Fourth Sunday Of Easter
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle A
Object:
Theme For The Day
Jesus Christ promises us abundance, as a flowing river.
First Lesson
Acts 2:42-47
Glory Days Of The Early Church
Picking up where last week's first lesson left off, this week's selection begins with that famous one-sentence summary of the life of the early church: "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers" (v. 42). This was not all that different from the life of the synagogue in that era: the one, distinctively Christian addition being "the breaking of bread" -- the eucharistic celebration. "Awe came upon everyone" -- the Greek literally says, "fear" (phobos), indicating the close link between reverence and fear. The reason for this awe? The signs (semeia) and wonders (terata) being performed by the apostles (v. 43). Verses 44 and 45 have been much commented-on: How the early Christians "held everything in common" and distributed goods to any who were in need. The fact that the early church was expecting the imminent return of Christ surely made it easier for them to forgo the security of private property -- but even so, it was a remarkable achievement. Their lives were subject to a daily rhythm of time spent in the temple, and time "breaking bread" at home -- reflecting the fact that distinctively Christian worship, in these early days, took place in what we would now call a "house church" setting (v. 46). So evident was their piety that they had "the goodwill of all the people." The results were clear: day by day, the Lord added new members to the company of "those who were being saved" (v. 47). The progressive tense of "begin saved" is worth mentioning: salvation is a journey, not a destination. For modern people to ask the question, "Are you saved?" -- implying a static achievement, rather than an ongoing, lifelong process -- is to go against the spirit of the book of Acts.
New Testament Lesson
1 Peter 2:19-25
Enduring Suffering With Dignity
(Note: Those contemplating a sermon series on 1 Peter should be aware that this passage occurs out of sequential order; 1 Peter 2:2-10 occurs next Sunday.)
Omitting the difficult verse 18, which advises slaves to be deferential to their masters, the lectionary begins this didactic section abruptly with verse 19, teaching that it is a credit to believers if they can stoically endure pain at the hands of others. Without including verse 18 in the reading -- providing the context that this is an instruction directed to suffering slaves -- it is hard to do justice to the author's intent. Unlike the Pauline epistles' advice on slavery -- which is addressed, in a balanced fashion, to both slaves and masters (Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 3:22-4:1) -- the author of 1 Peter addresses only the slaves. Whether this is because he assumes there are no slaveowners in his audience, or whether he cannot imagine that a Christian could hold slaves, is unclear. It is hard to preach this passage in a society in which upward mobility is almost considered a civil right. In first-century Mediterranean culture, by contrast, remaining within one's inherited social stratum was considered a civic virtue. "If you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God's approval" (v. 20) -- such innocent suffering is after the example of Jesus Christ (verses 21-22). Because they move beyond the specific concerns of slaves to matters that concern all Christians, the latter verses of this passage provide more opportunities for preaching than the earlier ones. Verses 22-23 recall the Fourth Servant Song of Second Isaiah (Isaiah 52:13--53:12). Verse 24, often used in worship as an assurance of God's pardon, teaches of the redemptive power of the cross. Verse 25 is about a spiritual homecoming: lost sheep returning to the fold, penitent sinners returning to the embrace of a loving God.
The Gospel
John 10:1-10
The Shepherd And The Sheep
Jesus uses an everyday image familiar to a rural, Middle Eastern audience -- a sheepfold -- to speak of his own role in caring for, and protecting, believers. He shifts his metaphors several times throughout this extended discourse. In the first verses (1-6), he seems to have a communal sheepfold in mind -- one used by several local shepherds. During the day, the shepherds pasture their flocks on the hillsides, and at night -- when the risk of attack by wild animals is great -- they bring them together in the village sheepfold, a circular stone enclosure with a wooden gate. In the morning, the shepherds go down to the sheepfold, and the gatekeeper opens the gate to each one in turn. But how to separate the sheep, so each one goes with its own shepherd? That's easy: The sheep know their shepherd's voice and obediently follow him out of the sheepfold. In verses 7-10, the scene shifts from a communal sheepfold to a temporary one, high in the hills. This simple, stone enclosure is used by a single shepherd and his flock when they are too far away to return to the communal sheepfold outside the village. This rustic enclosure is no more than a circle of stones. In place of a wooden gate, the shepherd lies down across the opening at night literally becoming the gate for the sheep. Jesus says, "I am the gate" (v. 9). In verses 11-18 (beyond the range of this lectionary selection), the metaphor shifts yet again. Now, the shepherd is defending the sheep against a wolf's attack in the open country (the wolf could not "scatter" the sheep if they were still crowded inside a sheepfold). A hired hand would not likely offer such fierce resistance, not having a personal investment in the flock. Jesus does not identify himself as the good shepherd until verse 11. Looking at the discourse as a whole, it is not possible to identify Jesus too closely with any one of the shifting metaphors (the shepherd who knows his own, the gate, or the shepherd who defends his own). Jesus is all these things; the important conclusion is that, because of him, the sheep are safe and protected.
