Easter 4

Readings: Acts 13:14, 43-52; Revelation 7:9, 14b-17; John 10:27-30

Jesus the Good Shepherd is a familiar image
and an apt metaphor for the one who calls and gathers us,
who guards and guides us,
who will even lay down his life to protect us;
as our Gospel today reminds us,
no one can take us out of the hands
of Jesus our shepherd.

This is all very fine,
but our second reading, from the Book of Revelation,
offers us a stranger, less easily understood,
image of shepherding.
Earlier, the seer John beholds a throne on which is seated
one of who’s appearance it is said only
that it “sparkled like jasper and carnelian”—
like precious stones.
And before this sparkling one seated on the throne
he sees a lamb standing.
Not a cute little fluffy white lamb,
whom we might imagine draped
around the shoulders of the good shepherd,
but one “standing as if it had been slaughtered,”
a sacrificial victim, blood-drenched and flesh-torn.
And this is the Lamb of whom it is said in today’s reading,
“The Lamb… will shepherd them
and lead them to springs of life-giving water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Christ our shepherd is this slaughtered Lamb.

John offers us a startling—
I’m tempted to say “psychedelic”—
set of images in which
the lamb is shepherd,
the victim is victor.
John’s Apocalypse makes clear
what we might miss
in the Gospel metaphor of the Good Shepherd:
the shepherd in whose hands we are held,
for whose voice we should listen,
is not one who triumphs over threats,
who slays the wolf and the thief,
but one whose life is sacrificed on the cross,
who wins through weakness,
who offers us life not as the avoidance of death,
but as the passage through the cross to resurrection,
who calls us to surrender our lives
into the Shepherd’s pierced hands.
The Lamb is slaughtered
yet standing,
slain
yet victorious.
Like I said, it’s all kind of psychedelic.
But what really makes it hard to understand
is that it runs counter
to everything the world tells us
about how power works,
about what victory looks like,
about what counts as winning.
John’s vision of the Lamb
suggests that the ordinary calculations of power
by which our world operates,
the ordinary standards of what counts as winning,
might not be the way that God sees things,
and perhaps should not be the way we see things either.

This past week saw the death of Jean Vanier,
the founder of the L’Arche movement,
which since the 1960s has created communities
in which the mentally disabled live together with others
who not only help them cope with the practicalities of life
but who offer them friendship and dignity.
Over the years, Vanier always stressed
that this was transformative
not only of the lives of the mentally disabled
members of his communities
but of those who lived with them as friends and helpers.
Vanier said that living with the mentally disabled
forced him to rethink what we mean by “ability”
and to reassess who is the giver
and who is the receiver in those relationships.
He wrote, “To be human is to be bonded together,
each with our weaknesses and strengths,
because we need each other.
Weakness, recognized, accepted, and offered,
is at the heart of belonging.”

Jean Vanier was always clear that his work
grew out of his Catholic faith,
out of his belief that in Christ the Lamb
God has redefined what counts as a life worth living,
God has redefined the possibilities of human community,
God has redefined victory.
Vanier wrote in a commentary on John’s Gospel,
“In front of the power and armies of Caesar,
in front of their mighty weapons,
stands a lamb, the lamb of God.
What can this lamb do?
The lamb will break down walls of fear, of aggression,
of violence, of sin
which imprison people in themselves
and incite them to seek their own glory.
He will liberate in each person a new life of communion with God,
with other people and with what is deepest in the self,
sowing seeds for universal peace.”

Jean Vanier was one of those who,
as the Revelation of John puts it,
“have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
He was one who learned from the Lamb,
slaughtered and yet standing,
that it is not the powerful or the capable
but the weak and the vulnerable,
who will lead us to the waters of life
by revealing to us
our own weakness and vulnerability.

