Neighbor. In almost every context except for Church, this is a word none of us have trouble defining. Invariably, if you ask a child or any person on the street, they’ll define it as the people who live next door, or maybe the people on their street, in their neighborhood, or even their city or town. When we here of a “neighborhood” shop or bar or park we immediately know what it is and who we’ll find there.
The second Sunday of Advent is, for me, when things start to feel real. When Advent truly starts.
In the first week, we’re still coming out of Thanksgiving, surprised we’re already in December, faced with blue after months of green, and thrown into remembering our place in the world, but not of it, as society begins feasting while we’re still reflecting and preparing.
In some ways, I wish we’d add a fifth week of Advent and just spend two weeks on the first readings. We read of the return of King Jesus, God making the world new, judgement, and hope. In the blur of it all, each year I feel like I don’t sit with that as long as I should.
Now, for those of you who know me — and even for those who’ve just heard the last few seconds — I’m sure it’s hard to believe that I could be any odder than I am now. But, believe you me, I was a very strange and awkward teenager. Asthmatic, nerdy, Mormon boys don’t really have a lot of places to fit in in Alabama. Looking back, it’s a sure sign of God’s providence and protection over my life that I made it out of school relatively unscathed. Outside of God, there really is no reason why I shouldn’t have been mercilessly bullied each and every day.
Friends, we live in difficult times. The last time we were together was March 1st. Spring was finally here. When I setup everything at Memorial Lutheran, many people were out on their bicycles. The neighborhood was full of noise from lawn mowers, children, and birds. A ladybug visited me in the narthex. Winter was over and the world was full of hope.
The tornado came two days later. The power of God’s creation was clearly seen. Our neighborhood was destroyed. Large buildings are now in ruins. Smith and Lentz, the brewery where we met so often, no longer has a beer garden, a roof, no rear wall.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.
Today is the fourth Sunday of Easter, often called “Good Shepherd” because of the gospel reading.
Though each Sunday is a sort of mini-Easter, the Sundays from Easter until Pentecost are especially so.
The question to answer today, is what does a good shepherd have to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus?
First, let’s get our bearings about where we are in John’s gospel.
In the previous two chapters, Jesus has been teaching in the temple and, naturally, his favorite friends the “scribes and the Pharisees” have tagged to ask him potentially entrapping questions.
In the midst of this, things get a little hot in the temple — Jesus nearly gets stoned — so Jesus leaves.
On his way out, Jesus heals a man from blindness, which of course the priests and other religious authorities do not believe. In chapter ten, Jesus is responding to these events.
Not only these events, but he is responding to some inquisitive Pharisees who seem to have started questioning their initial impressions of who Jesus is.
So, the initial context of this is Jesus taking the time to teach those who in our modern reading we automatically cast as the bad guys.
What hope this gives people like us who often find themselves on the wrong side of God’s will!
He is always there waiting to answer our honest advances for relationship. Even when we’re not yet fully committed.
Now for a little context around when all of this is taking place.
This whole scene in and around the temple is taking place during what we would now call Hanukkah.
I won’t go into the whole story, but at this point the feast was about 200 years old.
It had been established about 160 years before Jesus’ birth.
Hanukkah means “dedication” and is a celebration, among other miraculous parts of the story, of the cleansing of the temple after conquering Greek forces took over the temple, erected an alter to Zeus there, led sacrifices of pigs, and banned Judaism.
During Hanukkah one of the readings would have been from Ezekiel 34, I’ll read the first ten or so verses to better set the stage for the imagery that would have been fresh in Jesus and the Jews around him heads’
[READ EZEKIEL 34:1-11,30-31]
Let’s go back to John keeping all the background we now have, plus Ezekiel in our minds.
[READ JOHN 10:11-13]
This is a little more clear, now, isn’t it?
Jesus is not happy with how his people have been shepherded by the religious establishment of Jerusalem.
Jesus might even be implying that to outwardly worship God in the temple while neglecting to feed God’s sheep outside its walls is equivalent to desecrating the temple.
Jesus might be implying that it’s time for a new Hanukkah, a new rededication.
Jesus is the “good shepherd”. Now, the Greek here is more than our word “good.” Here it is not only a “good” shepherd, but an “ideal” and “noble” shepherd. Jesus is the model.
To complicate things further, a shepherd isn’t just a shepherd. In Hebrew poetry and scripture (Psalms, for example) shepherd is a near universal symbol of the king. You know, like David, the shepherd boy made king through whose line Jesus is attached.
[READ PSALM 23]
Now this thread of shepherds and kingship winds its way through David, the Psalms, failing Hebrew kings, exile, Ezekiel, Greek invasion, temple desecration, Hanukkah, and finally reaches its destination in Jesus.
This is the beauty of Holy Scripture.
This is God working through his narrative with his people to work out our salvation.
Jesus is the very ideal of kingship, the very truth of a shepherd.
“I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father”
I can’t help but notice the language here of ownership and naming God the Father.
Maybe it’s because my son was baptized two Sundays ago, but I’m moved back to Mark 1:9-11.
[READ MARK 1:9-11]
My son.
It is as if here, in baptism, we become adopted children of God.
We are Jesus’ because we know him as the true shepherd.
Jesus’ knows the Father and he knows us.
“I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.”
In baptism, we are adopted as children of God and enter Jesus’ death.
No longer enemies, strangers, or foreigners, we are now God’s adopted children through water, blood, and Spirit. The baptized are part of God’s flock.
This is the great Easter message.
On this fourth Sunday of Easter, remember your baptism.
Jesus knows us. We are his forever.
Remember you are God’s child.
We are still wet from our baptism.
We are soaked, because the Good Shepherd is continually washing us clean with his blood.
He knows us, and yet he still loves us.
He knows us and never forgets us.
When we are scared, when we are alone, the Good Shepherd is there beside us to remind us that we are adopted children of God.
God did not forsake his son in the tomb and he will not forsake us either.
Hear again the words of Scripture: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. […] I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.”
“And they shall know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and that they, […] are my people.”
As it appropriate for Easter, we end with the resurrected Jesus amongst his disciples: [READ JOHN 21:15-17]
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
After a semester studying soteriology, how has my view of salvation changed? It has not. I have, however, increased my ability to articulate my view.
Salvation is an unwarranted gift of grace from God offered to all of humanity. All the children of Adam and Eve are born into sin and death. Humanity has distanced itself from God and has brought corruption into God’s good creation. God, in his infinite mercy, looked down and saw that there was no one to rescue humanity from her fall, so he decided to save her himself (Isaiah 63:5). As his voice created all things ex nihilo at the genesis, so his eternal Λόγος came “mighty to save” (Isaiah 63:1) and to make “all things new” (Rev 21:5).
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