Preaching Possibilities
"I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." It's one of the more familiar sayings of Jesus. Abundant life -- it's what Jesus offers to those who follow him. It's the pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow, the prize toward which we are all striving.
Remember the sad story of Terri Schiavo? This unfortunate woman, comatose in a care facility, became the focus of a national debate over bioethics, as some family members tried to get permission to disconnect her life-support systems, while others opposed it. Some of us may remember the short video clip that was played on television in those days, seemingly endlessly: wandering eyes that hardly seemed to focus, the mouth a permanent grimace (or was it a smile?), physical reactions that might have been purposeful, but then again might have been random reflexes. Senator Bill Frist, a medical doctor, declared on the floor of the US Senate that -- based on his viewing of the video clip -- he was certain Terri Schiavo was conscious. Doctors on the scene, who had spent many hours examining her, were far less certain.
The debate focused the nation's attention on the question: What is life? One thing even the fiercest partisans on both sides of the debate could agree on was that the unfortunate Terry Schiavo's life was anything but abundant.
Once upon a time, the answer to the question, "What is life?" was easy to answer. Hold a mirror to the person's lips, feel for a pulse, look for signs of movement, or "quickening." It used to be there was no such thing as a "persistent vegetative state" -- in the absence of high-tech life-support equipment, such a state never persisted for very long. But now we have the ability to extend biological existence (or at least some shadowy remnant of it) with medical machinery. So now, it seems, all philosophical bets are off. The question "What is life?" now has dozens -- if not hundreds -- of possible answers.
So what does Jesus mean when he makes that promise: "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly"? The Greek word John uses for "abundance" means "overflowing to excess." Those who trust Jesus, it would seem, have so much life surging within them that it bubbles forth, flowing outward as a blessing to others.
This saying of his doesn't just come from left field. In the previous chapter, John's been telling a story of how Jesus healed a man born blind. It all begins when Jesus and his disciples happen upon a poor, miserable beggar -- which reminds them of a theological question: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
Jesus isn't especially interested in answering their question. He's far more interested in the blind man. He spits on the ground and makes a poultice of the wet mud. He applies the poultice to the man's eyes, then directs him to go to the pool of Siloam and wash the dried mud off. In no time at all, the man returns, announcing to all the world that he's been healed.
The townspeople are so unnerved by this experience, they disbelieve what their own eyes have seen. A lively debate breaks out among this man's friends and neighbors: is this the same man, or isn't he? They haul the former blind man before the local Pharisees to see what these experts have to say. The Pharisees, too, get distracted -- not by a debate over the man's true identity, but over the question of whether Jesus ought to have healed him at all because, don't you know, he made that poultice of mud on the sabbath! That's work. It's against the law of Moses.
The story gets even wilder. Some of the skeptics go, then, and seek out the man's parents. They want to make sure he really was born blind. Sure enough, he was. "So how come he can see?" they ask.
"Search us!" the clueless parents reply. "You ought to ask him!"
Well, they do ask him -- but when they hear what Jesus' patient has to say, they don't trust his answer. This man used to be blind. That means (according to their twisted, circular logic) he must have been some kind of terrible sinner. And if he's a sinner, how can we be sure he's telling the truth when he says he used to be blind?
Isn't that the way it so often is, when it comes to the wonders of this God-created world? Some people see. Others don't. Some make room in their hearts for miracles. Others seem determined to believe that life is not so abundant as all that.
