The Rights and Wrongs of Tending Sheep (Reflections on Easter 4, Year C 2023)

Photo by Robert Garstka RIK

“I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” (John 10:9)

The Fourth Sunday after Easter in Lectionary Year C gets called the “Good Shepherd Sunday,” which strikes me as rather odd since the compilers of the RCL in their wisdom (and who am I to question it?) have stopped the Gospel reading (John 10:1-10) at verse 10 and not included verse 11 in which Jesus says “I am the Good Shepherd.” What were those guys thinking?

This sheep and shepherd stuff must’ve made lots of sense to folks in the time of John’s Gospel, but I have to confess to having limited experience in the world of ovine husbandry. I therefore did a little bit of research and discovered that some 300 years before the time of Jesus, the great Greek philosopher Aristotle[i] likened a good king or ruler to a shepherd who lives for the welfare of his flock. In the appointed Psalm, King David[ii] compares the Almighty to a shepherd. This is a pretty funky comparison when you consider that shepherds, in the world of the text, were some of the lowest plankton on the social food chain. Dirt-scratching subsistence farmers were held in higher esteem than shepherds because they, at least, had some dirt to scratch. But I’m thinking both Jesus and the evangelist John had an audience of people with very little coin in their blue jeans pockets. Some of them might’ve been shepherds, so they’d get all the allusions to sheep and such.

The whole point? A good shepherd looks after his sheep. He feeds them, sees that they have water, and keeps them safe.

John’s Gospel may have been written some 70 years after the time of Jesus. Rome was still in charge of Palestine, having opened an imperial-sized can of whoop-ass on the Jews, crushing their ill-advised insurrection of 66-70 C.E. You can bet that times were hard and oppressive for the defeated Jewish folks, and everyone was looking with a stink eye at the local leadership, their “shepherds.” This would’ve consisted, I imagine, of a combination of ruthless Roman governors, feckless religious leaders, and weeny, greedy collaborators. There were also the dead revolutionaries who got the people into a losing war in the first place. If these guys were shepherds, they were doing a pretty lousy job of it.

When the Jesus of John’s Gospel calls out “all those who came before (v.8),” I believe he’s making a statement about the social situation. He’s comparing the way the leaders of this world had shaped the culture with the way God wants it shaped. Now, whenever a pastor starts to make commentary about social issues and culture, people start to get a little uneasy. At least they do in the Lutheran church in my experience. But the Bible is stuffed full of edgy, social commentary. You don’t believe me? Just take a look at the First Lesson in the RCL for Easter 4, Year C (Acts 2:42-47):

 “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need (vv.44-45).”

 Yup. You heard it right. The early Christians redistributed the wealth. They make Bernie Sanders look like Ronald Reagan by comparison.

I’m not advocating a radical overthrow of our capitalistic system, but I’d like to make the point that our social values should be shaped by our spiritual values. The gate or pathway we tread should be the way of the Good Shepherd, because all the bad shepherds do is mess things up. The bad shepherds like to divide, rank, and classify their “sheep.” In the world of the text, you were either righteous, semi-righteous, or unrighteous. You were clean or unclean. If you were unclean, you were kicked to the bottom of society, although you’d probably been there all along. The purity codes of the day divided people by sex, by wealth or poverty, by health or physical infirmity. The culture preached to us today still divides by social status, by deserving or undeserving, native or foreign. There even are some preachers who still insist on telling us that wealth is a sign of God’s favor and blessing. But the Good Shepherd loves everyone the same and sees no such distinctions. The Good Shepherd asks us to see with his eyes. He teaches us inclusivity, welcome, and tolerance.

The bad shepherd preaches a doctrine of selfishness, of “what’s-in-it-for-me?” The Good Shepherd teaches us to love one another, and to treat one another as we would want to be treated. The Good Shepherd calls us to see to the needs of our neighbors and trust that God can prepare a table for everyone in the midst of this chaotic world. The Good Shepherd wants the needs of all to be met.

