4 Easter B - 3 May 2009

4 Easter B - 3 May 2009
Acts 4:5-12; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
James V. Stockton

Given the current environment, with the flue scare, I think it especially meaningful that you are here today. I read a story about a priest who always did his best to be an excellent example and standard for those around him. The Reverend Hector Hanks is walking home one evening. Near his house he sees a number of little boys and girls sitting in a circle with a puppy in the middle of the group. “Hi, kids,” he says. “What are you doing here with the puppy?” “Aw, nothing, really,” answers one little boy named Joey. “We’re just having a contest. We’re sitting here telling lies, and whoever tells the biggest whopper gets to keep the dog.” The Rev. Hanks puffs up in his most righteously indignant manner. “What?” he exclaims. “I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!” The children sit motionless, with their eyes and ears fixed upon the wrathful priest before them.

The image of an angry bombastic clergy person is one with which many people are familiar, maybe too many. The fictitious Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or figures from history: Jonathan Edwards, Lyman Beecher, George Finney, or Ellen White. I’ll leave it to people’s memories and imaginations to identify possible examples from more recent times. The point is not blithely to ridicule such folks, or blindly to approve of them. It is, instead, to suggest that when people consider the words and manner of such folks as these, they will notice a contrast between that image and experience and the one portrayed in the scriptures for this morning.


Some people will have seen the picture on a wall in a church, a Sunday School, or even on a greeting card, or will have heard the description. Jesus is carrying a lamb upon his shoulders, and perhaps at his feet there is a mix of other lambs and also children. It is Jesus the Good Shepherd; and the inspiration for this image is right here in the Gospel reading for today. Jesus is gentle. He is carrying a lamb, another image itself of the gentle, of the soft, warm, and fuzzy. Jesus is attentive. He is watching over the flock lest somehow they might hurt themselves; Jesus provides safety for the flock. He is watching out for them in case something from the outside tries to do them harm. Jesus is patient with the flock, since they are sheep, after all, not the brightest members of the animal kingdom. Not just one among many, Jesus is the standard, the example; Jesus is the Good Shepherd. I think this must be for the disciples a most powerful and inspiring recollections of Jesus, especially through the first days and weeks following his resurrection. As I read these words or hear them again, I experience that comfort that I feel certain the apostles felt as they made their way into the world with the Good News of Christ Jesus, with the gospel of the Good Shepherd.

Here are Peter and John speaking to the people, letting them know that they can escape the finality of death, they may have new life, risen life, in Christ Jesus. Understandably, many of those listening are interested to learn more about all this. Perhaps just as understandably, the religious authorities find this a troubling development. New life, forgiveness, God’s mercy, and the fact that these things are being proclaimed authoritatively by commoners, tradesmen, all of this threatens the effectiveness of their own message of a mix of legalism and purification as the path to God. These same people who not so long ago arranged to have Jesus killed. So, because they have enough clout to do so, they have Peter and John arrested.

Yet, here is Peter, who once could not find the words to admit that he was indeed a follower of Jesus, now finding words enough to tell the authorities how irrelevant they have become. Peter claims that ‘there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.’ ‘It is Jesus who did the healing,’ he says, ‘and it is Jesus by whom people are rescued, from their own sins, and rescued from yours.’ And while fiery preachers of nearly every generation have used these words to condemn people of faiths other than our own, they have done so by taking Peter’s words of out context. And in so doing, they more fire to the question than light. Peter is speaking people who are quite confident in their official positions of religious authority and power, (after all, would they be there if God hadn’t willed it so?). These are people, then, who represent a religious system that claims that those who are somehow are descendant from Abraham, or members of the people of Jacob, or spiritual heirs of Moses, are virtually guaranteed a place of privilege before God either in life here and now or in the age to come.

But Peter is not speaking against religions about which he knows nothing. Nor is he speaking specifically against Judaism, especially since he himself is a Jew, and especially since the one in whom he proclaims also was a Jew. Peter is confronting head on a system of self-salvation, if you will, being perpetrated among the flock of God’s people by the religious experts of his day. As did Jesus himself, Peter is telling them that no mortal device, however clever or even pious, is able to do what only God can do, namely: to restore people to a whole relationship with God.

If we think about it, it’s sadly ironic that a similar self-righteousness might have been promoted by some of the fiery preachers through the ages, but claiming now to do so in the name of Jesus. But again, if we think about it, it is great consolation to recognize the same thing that gives Peter and John to stand up and speak out, with a fiery preaching of their own, is a fieriness that burns first in Jesus. It is a fire that warms them and gives them light, a fire given to them gently, patiently, lovingly, attentively; fire entrusted to them by the one who gives up his life so that they may have life, and may share life and its fullness with the world around them. And I think this is what fires them up, so to speak; it fires up John to write about it in his letter, as we hear today. It fires up Jesus’ followers when he presents himself here in this way.

Fr. Hector Hanks has asked the children what they were doing. They’ve informed him that they are playing a game. Whoever tells the biggest whopper,” explains Joey, “wins the puppy.” “This is outrageous,” blusters the priest. With hands on sides, he looks down upon the children very disapprovingly. And they stare back in speechless awe and wonder. “Why, when I was a little boy your age,” says the priest goes on, “I never even thought of telling a lie!” At this, all the kids moan with disappointment. “Aw, Gee, Father,” says Joey, handing the puppy to the priest. “We didn’t know you were going to play.”

I’m not going to lie to you, not today, not ever. People today are scared. Among a growing number of uncertainties that are scaring people all around us, scaring us, too, a spreading flu virus now adds itself to the list. People are scared. And if you I have ever wondered about the relevance of fiery preachers and demagogic judgmental religion, now is certainly the time to honor our doubts. People are scared, and they are not going to be fired up by posturing self-righteousness or by a preacher or a God who plays upon their fears in order to turn them to God in desperation, but sadly, turns them only to some cheap counterfeit instead. God does not work that way. And thanks be to God, neither do we.

What fires people up is to know that there is a gentle, loving, patient shepherd who is willing to fight for them against anything or anybody that would come between them and their access to fullness of life in God. What fires people up, what fires us up, is to find that this Good Shepherd, this best Shepherd of all, is willing to struggle against even that within ourselves that, even without our knowing it, would diminish our participation in the fullness of God’s Love. God gives us the gift of whatever security medicine may provide. And we can thank God for this. But what still fires up God today, is to fire up you and me, and through us, to fire up people in the world around us, with that possibility of being spiritually secure, with that hope of being spiritual comforted, in that divine love that sacrifices everything to be here with us all.

And so may Almighty God, by whose mercy we find both rest and confidence, inspire our witness to Christ Jesus who gave himself on our behalf and for the whole world that all might come within the reach of his saving embrace; through the same, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, One God, now and for ever. Amen.

© 2009, James V. Stockton