Jesus, then, warns his disciples against this sort of cynicism. He tells them a little parable about sheep in a sheepfold. A sheepfold is a circular stone enclosure with a doorway at one end. The Middle Eastern shepherd brings the sheep into the sheepfold for the night, then lays down across the entrance to sleep, protecting them from wild beasts with his own body. "The good shepherd," Jesus teaches, "lays down his life for the sheep."
This is over and against some other, unsavory characters -- thieves and bandits, who are skulking around in the darkness, just beyond the circle of firelight. These shadowy figures threaten to break in and kill. Then there are the hired hands, who are hardly any better. The hired hands refuse to lie down across the sheepfold entrance. They decline to lay down their lives for the sheep. At the first sign of trouble, these untrustworthy farm workers can be counted upon to cut and run. They just don't have the compassionate vision of the good shepherd.
Over and against the vision of abundant life is a competing vision: a vision of scarcity. We live in a culture of scarcity. We do so, even though we are surrounded by material abundance far beyond the imaginings of most of the world's people. We pull up at the gas pump and groan over the soaring prices -- seldom realizing that, in Europe, gas costs twice as much, and in much of the Third World, transportation is strictly by foot or -- for the lucky ones -- by bicycle.
The teaching of Jesus is clear: Life abundant does not come from a multitude of possessions. Yet, the seductive voices of consumer culture are hard to resist. They whisper to us from a thousand advertising photos that barely register on our consciousness. They shout to us from a hundred television commercials that do. If we subject ourselves to their spiel long enough, we'll take those voices of unrequited desire into our hearts. Eventually, we'll come to believe they are our own voices, our own desires.
The late-medieval Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, once observed: "Spirituality has a lot more to do with subtraction than it does with addition." Paradoxically, that's the way it is with God's abundance. We need to let go of the trinkets we're grasping in our hands before we can stoop to pick up the treasure at our feet. It's not easy to do because the whole world is telling us we live in a time of scarcity, and the only way to survive it is by grasping hold of everything we can. But, do it we must. We've got to stop trying to dam God's great river of abundance. The only thing to do is to sit by its banks and let it flow.
Prayer For The Day
God of peace,
creator of the deep stillness at the heart of creation:
your grace murmurs in our hearts, like a gentle stream.
Your goodness and mercy follow us, all the days of our lives.
Help us to trust your goodness to be good,
and your mercy to be merciful.
Ease the worries and anxieties that trouble our spirits.
Help us to cherish the life you give,
and to know that, in Christ, it is life abundant. Amen.
To Illustrate
The French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry became famous for his novel, The Little Prince. What's not so well-known about him is that he was a pilot in the French Air Force during World War II, stationed in North Africa. During the long hours of waiting that are part of any soldier's life, Saint-Exupéry was able to get to know the local inhabitants of the desert, the Bedouin. He and his fellow pilots would try to impress them with the blessings of European technology. A few of them they even took up for short rides in their planes. But even this did not seem to impress the Bedouin.
There was only one thing that impressed them: and this impressed them to no end. Saint-Exupéry discovered what this thing was when he escorted three of the Bedouin back to his native France for a visit. He thought they would be impressed by the Eiffel Tower, or a steamship, or a railroad train -- but no. What truly impressed the Bedouin visitors was the natural world of the European continent.
These men were desert-dwellers. They had never in their lives seen trees -- other than date palms at an oasis. They had never laid eyes on a river, or on a snow-covered mountain. But these things they saw in abundance in the French Alps.
The most amazing site of all, to them, was a waterfall, flowing forth from the side of a mountain. They gazed upon it in wonder, plunging their hands into its flow, again and again. These desert-dwell-ers, used to riding their camels a dozen miles just to fill their canteens, could not get over the sight of a cascade of water that never ended. Here is how Saint-Exupéry describes the scene:
"They stood in silence. Mute, solemn... gazing at the unfolding of a ceremonial mystery. That which came roaring out of the belly of the mountain was life itself... The flow of a single second would have resuscitated whole caravans that, mad with thirst, had pressed on into the eternity of salt lakes and mirages. Here God was manifesting himself: It would not do to turn one's back on him."