The bad shepherd believes in acquisition. The Good Shepherd teaches generosity. The bad shepherd is indifferent to the suffering of others, and has no problem blaming the victim. “If my neighbor is hungry,” he says, “it is because he lacks my industry and ambition.” The Good Shepherd is a healer. He recognizes that not everyone has the same advantages, and he does what he can to alleviate hunger, isolation, and sickness—and he enjoins those who love him to follow in his way.

The bad shepherd loves violence, intimidation, and punishment. He seeks to control by force and a show of might. The Good Shepherd preaches peace and desires that all should live in safety and without fear. The Good Shepherd’s way is that of abundant life—not just the eternal life he’s promised in the next world, but meaningful, safe, and complete life in this world.

The Good Shepherd leads us in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. We’d do well to follow.

Thank you for visiting, my fellow sheep. Keep on the path. 

[i] For you Aristotle fans, this was in his Nicomachean Ethics. To be honest, I never read Aristotle myself. I just found this reference in Professor Angela Parker’s commentary on the Working Preacher website. But when one quotes a great Greek philosopher it does make one sound awfully smart, don’t you think? BTW: Have you ever heard of a Greek philosopher who wasn’t considered great?

[ii] We’ve always believed it was King David who wrote this. We really don’t know for sure, but if it wasn’t him, it should’ve been.

Dinner with Jesus (Reflections on Easter 3, Year C 2023)

 

They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24: 32)

When I was in high school my great love of the theater prompted me to take courses in modern dance. I figured that, if I were to make a career on the stage, I’d better learn how to move gracefully and not stomp about running into the furniture. I also figured out that dance class would get me out of regular boy’s gym class and allow me to spend my phys ed period in a room full of cute girls in leotards. One other male student caught on to this benefit, a guy named Dale Cohen. Dale and I got to be pretty good buds as the only boys in the class. One day he invited me to come home with him and have dinner with him and his folks.

The Cohens were a conservative Jewish family, and their mealtime was steeped in a tradition of both religious observance and great hospitality to the goy guest their son had invited to share their table. I remember Mr. Cohen instructing me to hold a piece of bread in my hand as he said the Hebrew blessing. He then told me that it was the Cohen family tradition to enhance the meal by choosing a current topic for discussion. I don’t remember what the topic was that night, but I remembered being impressed by how this family ate and talked and related to each other. The breaking of the bread at the Cohen house seemed to me to be an occasion of great significance and intimacy.

The dinner party mentioned in our Gospel lesson for Easter 3, Year C (Luke 24: 13-35) is also full of intimacy and meaning. Like the Cohen family, Cleopas and his fellow disciple[i] are more than happy to welcome a stranger to come and break bread with them. It’s in this moment of generosity, welcome, and openness that Jesus really becomes visible to them.

Of course, you have to ask why their eyes were kept from recognizing Jesus when they met and journeyed on the road. We might think God was just playing a little game with these two—jerking them around so Jesus could spring a surprise on them. I like to think their eyes had been kept from recognizing Jesus for two reasons. The first and most obvious is their grief. They may have been in so much shock over their friend’s death that they couldn’t perceive the world outside of their own trauma. I guess it’s hard for us to recognize that life goes on for others when our own world seems to have slammed into a noxious, stinking ball of twisted metal, burning rubber, and spilled gasoline.

The second reason is the fact they never really recognized Jesus in the first place. “We had hoped,” they said, “that he was the one to redeem Israel.” Just what did that mean? Were they looking for a revolutionary? A king? A popular hero who would get everyone on the same page? If so, they weren’t looking too closely. Jesus himself said he was more likely to bring discord than agreement.[ii] But it’s clear that whatever picture they had of Jesus was smashed like an armadillo on the interstate when Jesus went to the cross.

This begs the question: What is our picture of Jesus? In his wonderful book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time[iii], Professor of Religion Marcus Borg talks about knowing only the “Sunday School Jesus.[iv]” That is, as kids we were all introduced to a lovable blond, blue-eyed Jesus holding a lamb or blessing children. We were told that this Jesus died to save us from our sins, and, if we believed in him, we wouldn’t go to Hell when we died. He also taught us to be good because he’s always watching us.

