Sunday, April 22, 2018

4^th Sunday of Easter

The Revised Common Lectionary passages for the Lord’s Day are:

First Reading: Acts 4:5-12, Psalm 23:1-6
Second Reading: I John 3:16-24
Gospel Reading: John 10:11-18

The liturgical color for the day is: White

The 4th Sunday of Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday.  In all 3 years of the lectionary cycle the Gospel passage come from John 10—the Good Shepherd chapter.

Here is this wonderful passage where Jesus announces, “I am the good shepherd.”  And we have lost touch with shepherds and sheep so what comes to mind is one of those nice pastoral scenes.  It is the kind of picture that you used to find in Sunday School classrooms where Jesus is there holding a little lamb in his arms and there are other lambs gathered around him.  Peaceful, serene, calm, restful…

Hardly.  Sheep are unruly.  Sheep are difficult.  Sheep go this way and that way.  Sheep have a mind of their own.  They will wander off.  They will lose sight of the rest of the sheep and do their own thing.  They are anything but tidy and organized and together.

Here is what sheep do.  Sheep count on the shepherd.  This is where the whole sheep/shepherd metaphor comes together.  See, what is different about sheep from other animals is the movement.  Other animals you push along and prod—you herd them.  Not sheep.  Sheep are led.

Sheep are oriented in a different way. You lead sheep.  The shepherd leads them.  The shepherd goes before the sheep.  The shepherd does not come from behind pushing them along.  Not with sheep.  No, the shepherd goes before the sheep calling back to the sheep to come after him.  And the sheep follow.

So, when Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd,” the dynamic is that Jesus goes before us.  He takes the lead.  And he does all those things that a shepherd does for the sheep.

A shepherd cares for the sheep, a shepherd feeds the sheep, a shepherd keeps the sheep safe, and a shepherd leads the sheep.  Those tasks—cares, feeds, leads—that is what a shepherd does.

Notice here in John 10 that Jesus adds to that list of what a shepherd does.  Jesus says that there is something that other shepherds, the hired hands, do not do.  Jesus says that the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

We are supposed to hear in these incredible words of Jesus the cross and the empty tomb.  When Jesus says that the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep and that he will take it up again—oh, you had bet we are supposed to be translating that into crucifixion and resurrection.

—
Daris Bultena
General Presbyter