The time came for them to leave that place, but the Bedouin refused. To do so would not honor the wondrous miracle God had wrought before their very eyes. They were certain that, if they just waited long enough, the waterfall would finally give out -- that "God would grow weary of his madness." Their guide finally told them, in exasperation, that this waterfall had flowed from the side of that very mountain for a thousand years -- and was not about to stop flowing for them now.
That's the way it is when you live in a culture of scarcity. When true abundance looks you in the face, you just can't believe it. You can't take it all in. You try to second-guess God, the giver of every good and perfect gift.
-- Source: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, p. 143; quoted by Belden Lane in The Solace of Fierce Landscapes (Oxford, 1998), pp. 203-204
***
Wendell Berry has a novel called Jayber Crow. It's the life story of a rural Kentucky man, told in his own words. The narrative of the story covers most of the twentieth century. By the time this small-town barber and gravedigger retires, to live in a humble fishing shack by the side of a river, the calendar's moved forward almost to our own time.
Jayber spends a good deal of time just sitting by the side of the river, watching it flow. His needs are simple -- he doesn't even have indoor plumbing in his house -- but he's happy. He rows out into the river on a summer's day, sets his fishing lines, catches enough for dinner and a few to give away to his friends, and feels his life is complete. God has fed him from the abundance of creation.
But Jayber's aware his laid-back perspective on life is not the only one. There's another perspective out there. Listen, as Wendell Berry describes it, in Jayber's own words:
"It might seem to you that living in the woods on a riverbank would remove you from the modern world. But not if the river is navigable, as ours is. On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work.
This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for -- or maybe even see -- an old man in a rowboat raising his lines.
The fishermen have the fastest boats of all. Their boats scarcely touch the water. They have much equipment, thousands of dollars worth. They can't fish in one place for fear that there are more fish in another place. For rest they have a perfect restlessness.
I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. 'Buy a car,' it says, 'and be free. Buy a boat and be free. Buy a beer and be free.' Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself?
-- Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (New York: Counterpoint, 2000), pp. 331-332
***
The relationship between Palestinian shepherds and their sheep is a very special one, even to this day. It is close and intimate in ways that are hard for us to imagine. The shepherd "calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." The shepherd leads them by walking ahead of them. Trusting their shepherd implicitly, the sheep follow.
That is not the way sheep are herded in many parts of the world. In Scotland, the famous border collies do the job, running around and around the herd, barking and nipping at their legs. In the wide-open spaces of the American west, some shepherds operate by helicopter, frightening the sheep with the drone and draft of the rotor blades. Yet that's not how it was in Jesus' day. The shepherds led their sheep by walking ahead of them.
This is still true in Palestine today. There once was a busload of tourists, traveling through Israel. Their Arab guide had just finished telling the visitors about how the Palestinian shepherd always walks ahead of the flock, when one of them looked out the window and saw a man driving a herd of sheep with a large, menacing-looking stick. Delighted with the opportunity to be one-up on the guide, he pointed out what he saw.
The guide immediately stopped the bus, bounded down the steps, and ran over to the man with the stick. The passengers could see the two men talking, waving their hands in the air. Finally, their guide turned and walked back to the bus, a big grin on his face.
Once aboard, the guide turned to the tourists and proclaimed in triumph, "I have just spoken to the man. Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to know that he is not the shepherd. He is the butcher."
***
When Christian missionaries first came to the arctic regions of Alaska, they struggled to tell the Christian story to the Inuit people, the ones they called "Eskimos." It was no easy task because life in Bible times was so different from anything in the Inuit experience. The story of the good shepherd posed particular problems, for none of the Inuit had ever seen a sheep. Finally, one of the missionaries learned of a strange and noble practice of the Inuit people that communicated this truth.
In times of severe famine, in the endless, dark days of arctic winter, it sometimes happened that a brave young man would go off across the ice, armed only with a pointed stick. He would walk until he encountered a polar bear, the deadliest animal of the arctic. The hunter would do whatever he could to provoke the bear to anger. Finally, the bear would rear up on its hind legs and raise its deadly claws to strike. At that moment, the hunter would set the blunt end of his pointed stick in the ground, and brace it against his foot. When the full weight of the bear fell down upon him, it also came down upon the stick. Pierced through the heart, the bear was sure to die -- but not before it had the opportunity to finish off the hunter.
