The Fourth Sunday of Easter
The Very Rev. Steve Lipscomb, Dean
Grace Cathedral
05/03/09

John 10:11-18

It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep feeling Easterish, isn't it?  Even in the liturgical readings we no longer have Easter stories.  This is because Easter, the great fifty-day season of the church year, is not solely about the resurrection of Jesus.  It's about the results of the dying and rising of Jesus—as they are extended over space and time and into the lives of countless people throughout the ages.  In other words, Easter is not only about Jesus; Easter is about us and about all people.

Easter, not Easter Day but the season, is about something theologians, in their customary delight with obscure terminology, call the paschal mystery.  "Paschal" is the biblical word for Passover, applied by Christians from the earliest times to the event of Jesus' death and resurrection.

And "Mystery" in this context means an event which reveals God's invisible and incomprehensible work of salvation to those who participate in it.  So, for us, the Paschal Mystery is the event of Jesus' dying and rising which reveals God's work of salvation to all people who participate in Jesus' dying and rising.

Easter, then, isn't simply about the historical events of Good Friday and Easter Day.  It's about the events by which you and I first became participants in Jesus' death and resurrection and by which we continue to participate—in Baptism and Communion, in worship and ministry.

Our readings today explore some of the results of the Paschal Mystery.  Through these passages we learn more about what God began in us in our Baptisms, and what God is continuing to do in and with us in our life in the church—our life of word, sacraments, prayer and ministry.

In this morning's lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear about the results of Jesus' death and resurrection in the lives of the first Christians.  We learn that they healed in Jesus’ name, were witnesses of his love and believers in resurrection and salvation. And in the verses just prior to today’s lesson, we’re told that they were so deeply bound together in love and spirit that they shared all their possessions and lived a common life.

This description of communal living hasn't been easy for Americans to accept.  Our national fear of Communism has made us wary of any talk about people's owning things in common.  One seldom hears of Christians advocating that today.  But this isn't a bit of first-century Marxism.  It's a description of a group of people whose experience of the resurrection and eager anticipation of its final results when Jesus returns, led them to become a single household.  It's been many centuries since Christians, other than those in religious orders, lived such a common life.  It is the case, however, that we, when we take our redemption seriously, our Easter seriously, our Christian lives and witness seriously, we are likely to be more open in sharing what we have than is human society in general.

We express this in our hospitality to strangers, our welcome to all people to join us in our life in Christ, and in the ways we engage in outreach to the community.  No doubt, we need to do more generous giving, and as we take more seriously our own new life through Baptism and Eucharist, we will be moved to deepen and extend our common life of proclamation and healing and outreach.

We've also heard a passage this morning from the first letter of John (as we do each Sunday of Easter this year).  Here we have a theological and ethical meditation on the meaning of the Paschal Mystery.  We are "children of God."  We will ultimately be like Jesus because God abides in us.  And we must love one another as Christ loves us, through the Spirit he has given to us.

Beginning with our adoption as God's children—the initial result of Jesus' dying and rising—we begin a new life by imitating our Lord, who is risen in us and abides in us, and emboldens us for the work we are called to do and the love we are called to share in his name.

In other words, God is restoring and reconciling us to him, to others, and to the world.  Our growth in Christian living (little children) is the result of the Paschal Mystery.  And that growth is not something foreign to human nature. To the contrary, it is growth into life which will be redeemed precisely because it is fully human.
     
Finally, we come to this morning's Gospel lesson. Years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Gospel of John was composed, not simply to tell what once happened, but as an interpretation of Jesus' life in the light of his dying and rising.  In today's reading, the author of John takes some sayings of Jesus which the church had remembered—sayings likening his ministry to the work of shepherds—and presents an explanation of Jesus' resurrection relationship to us in the image of the good shepherd.
    
Palestinian shepherds, in those days, took their flock out to water and graze during the day and then put them in either a natural or man-made stoutly walled sheepfold at night.  Often, all the sheep in a village were kept in the same fold.  Each shepherd knew his sheep by name and they knew him, no doubt by smell as well as the sound of his voice.  So when the shepherd came to the sheepfold each morning, the sheep—his sheep—would know and follow their own shepherd.  And the shepherd, if they were his own sheep, was willing to risk life and safety to protect the sheep from danger, whereas a mere hired hand employed to watch over someone else's sheep was more likely to abandon the flock if threatened by a wolf or bear or bandits come to snatch the sheep away.  Thus, the good shepherd was the doorkeeper who led the sheep, and not only led them but cared for them as well.

John and the readers of his day understood the ways and attributes of the good shepherd, and they also understood the additional good news in this analogy:  With Jesus, The Good Shepherd's flock is not limited to only some people.  But he calls all people into his fold.

So here we are, the people of God.  Called into a new freedom of life in the risen Christ, we are part of a vast family.  This family is to live together in a way which holds up to human society a better, more perfect, more human way than the world presents.

Here we are—a people who are being transformed into new christs—little christs, which is really what the word Christian means—because we have been christened with water and the Holy Spirit.  Here we are still in our baptismal journey toward God's home—our true home as
Well—often as confused and stubborn as a flock of sheep. 

But the attaining of our journey's end is not up to us alone.  We have a shepherd, the Good Shepherd.  The one who calls each of us by name, who feeds us and quenches our thirsts with living water, who lays down his life for us, and in taking up his life again, destroys the power of death in us and all humankind forever.
    
There is an ancient prayer of the church inspired by the 23rd Psalm that sums all of this up:

Lord Jesus Christ, shepherd of your church, you give us new birth in the waters of Baptism; you anoint us with oil, and call us to salvation at your table.  Dispel the terrors of death and the darkness of error.  Lead your people along safe paths, that they may rest securely in you and dwell in the house of the Lord now and forever, for your Name's sake. 

The Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.