Fourth Sunday of Easter
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle B
Revised Common
Acts 4:5-12
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18
Roman Catholic
Acts 4:8-12
1 John 3:1-2
John 10:11-18
Episcopal
Acts 4:(23-31) 32-37
1 John 3:1-8
John 10:11-16
Theme For The Day
Christ's call to discipleship is a call to sacrificial love.
Note: Those inclined to preach on either the Epistle or the Gospel Lesson would do well to look ahead in the lectionary. We are currently proceeding step-by-step through both the First Letter of John and the Gospel of John, and the texts chosen from both these books for the next several weeks are rather heavily focused on a single subject: love. Advance planning -- taking the form of either a sermon series or a balance among First Lesson, Epistle, and Gospel texts -- is advisable, to avoid repetition. Next Sunday -- which, in 2006, is Mother's Day in the United States -- is a day when a sermon on love may be especially appropriate. That may affect homiletical strategies for today.
First Lesson
Acts 4:5-12
Jesus, The Cornerstone
After attracting a great deal of attention through healings they have performed, Peter and John are brought before the council -- including Caiaphas, Annas, and others who condemned Jesus. They ask them by what name they have performed these wondrous works, and Peter resolutely replies that it is "by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead" (v. 10). He goes on to cite Psalm 118:22: "the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone." This stone, he declares, is Jesus Christ, and says of him that, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (v. 12).
New Testament Lesson
1 John 3:16-24
Love In Deed
The author has been speaking of "the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another" (v. 11). We know what true love is because Jesus laid down his life for us, and that example ought to lead us to do the same for others. Love that does not manifest itself in loving action is no love at all (v. 17). From the perspective of this letter, the gospel may be summed up in these words: "And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he has commanded us" (v. 23). John's is a down-to-earth, practical conception of love: don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk.
The Gospel
John 10:11-18
The Good Shepherd
"I am the good shepherd," says Jesus. "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (v. 11). Earlier, in verse 7, Jesus has said he is "the gate for the sheep" -- alluding to a common sort of semi-circular stone sheepfold enclosure, that had an opening across which the shepherd would lie at night, to protect the animals from predators. This is a homey, practical analogy that would have been familiar to many of Jesus' listeners. The shepherd who owns the flock naturally cares more for the individual sheep than does the hired hand, who is only earning a salary. When danger comes, the hired hand will typically run, while the shepherd will stay with the flock -- for "I know my own and my own know me ... And I lay down my life for the sheep" (v. 14). Verse 16 is somewhat cryptic, and has led to much scholarly discussion, particularly with regard to the relationship between Christianity and other world religions: "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd." It's possible that John shares these words of Jesus because he wants to make the point that there are other people who have not yet heard the gospel, but who will hear it in the future. The important point is that it is an all-inclusive message of welcome, which always ought to be the church's stance.
Preaching Possibilities
In the time of Jesus, sheep wandered all over the hillsides of what we now know as Palestine. Their shepherds, for the most part, journeyed with them. Each night, it was the shepherd's task to round the sheep up, herding them into a circular enclosure called a sheepfold. Now a sheepfold wasn't much to look at -- a low wall, and not much more. From within the sheepfold, the shepherd could look out, searching for enemies roundabout. From within the sheepfold, the sheep could feel secure.
Most sheepfolds didn't have doors. Doors would have been hard to maintain and would have interfered with the process of getting sheep in and out. The shepherd solved the problem with his own body, stretching himself across the opening as he lay down to sleep at night: "I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved...." It is a self-sacrificing role, this role of the shepherd.
There is a nagging voice within us that distrusts the idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice seems to run against the grain of our very culture. After all, doesn't the Declaration of Independence promise "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" (Where does sacrifice fit into that equation?) Didn't all those Depression-era children Tom Brokaw talks about in The Greatest Generation pretty much corner the market on sacrifice? And isn't this the era of self-actualization, of discovering our deepest potential, of nurturing the inner child? Self-sacrifice sounds awfully like that old psychological bogeyman called "co-dependence" -- which, we all know, is the bane of the human-potential movement.
Sacrifice does not mean trampling individuality under foot, nor does it mean subordinating our every desire to the dreams of another. It most certainly doesn't mean being a doormat. There's such a thing as true, selfless sacrifice, and co-dependence is certainly not an example of it.
There is a healthy kind of self-sacrifice that represents the human spirit at its very best. It's the sort of inner motivation that fuels the most exemplary human lives. "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep." It could just as well be, "I am the good teacher ... or the good nurse ... or the good parent ... or the good spouse ... or the good neighbor. I am the one who has taken it upon myself to look out for others: to nurture them, guide them, sustain them with love."
This gift of self is offered up not as the result of compulsion, but freely, willingly: "I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again."
Now there's a model of self-sacrifice that's anything but neurotic. It's the self-sacrifice of a healthy individual, who's counted the cost and who's prepared to pay it. May that person's tribe increase!
