use, but God declared him to be the most important stone in the whole edifice; you declared him to be a political agitator, but God has made him king of the universe!
This is what salvation is: it is what God does in grace, despite all we do in sin and rebellion. That is why Jesus is the name by which we are saved. There is no other because it is Jesus who died and whom God raised.
Not murder, but self-sacrifice
Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life. Laid down voluntarily and deliberately, rather than taken. This is a constant emphasis in the gospel accounts of the post-Easter appearances. It wasn’t some terrible disaster because God had it planned. It wasn’t some terrifying defeat of Jesus because Jesus chose the way of the cross.
John is at pains to tell us, throughout the passion narrative, that Jesus is in control. In his account of Jesus before Pilate, John has Pilate ask Jesus, “Don’t you know that I have the power to have you crucified or let you live?” (19:10) Jesus quite explicitly tells Pilate, “No you don’t! It’s only because God has given you that power that you do. Without it, you are absolutely powerless in this matter!” John’s crucified Jesus is not the God-abandoned, soul-shattered Jesus of Mark’s gospel, but the king who is enthroned. He is in control on the cross.
Why this particular portrayal? It has led to all sorts of difficulties and a sense that the cross “wasn’t really so bad after all”. But that’s only because we’ve missed John’s point. He is trying to hammer home what emerged after Easter Sunday: the contrast between what appears to be the case when we look at the crucified Jesus, and the truth that God is deeply, marvellously and savingly active in the very midst of this act of deepest sinfulness and self-destructiveness on the part of human beings. We are to look at the cross, then, in the light of the resurrection, if we are truly to see what it tells us about Jesus and God.
As I said last week, there is no sense in which those who crucified Jesus can plead divine planning as some sort of excuse. The “You crucified him!” is an accusation that they did it all on their own. It’s not good practice to try and read John as though he is saying the same thing as Mark, or trying to take a “the Bible says …” approach. It destroys the integrity of each evangelist’s particular “take” on Jesus, and flattens an enormously rich and varied biblical witness. But it is not doing violence to John’s theology to say that, in becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ, God abandons God’s self and Jesus to all the human processes and consequences of sin. The “powers” (in Mark’s terms) are given free reign to do their damndest (as seen in Jesus’ exchange with Pilate). God, in other words, doesn’t act to skew the outcome of Jesus’ ministry and message. That means that God neither protects Jesus, nor does God force people to act against their will.
The “divine plan” that is revealed after the resurrection is not that God “engineered” all this, but rather that the “plan” is grace! God is acting to save the world in Jesus (John 3: 17). And that means that Jesus has to be a volunteer. And whatever humans do – however bad it is – there is the “but God …” which is grace and salvation. And that “but God” is seen no more clearly than in the resurrection.
World-transforming love (1 John 3: 16-24)
Love is tough. It is the sort of love that is embodied (literally) in the shepherd who provides for the sheep and protects them with his life against wild beasts. We know love, says John, when we see it – and we see it in Jesus laying down his life for us (v16). But that means that those of us who live because of that love ought to live by it. So John goes on, “… so we ought to lay down our lives for one another!” Concretely, that means providing for their needs (v17) – just as a shepherd does for the flock. Love is made real, not in words and fluffy feelings, but in truth and action (v18).
We symbolise love by a heart. Not so, says John. That may be appropriate insofar as it seeks to convey that love is depth-language (“heart vs head”), but it won’t do as a criterion for love. Feelings and intentions are not a sure enough guide. Only love that is made incarnate – takes concrete shape in actions – will do. Feelings – heart, or conscience – can lead us wrongly. If we’re particularly sensitive, we are likely always to beating ourselves up because we’re aware of how great the needs are and just how little we seem to do in comparison with what we’d like to do. When that happens, says John, we need to take a steer and encouragement from actions. When we can see that we have shepherded others – provided for their needs at cost to ourselves – then we need not feel “condemned by our hearts” (vv 19-21).
If we’re particularly insensitive to the needs of others, we will be able to ignore the needs for food, shelter, clothing, liberation and a cup of cold water and still sleep at night, comforted by our general feeling of “universal love”. Not good enough, says John. Then we’re using the word in a completely different way from the way in which he means it, and from the content that Jesus gives it.
To be “in Jesus” and to have Jesus “in us” (abiding) means that we will be those who, having experienced God’s love in Christ, live it out in world-transforming, community-shaping actions that are the work of the same Spirit that was “abiding” in Jesus. If we follow the Good Shepherd, we will be shepherds to others and to the world.
Amen.
14:37 Posted by Posted in 1 John , Acts , John , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Email this