CW: This sermon addresses the leak from the Supreme Court, which indicated the possibility of a decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade. On a day when we are thinking about women - both Mothers' Day and hearing the story of Tabitha, it felt important to address.
Full sermon HERE. (This link misses the first part of the service, begins at 2nd reading.)
Easter 4C
May 8, 2022
Acts 9:36-43
John 10:22-30
INTRODUCTION
This 4th Sunday of Easter is always known as Good Shepherd Sunday – we hear Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd”), and a chapter of John’s Gospel where Jesus talks about being the Good Shepherd. It’s a beloved and comforting image, and one of the first images ever used for Jesus, and one worth reflecting on during this Easter season each year.
First in Acts, we will hear the story of Dorcas – another person of importance to St. Paul’s, because that is the name of our women’s group. They are named for this woman of faith. The only time the feminine version of the word “disciple” is used is in reference to Dorcas, which is a pretty great legacy! As you listen to this text, think of the women in your life who have shepherded you in your faith, who have shown you Christ by the way they lived their lives.
In our reading from John, Jesus does not actually call himself a shepherd, but he does call us his sheep. Earlier in this chapter he does call himself the Good Shepherd, but today’s story takes place some two months later, during Hanukkah, a festival whose central symbol is light. And so, it is appropriate that the Jews will, on this festival celebrating light, ask for some clarity about who Jesus is. But Jesus won’t give them a straight answer (typical!). We won’t hear what happens next, but I’ll tell you – they are unimpressed and try to arrest him! Those in the first century craved clear answers as much as we do.
As you listen, consider what it means to be a sheep, with Christ as our shepherd. Where do you hear the voice of your shepherd? What is it saying to you today? Let’s listen.
[READ]
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. Amen.
“How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly!” I feel this request from “the Jews” deep in my bones. I hear this and think it sounds very much like my own prayers these days. “How long until you start answering my prayers, Jesus? How long will you keep us in suspense? Temperatures reached 140 degrees in parts of India last week. The earth is warming in ways incompatible with human life. Will you intervene? Several people got shot this week in my city. Where were you? The war in Ukraine is more horrifying every day. Do you care? I’m drowning in my own struggles, and I could use some help here. If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly – tell us by doing something about the brokenness in this world!”
And then, on top of all that, there was this major leak this week of a draft of the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade. Some are thrilled, others are terrified by the potential loss of rights (both reproductive and others), and many are reliving past traumas. After the leak hit the news, social and traditional media blew up with adamant diatribes on each side of the issue, and people hit the streets to make known their concerns. Like in so many hot issues these days, discourse isn’t always respectful, is often fiery and mean, and for all that, it turns out, no one is changing anyone’s mind.
It is certainly a hot, emotional, and difficult issue, fraught with traumatic memories and emotional pain for many (and it is not lost on me that this has come so forcefully into our public discourse in the week leading up to Mother’s Day, a day already highly emotional for many, in part because of this very issue!). We deeply desire for there to be a clear right and clear wrong answer on this. Well, not just on this. I’d say what we desire in most things is certainty. Black and white answers are so much simpler than reality – we want a clear right, and a clear wrong, so we know which side to stand on. And so, we claim anyone who believes differently from us is a baby-killer, or a woman-hater. Clear-cut, good/bad/ right/wrong answers make us feel solid and grounded. “Tell us plainly,” we say. “Tell us plainly what we are to believe. How long will you keep us in suspense?”
Jesus is characteristically elusive in his response to the Jews. “I told you and you didn’t believe,” he says. “You do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” Do you hear what he did there? Rather than give them the black and white answer they were looking for, he invited them into relationship: a relationship in which they speak to each other, and listen and know one another, and the sheep linger close to the shepherd. Let me say that another way: instead of giving them the certainty they crave and drawing a line in the sand, Jesus invites them into relationship.
Throughout John’s Gospel, this is how Jesus defines what it is to have faith. It is to be in relationship with him, to abide with him. In John 1, we hear that Jesus came to earth to dwell with us. Here in John 10, he identifies as the Good Shepherd to the sheep, the one who doesn’t leave his sheep or let them be snatched away. In John 12 he says he came to draw all people to himself. In John 15 he identifies as the vine, and we are the branches, and he invites the disciples to abide in him. You see, in each instance, the emphasis is on relationship, closeness with Jesus. That is what it means to have faith: to be in relationship with Jesus, to hear his voice, and to follow him.