As kids we believed in “Sunday School Jesus,” much the same way we believed in Santa Clause. The problem is, over time we lose our belief in Santa, and, perhaps, many also lose belief in Jesus. It might be impolite for some folks to confess this, or it might be seen as some kind of betrayal of our parents or our culture. We therefore just avoid the subject of faith altogether.

I would ask today, “How do we get beyond ‘Sunday School Jesus?’” How do we move beyond mere acceptance of a dogma to an actual relationship with Jesus? How do we find the Jesus who, as Cleopas and his companion say, makes our hearts burn within us?

I think the quest has to start with our asking: What was it about Jesus which so inspired his followers? What was it that gave them the courage to confront their own culture and change the world? Dr. Borg sees in Jesus a powerful ethic which spoke to the issues of his day—an ethos which challenged those who camouflaged themselves behind Jewish purity codes so they could feel good about committing other sins. This Jesus still speaks powerfully to us today if we’re willing to listen. Borg also says that the power of Jesus lay in Jesus’ relationship to God and the Spirit. Jesus’ understanding of the God he called “Father” influenced everything he did. As followers of Jesus we’re challenged always to navigate our own relationship to God.

A relationship with Jesus calls us to return to reading the scriptures with adult eyes. We won’t be reading to find literal history, because the Gospel writers didn’t write for that purpose. We need to look at these texts to feel what the writers felt about Jesus.

We teach that Jesus is revealed in the breaking of the bread. When we get together for this little weekly breakfast club we call the Christian Church, what are we experiencing in the breaking of the bread? We say, “As often as we eat of the bread and drink of this cup, we proclaim our Lord’s death until he comes again.” What does that mean to you? Flesh and blood. A man died a horrible death for the sake of others. What does that say about the capacity of human beings for cruelty and indifference and the value Jesus placed on others like you and me?

Perhaps it might not be amiss to have a Cohen-style meal sometime during which you share the intimacy of dining with a frank discussion of who Jesus is to you and your companions. Maybe in opening your hearts you will feel them burn within you. It’s worth a try, don’t you think?

God’s peace be with you, and thanks again for coming by.

---

[i] Because this disciple is not named, some scholars suggest this might be a woman.

[ii] See Matthew 10:34-39

[iii] Borg, Marcus J. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (San Francisco: Harper Collins: 1994). Really a cool book. I bet you can get it from Amazon.

[iv] That’s my phrase, not Dr. Borg’s.

Fear and Great Joy! (Reflections on Easter 2023)

 

"Three Marys at Christ's Tomb" 15th Cent.

So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. (Matthew 28:8) 

I love Easter. Of course, given the life I live, that’s a good thing. But you don’t even have to be a Christian these days to enjoy the fact that here in the Northern Hemisphere it’s now spring, and, at least for those of us here in Philadelphia, the odds are good we can put the snow shovels away for another year. 

This is a season of joy as we watch the trees start to bud, the flowers sneak out, and the days getting warmer and longer. Fun fact: According to the Venerable Bede, a 7^th Century Monk who was into this kind of thing, the name “Easter” might actually come from a pagan goddess of springtime and fertility named Eostre. Ancient Britains celebrated this gal in a month they called Eostrumonath, which corresponds to our April. Christians, of course, always celebrated the resurrection of Jesus in the spring to correspond with the Jewish Passover as the Gospels tell us[i]. So, when Christianity came to Britain, the old pagan festival name was appropriated for the new celebration. I guess human beings just don’t like change[ii]. 