The next day, the villagers would follow the hunter's tracks, until they came to the place where the two bodies lay -- the bear's and the one who had slain it. And in the frozen bear meat they would find enough food to survive the famine.
It is this story the missionaries used to tell the parable of the good shepherd. And that is how the story of the good shepherd became, in the Inuit language, "the story of the good hunter."
Jesus Christ promises us abundance, as a flowing river.
First Lesson
Acts 2:42-47
Glory Days Of The Early Church
Picking up where last week's first lesson left off, this week's selection begins with that famous one-sentence summary of the life of the early church: "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers" (v. 42). This was not all that different from the life of the synagogue in that era: the one, distinctively Christian addition being "the breaking of bread" -- the eucharistic celebration. "Awe came upon everyone" -- the Greek literally says, "fear" (phobos), indicating the close link between reverence and fear. The reason for this awe? The signs (semeia) and wonders (terata) being performed by the apostles (v. 43). Verses 44 and 45 have been much commented-on: How the early Christians "held everything in common" and distributed goods to any who were in need. The fact that the early church was expecting the imminent return of Christ surely made it easier for them to forgo the security of private property -- but even so, it was a remarkable achievement. Their lives were subject to a daily rhythm of time spent in the temple, and time "breaking bread" at home -- reflecting the fact that distinctively Christian worship, in these early days, took place in what we would now call a "house church" setting (v. 46). So evident was their piety that they had "the goodwill of all the people." The results were clear: day by day, the Lord added new members to the company of "those who were being saved" (v. 47). The progressive tense of "begin saved" is worth mentioning: salvation is a journey, not a destination. For modern people to ask the question, "Are you saved?" -- implying a static achievement, rather than an ongoing, lifelong process -- is to go against the spirit of the book of Acts.
New Testament Lesson
1 Peter 2:19-25
Enduring Suffering With Dignity
(Note: Those contemplating a sermon series on 1 Peter should be aware that this passage occurs out of sequential order; 1 Peter 2:2-10 occurs next Sunday.)
Omitting the difficult verse 18, which advises slaves to be deferential to their masters, the lectionary begins this didactic section abruptly with verse 19, teaching that it is a credit to believers if they can stoically endure pain at the hands of others. Without including verse 18 in the reading -- providing the context that this is an instruction directed to suffering slaves -- it is hard to do justice to the author's intent. Unlike the Pauline epistles' advice on slavery -- which is addressed, in a balanced fashion, to both slaves and masters (Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 3:22-4:1) -- the author of 1 Peter addresses only the slaves. Whether this is because he assumes there are no slaveowners in his audience, or whether he cannot imagine that a Christian could hold slaves, is unclear. It is hard to preach this passage in a society in which upward mobility is almost considered a civil right. In first-century Mediterranean culture, by contrast, remaining within one's inherited social stratum was considered a civic virtue. "If you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God's approval" (v. 20) -- such innocent suffering is after the example of Jesus Christ (verses 21-22). Because they move beyond the specific concerns of slaves to matters that concern all Christians, the latter verses of this passage provide more opportunities for preaching than the earlier ones. Verses 22-23 recall the Fourth Servant Song of Second Isaiah (Isaiah 52:13--53:12). Verse 24, often used in worship as an assurance of God's pardon, teaches of the redemptive power of the cross. Verse 25 is about a spiritual homecoming: lost sheep returning to the fold, penitent sinners returning to the embrace of a loving God.