We know this, and yet, he also says in John that he gives us a new commandment, to love one another as he has loved us – in other words, to be in relationship also with one another. And the very people who have been given to us to love, we tear apart on the internet, or silently (or not so silently) judge them for their views, or perhaps we just avoid them altogether, preferring our silos of like-minded people. When we do this to each other, when we break or refuse to engage in loving relationship with those who differ, even if it is because we are certain we have the moral high ground – what makes us think we are still in right relationship with Jesus?
So, let’s take some time today to think through how to engage in this particular difficult topic faithfully – and especially as we also think about and give thanks for mothers, let us also keep in our hearts and prayers those for whom “motherhood” is a very complicated topic.
First of all, if faith is relationship, let’s consider: what makes relationship possible? What makes is authentic? This brings to mind one of our mission milestones I introduced last week – we want this, St. Paul’s, to be a place where people connect genuinely, not just on the surface, and develop real friendships, not just acquaintanceships. Often we think friendships happen when people have things in common, and to some extent that is true. But while we may have an immediate liking for someone who shares our interests, we likely won’t connect genuinely with them until we have ventured into a place of vulnerability with them – that is, when we enter into the messy gray place in the middle of the absolute rights and wrongs on either side. I suspect that’s why Jesus doesn’t give them the “plain” answer they crave, and instead invites them into the gray: because facts don’t encourage dialogue. Black and white don’t give us anything to talk about, except how right we are and how wrong they are. Dialogue and connection and yes, relationship can only happen in the messy gray space in between.
Second, Jesus says that his sheep (aka the faithful) hear his voice and follow him. I really struggle with this, because there are so many competing voices out there, so how are we to know which one is really Jesus, and which ones are our own egos, and which ones are the devil himself? Is Jesus’ voice the one saying, “The unborn are completely innocent in this, and they shouldn’t be punished because of the choices of their parents.” Or is Jesus’ voice the one saying, “The people who will suffer the most if Roe is overturned are women who are already disadvantaged for various reasons – whether poverty or lack of support or pre-existing health concerns. Overturning Roe will only exacerbate the gap between the privileged and the under-privileged.” Which is it? They’re both good points. So how are we to know?
Well, if I may be so bold, here is the voice I think belongs to Jesus. It is the one that says, “This is complicated. There’s more to people’s stories than you can see. There is more pain here than one person can know. But I know it. Because I know my sheep. And I love my sheep.”
And then, Jesus’ is the voice that invites us into that gray space between certainties, the space where we are willing to hear someone’s story with an open heart, to gently hold another’s pain, and to connect authentically with one another. Not everyone will be ready to share their story (there is a lot of trauma around this issue), but lovingly holding space for it without judgment is the main thing. That place of empathy and compassion is the place where faith happens, where love of neighbor happens, where relationship with Jesus and with each other happens.
My friends, if you are hoping to hear the voice of Jesus, you will not find it in insults. You will not find it in insistence that you alone have the moral high ground. No, here is where you will find it: you will find it in the plight of your neighbor, in the gray and uncertain space between “us” and “them.” Earlier in this chapter of John, Jesus declares, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” You see, Jesus is pro-life – and that abundant life is found not in certainties, but in this space between. It is found in whatever brings love and life and connection and relationship to the sheep – the unwanted babies, the very wanted but unviable babies, the scared or devastated mothers-to-be, the women not in a place physically, mentally, or financially to bear or raise a child, the fathers who may or may not be in the picture, the couples trying in vain to conceive or adopt – all of the sheep. Jesus loves them all. Even you. Even me. And Jesus wants abundant life for them all. Will we live and love in a way that embraces that?
Let us pray… God of life, good shepherd of the sheep, we so desperately want certainty, to hear your voice, and to do what is right. Draw us again into the gray area, the space in between, so that we would find there both relationship with you, and love for our neighbor. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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