But it’s not just the name that’s been appropriated. We still use a lot of fertility symbols to celebrate this day. Eggs are symbols of fertility and new life, as are flowers and bunnies. One of my favorite Easter symbols has always been the butterfly. Christians use this symbol, I guess, because the caterpillar in the cocoon looks pretty much like a dead thing, or at least like a pebble or something that couldn’t possibly be alive. It’s meant to remind us of Jesus in the tomb. Then, out of this rock, comes something beautiful and totally unexpected—something vastly different from what went inside. I think it’s a pretty cool metaphor for Jesus himself and the whole gospel story. We had Jesus who was baptized by John, who taught and loved and forgave enemies and fed people and healed the sick. Then he was killed and buried in a cave with big rock sealing the entrance. What emerged on Easter is the Christ of faith who lives inside us and reminds us that death isn’t the end, and all the things he has done we are called to do also. 

What always fascinated me about butterflies is what really goes on inside that cocoon. If you ever cut one open—which I don’t recommend. It’s not nice to the insect—you’ll discover something unlike any kind of growth transformation you’ve ever seen. The whole worm just dissolves into a kind of goo which bears no resemblance to anything that could be alive—animal, insect, or plant. It’s just goo. Then it morphs into a beautiful flying insect. 

For all of Jesus’ friends and loved ones, that time between Good Friday and Easter morning must’ve been gooey time. It wasn’t what it had been, and it didn’t show any signs of turning into anything. Matthew says there was an earthquake[iii], that the whole ground had shifted under their feet.

 Then comes that morning at the tomb when the earth shakes again. It’s another aftershock. More confusion, more uncertainty. The women are told Jesus has been raised—they even meet Jesus! But what does any of this mean? When they tell the disciples Jesus is raised, the question is, “What do we do now?” Things certainly wouldn’t be the same, but what would they become? 

I think we live a good portion of our lives in the indeterminate, gooey stage. It’s not just COVID or the climate change or politics or gas prices that have us feeling the world has changed and we don’t know what it’s changing into. We enter into “gooey time” all our lives. We get married, we choose careers, we change jobs, we have kids, we get divorced, we get sick, we retire—the list of little earthquakes goes on and on. 

The women at the tomb must’ve been overjoyed to see Jesus, but they were afraid, too. Every change is frightening. The message of Easter is that the changes can also be moments of joy. They can be moments of excitement and hope. We are called to believe that life can come out of death, that loss can lead us to growth, and that uncertainty does not spell doom. 

Fear and great joy can go skipping down the road together, because joy—real joy—doesn’t depend on circumstances. Real joy comes from the knowledge that we dwell constantly in the love of God. 

We in the American Church are in a gooey period. Three out of ten US adults are religiously unaffiliated. The percentage of self-identified Christians has dropped in the last ten years from 75% to 63%[iv]. The churches of my parents’ generation—with their enormous worship spaces, giant pipe organs, and robed choirs—may soon be a thing of the past. For some of us, that might be frightening. 

But I see a new Christianity emerging, resurrected from the tomb of our ancestors’ faith. It will be smaller but grittier. More honest, less judgmental. Open to all kinds of people, and concerned more with healing society than with doctrinal purity. People won’t worship there because it’s “the right thing to do.” They will come because the words and the sacrificial love of Jesus will move their hearts and fill them with joy. When this church emerges it might not look much like what came before it, but, like the butterfly, it will be astounding. 

Easter is our holiest day because it reminds us that God’s still in control. God’s will for us is life and joy. Everything may change, but it will be all right in the end. And if it’s not all right, it’s because this is not the end. 

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

---

[i] Just in case you ever wondered, the Passover takes place, according to Scripture, at the first full moon following the Spring Equinox. Easter is always observed on the first Sunday that follows. That’s why it comes at different times each year. It depends on the phase of the moon.

[ii] Folks around the neighborhood of Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia still refer to the shopping mall across the street as “Franklin Mills,” even though the name was changed to Philadelphia Mills years ago. And does any New Yorker ever call 6^th Avenue “The Avenue of the Americas?”

[iii] See Matt. 27:51

[iv] This is according to the Pew Research Center report of December, 2021.