What does it mean to be a Christian?
Jean Vanier and John the visionary suggest to us
that it means letting yourself be shepherded by the Lamb.
It means placing yourself in the pierced hands of Jesus,
trusting them to shelter you from the great tribulation.
It means living by a new standard of what counts as victory.
It means learning from the Lamb
how to let yourself be wounded,
even slain, for love
and yet still stand,
bearing witness
to the God who chose what is foolish in the world
to shame the wise,
the God who chose what is weak in the world
to shame the strong,
the God who is revealed to us
in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

Easter 4

Readings: Acts 13:14, 43-52; Revelation 7:9, 14b-17; John 10:27-30

Today’s reading from John’s Gospel

is an echo of Jesus’ longer discourse in that Gospel

about himself as the good shepherd

who lays down his life for his sheep.

Taking up this image, Jesus says

“My sheep hear my voice;

I know them, and they follow me.”

Some scholars argue that the image Jesus is using here

reflects the custom in the ancient near east

of the members of a village

keeping their sheep in a common pen at night;

when morning comes

and it is time for the shepherd to take his sheep

out of the pen to pasture

he would call them with a distinctive cry

and they would separate themselves

from the other sheep and follow him.

A pretty neat trick, if you ask me.

I can’t even get my dog to come when I call.

In John’s Gospel Jesus uses this image

to indicate how those who are members of his flock

will recognize his call and follow him,

separating themselves from those who do not recognize his call.

It is an image shaped both the concrete situation

in which John’s Gospel was written –

a situation of conflict between the Church,

the synagogue,

and pagan culture –

as well as the perennial call of Christians

to live in a manner that distinguishes them

from the culture and values of the world around them.

Thinking about our own vocation

to hear the voice of Christ and to follow him,

we might interpret this passage as a call

to separate ourselves from a world

that seems in many ways hostile to the Christian faith,

and, in particular, to the Catholic Church.

As we watch the Church and her leaders

pilloried in the press on an almost daily basis

over the scandal of sexual abuse by the clergy

and the cover up of that abuse by Church leaders,

some have suggested that this experience is showing us

that the secular world is out to get the Church

and that now is the time to circle the wagons,

pull up the draw bridge,

batten down the hatches,

leave the common sheepfold

and follow Jesus our shepherd to some place

where we can be free from these attacks.

Let me say that I think it would be a mistake

to take such a lesson from today’s Gospel.

 

My reason for thinking it is a mistake

is not because I think that there are no people in our world

who are anxious to use the current scandals as an occasion

to settle long-standing grudges with the Catholic Church.

I think some – though probably a minority –

of the current critics of the Church fall into this category.

As the ancient proverb says,

“When you want to beat a dog, any stick will do,”

and in this case the stick is the misdeeds of Catholic clergy.

Nor do I think it is a mistake

because I think that Christians should in no sense

seek to distinguish themselves from the world around them

and its culture and values.

Rather, I think it is a mistake

because Christians should be distinguished

not by their withdrawal from the world into a sheltered enclave

but by the way in which they live in the midst of the world.

Our way of living as those who follow Christ the shepherd

should not be one in which we flee our critics

into the safe haven of self-congratulation or self-pity,

but rather should be a life

of fearless self-scrutiny and on-going conversion.

What should distinguish us from the world

is our ability to hear the truth about ourselves,

no matter who speaks it,

and to repent and reform when needed.

The Christian calling involves

hearing the voice of the shepherd

even in the voices of those who would criticize the Church,

and to follow the shepherd into the new life that is promised

to those who let the blood of the lamb wash away their sins.

In the image from the book of Revelation

of the lamb who is our shepherd,

we see that following the call of Christ

is not a fleeing of the world to a place of invulnerability

but precisely our willingness

to let ourselves be wounded as he was

so that he might heal us.

And we are able to face the truth about ourselves,

to let the truth wound us.

because we believe the promise of Christ:

“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.

No one can take them out of my hand.”

The recognition of painful truth about ourselves

is the path to resurrection.

Some criticism is unfair and uninformed;

some is even malicious.

But the distinguishing mark of Christians –

both as individuals and as a community –

is not to flee from criticism to some imagined place of safety,

but our willingness to listen for the voice of our shepherd

even in the words of our critics.

Because our willingness to hear

uncomfortable truths about ourselves

grows from our faith

that no one can take us out of God’s hands.

If we are following the voice of the shepherd,

we have nothing to fear from the truth,

no matter who may be speaking it.