The Gospel
John 10:1-10
The Shepherd And The Sheep
Jesus uses an everyday image familiar to a rural, Middle Eastern audience -- a sheepfold -- to speak of his own role in caring for, and protecting, believers. He shifts his metaphors several times throughout this extended discourse. In the first verses (1-6), he seems to have a communal sheepfold in mind -- one used by several local shepherds. During the day, the shepherds pasture their flocks on the hillsides, and at night -- when the risk of attack by wild animals is great -- they bring them together in the village sheepfold, a circular stone enclosure with a wooden gate. In the morning, the shepherds go down to the sheepfold, and the gatekeeper opens the gate to each one in turn. But how to separate the sheep, so each one goes with its own shepherd? That's easy: The sheep know their shepherd's voice and obediently follow him out of the sheepfold. In verses 7-10, the scene shifts from a communal sheepfold to a temporary one, high in the hills. This simple, stone enclosure is used by a single shepherd and his flock when they are too far away to return to the communal sheepfold outside the village. This rustic enclosure is no more than a circle of stones. In place of a wooden gate, the shepherd lies down across the opening at night literally becoming the gate for the sheep. Jesus says, "I am the gate" (v. 9). In verses 11-18 (beyond the range of this lectionary selection), the metaphor shifts yet again. Now, the shepherd is defending the sheep against a wolf's attack in the open country (the wolf could not "scatter" the sheep if they were still crowded inside a sheepfold). A hired hand would not likely offer such fierce resistance, not having a personal investment in the flock. Jesus does not identify himself as the good shepherd until verse 11. Looking at the discourse as a whole, it is not possible to identify Jesus too closely with any one of the shifting metaphors (the shepherd who knows his own, the gate, or the shepherd who defends his own). Jesus is all these things; the important conclusion is that, because of him, the sheep are safe and protected.
Preaching Possibilities
"I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." It's one of the more familiar sayings of Jesus. Abundant life -- it's what Jesus offers to those who follow him. It's the pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow, the prize toward which we are all striving.
Remember the sad story of Terri Schiavo? This unfortunate woman, comatose in a care facility, became the focus of a national debate over bioethics, as some family members tried to get permission to disconnect her life-support systems, while others opposed it. Some of us may remember the short video clip that was played on television in those days, seemingly endlessly: wandering eyes that hardly seemed to focus, the mouth a permanent grimace (or was it a smile?), physical reactions that might have been purposeful, but then again might have been random reflexes. Senator Bill Frist, a medical doctor, declared on the floor of the US Senate that -- based on his viewing of the video clip -- he was certain Terri Schiavo was conscious. Doctors on the scene, who had spent many hours examining her, were far less certain.
The debate focused the nation's attention on the question: What is life? One thing even the fiercest partisans on both sides of the debate could agree on was that the unfortunate Terry Schiavo's life was anything but abundant.
Once upon a time, the answer to the question, "What is life?" was easy to answer. Hold a mirror to the person's lips, feel for a pulse, look for signs of movement, or "quickening." It used to be there was no such thing as a "persistent vegetative state" -- in the absence of high-tech life-support equipment, such a state never persisted for very long. But now we have the ability to extend biological existence (or at least some shadowy remnant of it) with medical machinery. So now, it seems, all philosophical bets are off. The question "What is life?" now has dozens -- if not hundreds -- of possible answers.
So what does Jesus mean when he makes that promise: "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly"? The Greek word John uses for "abundance" means "overflowing to excess." Those who trust Jesus, it would seem, have so much life surging within them that it bubbles forth, flowing outward as a blessing to others.
This saying of his doesn't just come from left field. In the previous chapter, John's been telling a story of how Jesus healed a man born blind. It all begins when Jesus and his disciples happen upon a poor, miserable beggar -- which reminds them of a theological question: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
Jesus isn't especially interested in answering their question. He's far more interested in the blind man. He spits on the ground and makes a poultice of the wet mud. He applies the poultice to the man's eyes, then directs him to go to the pool of Siloam and wash the dried mud off. In no time at all, the man returns, announcing to all the world that he's been healed.
The townspeople are so unnerved by this experience, they disbelieve what their own eyes have seen. A lively debate breaks out among this man's friends and neighbors: is this the same man, or isn't he? They haul the former blind man before the local Pharisees to see what these experts have to say. The Pharisees, too, get distracted -- not by a debate over the man's true identity, but over the question of whether Jesus ought to have healed him at all because, don't you know, he made that poultice of mud on the sabbath! That's work. It's against the law of Moses.
The story gets even wilder. Some of the skeptics go, then, and seek out the man's parents. They want to make sure he really was born blind. Sure enough, he was. "So how come he can see?" they ask.
"Search us!" the clueless parents reply. "You ought to ask him!"
Well, they do ask him -- but when they hear what Jesus' patient has to say, they don't trust his answer. This man used to be blind. That means (according to their twisted, circular logic) he must have been some kind of terrible sinner. And if he's a sinner, how can we be sure he's telling the truth when he says he used to be blind?