Rotten Jobs (Reflections on Maundy Thursday 2023)

 “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34) 

Did you ever hear anyone say, “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it?” What’s the dirtiest job you’ve ever had? I remember my dirtiest job: The summer I was nineteen years old my Luther League buddy Mike and I took a job with a guy who was a member of our church. He was an independent contractor, and he was fixing up and selling some properties he owned in Southern California so he could sell them and make a big score buying undeveloped land further north. It was the dirtiest, sweatiest, most miserable summer of my life. Mike and I hauled trash barrels of mulch, mixed cement with shovels, did stone work, and painted houses indoors and out—all for the princely reward of three dollars an hour. 

The physical labor wouldn’t have been so bad, but we were also subjected to our boss’s unending spew of verbal abuse. He addressed us as “ladies,” not unlike a Marine Corp DI humiliating recruits in order to break their willful spirits and make them obedient fighting men. The difference here was Mike and I weren’t going into combat. Our boss bullied us just because he was an ill-tempered, neo-fascist asshole—who forced us to listen to his diatribes about how the world was being ruined by Jews and liberals. That Mike and I listened to his verbal vomit without losing our own lunches still amazes me. 

But, hey! It might’ve been a dirty, unpleasant job (It took me all summer to get the paint spatter out of my hair!), but I needed to do something to earn money for my next semester in college. I guess it all worked out in the end.[i] 

At home we often ask our kids to do the dirty jobs. We cook, but we make the kids clean the dirty dishes. They can scoop up the dog’s poop or take out the trash. In the world of the Maundy Thursday text (John 13: 1-17, 31b-35), washing the dirty feet of your guests was a kid’s job. Or a slave’s job. Or a woman’s job. Whoever had the lowest status in the household was the one who had to do it. After all, it had to be done. 

Our society has plenty of low-status jobs—jobs smart, college-educated folks just don’t want to do. You know: like collecting trash, stocking grocery shelves, picking lettuce, or bathing feeble, elderly folks who can’t bathe themselves. These jobs don’t pay a lot of money, and they don’t get you invited to black-tie fundraisers. But someone has to do them, and if COVID has taught us nothing else, it’s shown us just how important the folks who do dirty jobs really are. 

In our Gospel lesson we hear Jesus give us a commandment: love one another as I have loved you. He’s just demonstrated his love by taking on the job of a slave, a woman, or a child. He, the rabbi and leader, has made himself the lowest person in the room by doing the dirtiest job. He’s telling us that this is how we are to love one another, by seeing no distinction and no hierarchy. We are not to value fame or wealth. We are not to keep score of achievements. We are not to judge, shame, or embarrass one another. 

What we are called to do is see ourselves as servants of one another. We are to give and to acknowledge the sacredness of every person we encounter. When my late mother-in-law was in her last, declining days, my wife would visit her, bathe her, and help her dress. She’d tell her, “Mom, once, when I was little, you did this for me. Now I do it for you because I love you and I’m grateful for who you are.” The messiest jobs, I think, are so often done more out of love than necessity. 

Jesus gave us a second command on this night: Do this in remembrance of me. Remembrance, that is, of the dirtiest job anyone could ever do—hang on the cross as a shamed and reviled criminal. Do this, he tells us. Eat this meal. Share this bread with one another. Come to the table together as a family and recognize each other’s sin, each other’s need, and each other’s faith. Put away your pride and know that we all are one in Him. 

If my grouchy old boss from that backbreaking summer were to come and kneel at the altar, could I offer him the Body of Christ with love, compassion, and forgiveness? I certainly hope I could. To love as Jesus commands would mean seeing Christ in everyone. It would require putting away my sense of entitlement, my ego, and my resentments. 

It may be a hard job, but—in this fractured, broken world—it has got to be done.

---

[i] Just FYI, Mike went on to a successful career doing oceanographic research for the Merchant Marines. He is now the chief engineering officer on the USS Iowa, a floating museum he co-founded. He converted to Roman Catholicism, but I consider this a lateral move. He’s one of the most interesting people I know, and we’re still in touch 44 years later. Our boss went on to lose his dyspeptic butt in the Northern California land scheme. Karma, dude.