Prayer For The Day
We know, O God, that sometimes faith is a risk: and never does it feel more risky than in those moments when we feel called to give of ourselves, so others may live more fully. When such situations present themselves, help us to discover within ourselves a reservoir of courage, courage that comes from Christ himself: so we may follow in his way, bearing witness to what he has already done for us. Amen.
To Illustrate
For a certain boy named Bradley, age eight, an awareness of the meaning of sacrifice arrived one morning just before breakfast. Somehow, he had managed to slip under his mother's plate a folded piece of paper. It was a bill. Scrawled in crayon were these words: "Mother owes Bradley: for running errands, 25 cents, for being good, 10 cents, for taking piano lessons, 15 cents; for extras, 5 cents. Total, 55 cents."
Bradley's mother smiled when she saw the note, but said not a word. As he returned for lunch, Bradley discovered to his delight that at his place was a little pile of coins: 55 cents. He discovered something else, as well: another folded piece of paper. Opening it, he read, in his mother's handwriting, these words: "Bradley owes mother, for nursing him through the chicken pox, nothing; for being good to him, nothing; for clothes, shoes, and playthings, nothing; for his playroom, nothing; for his meals, nothing. Total, nothing."
Bradley got the point. He learned a valuable lesson that day, a lesson about love: that it has no price.
***
Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
***
A farmer named Bert -- from the "Northern Kingdom" of New England, from rural Maine -- traveled to the faraway metropolis of Boston. There he heard a lecture on socialism. To Bert, socialism sounded like a pretty good thing: everyone sharing with each other and helping each other out. He went back home and announced to his friend and neighbor, Harry, that he had become a socialist.
"So tell me what this socialism thing is, Bert," said Harry. Bert explained that it was all about sharing with each other and helping each other out.
"Let me see if I understand this. Are you saying that, if you had two farms, you'd give me one?"
"Sure," said Bert.
"If you had two pickup trucks, would you give me one?"
"Sure."
"If you had two hogs, would you give me one?"
Bert suddenly got red in the face and began looking at his shoes. "Now Harry," he said, "you know I've got two hogs!"
-- From a story told by Jack Stotts
***
Once an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, "What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?" "Oh," he said, "for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!" Whereupon I replied, "You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering -- to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her." He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of sacrifice.
-- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), p. 135
***
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in sight of all. Men will give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as if on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude.
Ê-- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
***
What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket when, of course, it is the cross.
-- Flannery O'Connor
Acts 4:5-12
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18
Roman Catholic
Acts 4:8-12
1 John 3:1-2
John 10:11-18
Episcopal
Acts 4:(23-31) 32-37
1 John 3:1-8
John 10:11-16
Theme For The Day
Christ's call to discipleship is a call to sacrificial love.
Note: Those inclined to preach on either the Epistle or the Gospel Lesson would do well to look ahead in the lectionary. We are currently proceeding step-by-step through both the First Letter of John and the Gospel of John, and the texts chosen from both these books for the next several weeks are rather heavily focused on a single subject: love. Advance planning -- taking the form of either a sermon series or a balance among First Lesson, Epistle, and Gospel texts -- is advisable, to avoid repetition. Next Sunday -- which, in 2006, is Mother's Day in the United States -- is a day when a sermon on love may be especially appropriate. That may affect homiletical strategies for today.
First Lesson
Acts 4:5-12
Jesus, The Cornerstone
After attracting a great deal of attention through healings they have performed, Peter and John are brought before the council -- including Caiaphas, Annas, and others who condemned Jesus. They ask them by what name they have performed these wondrous works, and Peter resolutely replies that it is "by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead" (v. 10). He goes on to cite Psalm 118:22: "the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone." This stone, he declares, is Jesus Christ, and says of him that, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (v. 12).
New Testament Lesson
1 John 3:16-24
Love In Deed
The author has been speaking of "the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another" (v. 11). We know what true love is because Jesus laid down his life for us, and that example ought to lead us to do the same for others. Love that does not manifest itself in loving action is no love at all (v. 17). From the perspective of this letter, the gospel may be summed up in these words: "And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he has commanded us" (v. 23). John's is a down-to-earth, practical conception of love: don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk.
The Gospel
John 10:11-18
The Good Shepherd
"I am the good shepherd," says Jesus. "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (v. 11). Earlier, in verse 7, Jesus has said he is "the gate for the sheep" -- alluding to a common sort of semi-circular stone sheepfold enclosure, that had an opening across which the shepherd would lie at night, to protect the animals from predators. This is a homey, practical analogy that would have been familiar to many of Jesus' listeners. The shepherd who owns the flock naturally cares more for the individual sheep than does the hired hand, who is only earning a salary. When danger comes, the hired hand will typically run, while the shepherd will stay with the flock -- for "I know my own and my own know me ... And I lay down my life for the sheep" (v. 14). Verse 16 is somewhat cryptic, and has led to much scholarly discussion, particularly with regard to the relationship between Christianity and other world religions: "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd." It's possible that John shares these words of Jesus because he wants to make the point that there are other people who have not yet heard the gospel, but who will hear it in the future. The important point is that it is an all-inclusive message of welcome, which always ought to be the church's stance.
