– You may remember we mentioned a few weeks ago that on the Sundays after Easter, we have a cycle of readings that can be a bit repetitive (think: “Doubting Thomas Sunday”). Well, this Sunday again, we don’t have much of a surprise with our lessons. If you’re a frequent flyer in the Episcopal Church, you probably know that the Fourth Sunday after Easter is “Good Shepherd” Sunday. And although it is a very traditional theme, the least we can say is that most of us have mixed feelings about it. Some love the comforting imagery of Jesus as a shepherd, but many find it a bit too sentimental or even childish. Some resent a bit being compared to a sheep for quite obvious reasons I won’t list!
– But more than ever, when our religious ideas become a little bit of a cliché or a stereotype, it’s important to be able to go open the Bible and to go back to the text. And the good news is that, although Good Shepherd Sunday happens every year, the lectionary focuses on different themes each time. It may have struck you ear as you were listening to the lessons. This short passage of John’s Gospel we have just read mentions not less than five times that the good shepherd is the one who “lays down his life for the sheep“. And because it’s this same John who wrote the Epistle we’ve shared this morning as well, we’ve also heard about that in our New Testament reading: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for one another“.
– So let’s make a first stop here. What is love all about? That’s one of the questions we actually debated during our Bible study last Wednesday. Our new book is about the “Love stories” of the Bible and we wondered if the story of Samson and Delilah (our chapter for this week) was really a love story. We could agree that it was a romantic story, the story of an intimate relationships between a man and a woman, but it looked like it was more difficult for some of us to talk about love when one of the partner is manipulative, full of deception and seeking her own interest. And indeed, as Christians, that’s not the way we think about love. In everyday language, love may often be a synonym for passion or desire (someone said “infatuation”), but we know God’s love is different. So how is it? What’s the difference? Well, we have the answer in our reading today. Jesus has shown us God’s love by laying down his life for us, and if we want to love in truth and action, as John mentions in his Epistle,we should also lay down our lives for one another. We often capture it by saying thatChristian love is self-sacrificial.
Okay so now we have narrowed it down a little bit but it seems that it still requires some explanation. I notice two things:
- First of all, laying down one’s life is not literally about dying, at least not in general! John is talking about the everyday life of the followers of Jesus and he opposes the laying down of one life’s and oppose it to “words and speech”. John says that it does nothing to talk, what Christians are called to do is to help those in need, if they have the means to. I like to say that if you want to know if somebody loves you, don’t listen to what they say, look at what they do. John asks: How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help? So laying down our life is self sacrificial in the sense that it is about giving(Word “Give” in the Bible – explain). Now I like it that John takes the time to say that we must give if we have the means. The idea is that it’s not about depriving ourselves and neglecting ourselves, it’s about sharing what we have. I like it because sometimes we think that to be a good Christian we have to treat ourselves like we don’t matter (or that’s what we were taught): that our needs don’t matter, whether they are our financial or material needs, or our needs for good health and rest, or our needs for respect, attention and affection. John do not say that, but he says we need to share. Yes, maybe at some point we will need to give our life for someone, some people do it, but that’s not what we do on a daily basis, this is even kind of ridiculous to interpret it that way!
- Then, and that’s the second thing I notice, John says we have to lay down our lives for one another. It’s again about sharing, not about someone giving everything so another one can take everything. Rather we give to each other, or we give to someone who in their turn will help someone else. Like maybe you give to your child but your child will give to their children, as you have received from your parents in the first place. Whether it’s inter-personal or over the generations or in a virtuous cycle of exchange, Christian love is a love that is passed on. Christian love is not about letting someone abuse you, taking it all away from you and you receive nothing.
