Homily for Easter 4, 2007[i]
The Very Rev Michael J. Pitts
Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal
Acts 9:36-43
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30This day in our church’s calendar is often know as Good Shepherd Sunday, since our readings from scripture focus on this theme. I spent a lot of time looking at the readings, thinking about them and wondering how I could shed any fresh light on such a well worn theme. I just kept getting a “been there: done that” sort of feeling. Then in a conversation with our Director of Music, it suddenly jumped out at me:
for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd [ii]
What a strange and illogical thing to say: how can a lamb be a shepherd? But then the sentence is from the Book of the Revelation which is a strange book at the best of times. However, I think it points us to a very important feature of our scriptures: they are very often paradoxical. One of the strangest ways of treating the scriptures is to read them as though they presented only literal meanings and facts. This way of interpreting scripture, which is widespread and fervently supported by the fundamentalists and right wing evangelicals, misses out on so much of the beauty of story, metaphor and poetry, on the challenging and mind stretching demand of these texts, which form the basis of Christian faith.
Let me just remind you of a few random passages which illustrate what I mean.
Jesus said: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." [iii]
Like several others of Jesus’ sayings recorded in the Gospels it has a Buddhist koan quality about it. Imagining the saying is like imagining the sound of one hand clapping.
Consider two Jesus sayings from Luke’s Gospel
… whoever is not against you is for you." [iv]
Whoever is not with me is against me. [v]
The sense is diametrically opposite.
The Prophets Micah and Isaiah say:
they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; [vi]
while Joel says:
Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weakling say, "I am a warrior." [vii]
There are two separate stories of Creation side by side. There are two separate stories of Noah and the flood, which have been woven together, with confusing inconsistencies.
There is one series of stories about the early monarchy of Israel which sees kingship as the gift of God. There is another series of stories woven into the texts which see it a the greatest sin of the people, who have refused Yahweh as their only king.
I could go on with many more examples, but that is, I hope, enough to demonstrate the Bible is not a document of incontrovertible facts and simple moral guidelines.
In many ways I think of the scriptures and their interpretation like the basic musical form of the symphonic movement. First there is the statement of one theme, then the statement of a second. This is followed by a development of both themes together, and then the movement is brought to an end by the restatement of the two themes. Sometimes the development of the different themes together is seen within the scriptures, but it is also in the work of preaching where this happens. In the homily, scripture, on the one hand, with everyday life and culture on the other are interpreted in the light of each other.
Before I leave the musical metaphor, let me mention that I find it interesting that the idea of scripture having one plain and simple meaning arose in the time of the Reformation, and especially among those influenced by Calvin’s theology. In the same period, polyphonic religious music was discouraged. Each syllable, it was decreed, should be sung to one note only. For me the polyphonic music of Thomas Thomkins, William Byrd or Henry Purcell, and the 20th century work of Kenneth Leighton, Dan Locklair or Arvo Pärt, all of whom you will have heard in this place, speak much more of kaleidoscope quality of our Bible.
So let me return to the Lamb who is the shepherd. It is of course largely in John’s Gospel that we find Jesus described as the good shepherd. It is John who tells us that Jesus calls his sheep by name and that they follow him. In today’s reading Jesus says:
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand. [viii]
But John also sees Jesus, from the very outset of the Gospel, as the Lamb of God.[ix] That is, he interprets Jesus’ death as the sacrifice which overcomes human alienation from God. So important is this for John that he changes the tradition seen in the other Gospels that the Last Supper was a Passover meal. Instead, for John, the meal with the disciples is the scene of the washing of the feet, and Jesus crucifixion takes place the next day on Passover eve, when the lambs are being slaughtered ready for the Passover meal. So the good Shepherd in John is the one who lays down his life for the sheep.[x] Although the writer of Revelation is unlikely to be the same John who wrote the Gospel, there are, despite huge differences in style and philosophical approach, also theological links. While the shepherd in the Gospel becomes the Lamb, in Revelation the paradox turns full circle and the lamb becomes the shepherd.
John of the Apocalypse centers his concern in the new heaven and the new earth. His vision is all about the recreated universe.
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.
But his emphasis on the hereafter, which led to the medieval ideas of heaven and hell, has often led us to misinterpret John the evangelists meaning when he speaks of eternal life. Despite the use of the phrase in this morning’s gospel [xi], eternal life elsewhere for John, is a quality of life lived in the present in relationship with God. Jesus the Good Shepherd says:
I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. [xii]
Let me end my symphonic movement in words by returning to some more scriptural paradox. At the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." [xiii]
Being read as a simple instruction, this text has been the basis for much of the missionary work of Christians in the past two hundred years. It has also been the justification for the cultural, political and economic imperialism that the west has visited on the rest of the world in the same period.
But if we read our scriptures with an eye to the interwoven themes, we may notice that John has a very different idea. The risen Jesus says to his disciples:
"Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." [xiv]
Remember always that peace in the Bible means well-being, sufficiency, contentment with life and distributive justice in society. At the very end of the John’s Gospel, Jesus challenges Peter, not to go out, convert the world and impose obedience on people, but rather to feed the sheep and the lambs. We (and this means not just the professional pastors but the whole people of God) are to be the shepherds who bring the life of overflowing abundance to the world.
Part of this abundant life is the stretching of minds, which I have been suggesting is what our whole scriptures are about. But there are and always have been a whole lot of people out there, in the world and in some cases, in here in the church, who have no great fervor for having their minds stretched. So, as Jesus also reminds Peter, we should not expect the task of pastoring to be easy. The shepherd is also the lamb, and Peter will be taken off, his hands bound, to face a repeat of his master’s death. [xv]
It would be so much easier if the Bible were a collection of simple instructions, facts and literal meanings. Then we wouldn’t have to stretch our minds, and we wouldn’t be call to stretch others’ minds. Our lives as pastors would be much easier.
But as I read the scriptures, that is not how it is!
[i] Aspects of the formulation of my thoughts in this sermon have come from my reading of God and Empire, Jesus against Rome, Then and Now, John Dominic Crossan, HarpurSanFrancisco, 2007 and also of an unpublished paper by the Rev Dr Patricia Kirkpatrick.
[ii] Revelation 7:17
[iii] Mark 10:25
[iv] Luke 9:50
[v] Luke 11:23
[vi] Micah 4:3 cp Isaiah 2:4
[vii] Joel 3:10
[viii] John 10:28-29
[ix] John 1:29
[x] John 10:11
[xi] John 10:28b
[xii] John 10:10b
[xiii] Matthew 28:19-20
[xiv] John 20:21
[xv] John 21:18-19