Preaching Possibilities
In the time of Jesus, sheep wandered all over the hillsides of what we now know as Palestine. Their shepherds, for the most part, journeyed with them. Each night, it was the shepherd's task to round the sheep up, herding them into a circular enclosure called a sheepfold. Now a sheepfold wasn't much to look at -- a low wall, and not much more. From within the sheepfold, the shepherd could look out, searching for enemies roundabout. From within the sheepfold, the sheep could feel secure.
Most sheepfolds didn't have doors. Doors would have been hard to maintain and would have interfered with the process of getting sheep in and out. The shepherd solved the problem with his own body, stretching himself across the opening as he lay down to sleep at night: "I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved...." It is a self-sacrificing role, this role of the shepherd.
There is a nagging voice within us that distrusts the idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice seems to run against the grain of our very culture. After all, doesn't the Declaration of Independence promise "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" (Where does sacrifice fit into that equation?) Didn't all those Depression-era children Tom Brokaw talks about in The Greatest Generation pretty much corner the market on sacrifice? And isn't this the era of self-actualization, of discovering our deepest potential, of nurturing the inner child? Self-sacrifice sounds awfully like that old psychological bogeyman called "co-dependence" -- which, we all know, is the bane of the human-potential movement.
Sacrifice does not mean trampling individuality under foot, nor does it mean subordinating our every desire to the dreams of another. It most certainly doesn't mean being a doormat. There's such a thing as true, selfless sacrifice, and co-dependence is certainly not an example of it.
There is a healthy kind of self-sacrifice that represents the human spirit at its very best. It's the sort of inner motivation that fuels the most exemplary human lives. "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep." It could just as well be, "I am the good teacher ... or the good nurse ... or the good parent ... or the good spouse ... or the good neighbor. I am the one who has taken it upon myself to look out for others: to nurture them, guide them, sustain them with love."
This gift of self is offered up not as the result of compulsion, but freely, willingly: "I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again."
Now there's a model of self-sacrifice that's anything but neurotic. It's the self-sacrifice of a healthy individual, who's counted the cost and who's prepared to pay it. May that person's tribe increase!
Prayer For The Day
We know, O God, that sometimes faith is a risk: and never does it feel more risky than in those moments when we feel called to give of ourselves, so others may live more fully. When such situations present themselves, help us to discover within ourselves a reservoir of courage, courage that comes from Christ himself: so we may follow in his way, bearing witness to what he has already done for us. Amen.
To Illustrate
For a certain boy named Bradley, age eight, an awareness of the meaning of sacrifice arrived one morning just before breakfast. Somehow, he had managed to slip under his mother's plate a folded piece of paper. It was a bill. Scrawled in crayon were these words: "Mother owes Bradley: for running errands, 25 cents, for being good, 10 cents, for taking piano lessons, 15 cents; for extras, 5 cents. Total, 55 cents."
Bradley's mother smiled when she saw the note, but said not a word. As he returned for lunch, Bradley discovered to his delight that at his place was a little pile of coins: 55 cents. He discovered something else, as well: another folded piece of paper. Opening it, he read, in his mother's handwriting, these words: "Bradley owes mother, for nursing him through the chicken pox, nothing; for being good to him, nothing; for clothes, shoes, and playthings, nothing; for his playroom, nothing; for his meals, nothing. Total, nothing."
Bradley got the point. He learned a valuable lesson that day, a lesson about love: that it has no price.
***
Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
***
A farmer named Bert -- from the "Northern Kingdom" of New England, from rural Maine -- traveled to the faraway metropolis of Boston. There he heard a lecture on socialism. To Bert, socialism sounded like a pretty good thing: everyone sharing with each other and helping each other out. He went back home and announced to his friend and neighbor, Harry, that he had become a socialist.
"So tell me what this socialism thing is, Bert," said Harry. Bert explained that it was all about sharing with each other and helping each other out.
"Let me see if I understand this. Are you saying that, if you had two farms, you'd give me one?"
"Sure," said Bert.
"If you had two pickup trucks, would you give me one?"
"Sure."
"If you had two hogs, would you give me one?"
Bert suddenly got red in the face and began looking at his shoes. "Now Harry," he said, "you know I've got two hogs!"
-- From a story told by Jack Stotts
***
Once an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, "What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?" "Oh," he said, "for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!" Whereupon I replied, "You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering -- to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her." He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of sacrifice.
-- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), p. 135
***
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in sight of all. Men will give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as if on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude.
Ê-- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
***
What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket when, of course, it is the cross.
-- Flannery O'Connor