– And so I think we now touch on something that is often kind of ambiguous in the way we are taught how to love as Christians: We have to imitate Christ and yet we are not Christ and we have to be constantly reminded of those two sides of the equation: Love like Christ without claiming to be Christ. This second aspect is part of the message of the Gospel we have just heard: Jesus is the good shepherd and we all belong to his flock. We can help each other but we cannot rescue or save anyone ultimately and we have to be very, very careful when we claim to be guides or role models. It might not be obvious for us, but “shepherds” was a traditional way in the Hebrew Bible to refer to the kings and/or to the spiritual leaders. This passage from John actually follows an argument Jesus’s just had in the Temple with some of the Pharisees and this speech is also addressed to them. They needed to understand, as we do, that if we have any authority, it has been given to us by God for the sake of others and not to seek our own advantage, like the “hired hand” Jesus mentions.
– So how does Jesus’s love look like for us? Jesus reminds us what the shepherd does for his sheep and it’s not really about cuddling lambs like we sometimes see in the traditional imagery. I notice three things:
- When Jesus says that he lays down his life, he says that it means that he does not run away: I think it’s so important to hear that when so often we fear that those who love us will end up leaving us if we change, if we go through some sort of trial or crisis, if we are sick, if we lose our health, if we run out of money. Jesus promises us to be with us always, whatever happens to us. There is a very beautiful prayer by a French Saint about it. He says that Jesus is the one true friend who is never tired of us or disgusted with us, on the other way around, the weaker we feel, the closer Jesus is going to be. To me this prayer is like a commentary on Psalm 23 (there is a copy at the end of the sermon and we can read it after the rite of healing)
- Not only Jesus does not run away, but he fights with us and for us. I really like the picture we have on the cover of the bulletin this week, because it is not the traditional representations of the Good Shepherd with Jesus carrying a lamb on his shoulders. Here, we see Jesus coming to interpose himself between the wolf and the sheep to protect them. We need to remember that when we go through difficulties, when we are afflicted, tempted, when we lose control of our lives or when we feel like giving up on faith. Far from being disappointed in us if we are tormented by the devil, Jesus is going to help us resist and assure us of his love (See our NT reading: “Even if our hearts accuse us…He knows everything“. The Good shepherd is not a sentimental or childish imagery, it is quite a powerful one!
- Lastly: Jesus’s job is to keep us united. The devil means “the one who divides”(etymology). Jesus talks about the wolf who snatches and scatters. Since we are having a rite of healing today, we can remember that unity is what healing looks like: Reconciled as a community and made whole as a person. Jesus goes ahead of us to lead us into fullness of life. At the beginning we talked about how we believe that Christian love is self sacrificing. Yet the shepherd Jesus compares himself to does not lead his sheep to sacrifice (that’s mainly what they were good for, on top of providing food and wool), rather this shepherd sacrifices himself so the sheep can have life – which turns everything upside down. John wants us to understand Jesus’s death as Jesus’s way to go ahead of us to open the gates of heaven for us (it’s clearer if you read the whole chapter 10). The shepherding Jesus does leads us to unity as a community, wholeness within ourselves and reunion with God.
Prayer of the True Friend by Saint Claude La Colombiere, SJ
Jesus, you are my true friend, my only friend.
You take a part in all my misfortunes;
You take them on yourself;
You know how to change them into blessings.
You listen to me with the greatest kindness
when I relate my troubles to you,
and you always have balm to pour on my wounds.
I find you at all times, I find you everywhere,
You never go away;
if I have to change my dwelling, I find you wherever I go.
You are never weary of listening to me,
You are never tired of doing me good.
I am certain of being beloved by you if I love you;
my goods are nothing to you,
and by bestowing yours on me you never grow poor.
However miserable I may be,
no one nobler or wiser or even holier
can come between you and me,
and deprive me of your friendship;
and death, which tears us away from all other friends,
will unite me forever to you.
All the humiliation attached to old age
or to the loss of honor will never detach you from me.
On the contrary, I shall never enjoy you more fully,
and you will never be closer to me’
than when everything seems to conspire against me,
to overwhelm me, and to cast me down.
You bear with all my faults with extreme patience,
and even my want of fidelity and ingratitude
do not wound you to such a degree
as to make you unwilling to receive me back
when I return to you.
Jesus, grant that I may die praising you,
that I may die loving you,
that I may die for the love of you.
Amen.