Isn't that the way it so often is, when it comes to the wonders of this God-created world? Some people see. Others don't. Some make room in their hearts for miracles. Others seem determined to believe that life is not so abundant as all that.
Jesus, then, warns his disciples against this sort of cynicism. He tells them a little parable about sheep in a sheepfold. A sheepfold is a circular stone enclosure with a doorway at one end. The Middle Eastern shepherd brings the sheep into the sheepfold for the night, then lays down across the entrance to sleep, protecting them from wild beasts with his own body. "The good shepherd," Jesus teaches, "lays down his life for the sheep."
This is over and against some other, unsavory characters -- thieves and bandits, who are skulking around in the darkness, just beyond the circle of firelight. These shadowy figures threaten to break in and kill. Then there are the hired hands, who are hardly any better. The hired hands refuse to lie down across the sheepfold entrance. They decline to lay down their lives for the sheep. At the first sign of trouble, these untrustworthy farm workers can be counted upon to cut and run. They just don't have the compassionate vision of the good shepherd.
Over and against the vision of abundant life is a competing vision: a vision of scarcity. We live in a culture of scarcity. We do so, even though we are surrounded by material abundance far beyond the imaginings of most of the world's people. We pull up at the gas pump and groan over the soaring prices -- seldom realizing that, in Europe, gas costs twice as much, and in much of the Third World, transportation is strictly by foot or -- for the lucky ones -- by bicycle.
The teaching of Jesus is clear: Life abundant does not come from a multitude of possessions. Yet, the seductive voices of consumer culture are hard to resist. They whisper to us from a thousand advertising photos that barely register on our consciousness. They shout to us from a hundred television commercials that do. If we subject ourselves to their spiel long enough, we'll take those voices of unrequited desire into our hearts. Eventually, we'll come to believe they are our own voices, our own desires.
The late-medieval Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, once observed: "Spirituality has a lot more to do with subtraction than it does with addition." Paradoxically, that's the way it is with God's abundance. We need to let go of the trinkets we're grasping in our hands before we can stoop to pick up the treasure at our feet. It's not easy to do because the whole world is telling us we live in a time of scarcity, and the only way to survive it is by grasping hold of everything we can. But, do it we must. We've got to stop trying to dam God's great river of abundance. The only thing to do is to sit by its banks and let it flow.
Prayer For The Day
God of peace,
creator of the deep stillness at the heart of creation:
your grace murmurs in our hearts, like a gentle stream.
Your goodness and mercy follow us, all the days of our lives.
Help us to trust your goodness to be good,
and your mercy to be merciful.
Ease the worries and anxieties that trouble our spirits.
Help us to cherish the life you give,
and to know that, in Christ, it is life abundant. Amen.
To Illustrate
The French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry became famous for his novel, The Little Prince. What's not so well-known about him is that he was a pilot in the French Air Force during World War II, stationed in North Africa. During the long hours of waiting that are part of any soldier's life, Saint-Exupéry was able to get to know the local inhabitants of the desert, the Bedouin. He and his fellow pilots would try to impress them with the blessings of European technology. A few of them they even took up for short rides in their planes. But even this did not seem to impress the Bedouin.
There was only one thing that impressed them: and this impressed them to no end. Saint-Exupéry discovered what this thing was when he escorted three of the Bedouin back to his native France for a visit. He thought they would be impressed by the Eiffel Tower, or a steamship, or a railroad train -- but no. What truly impressed the Bedouin visitors was the natural world of the European continent.
These men were desert-dwellers. They had never in their lives seen trees -- other than date palms at an oasis. They had never laid eyes on a river, or on a snow-covered mountain. But these things they saw in abundance in the French Alps.
The most amazing site of all, to them, was a waterfall, flowing forth from the side of a mountain. They gazed upon it in wonder, plunging their hands into its flow, again and again. These desert-dwell-ers, used to riding their camels a dozen miles just to fill their canteens, could not get over the sight of a cascade of water that never ended. Here is how Saint-Exupéry describes the scene:
"They stood in silence. Mute, solemn... gazing at the unfolding of a ceremonial mystery. That which came roaring out of the belly of the mountain was life itself... The flow of a single second would have resuscitated whole caravans that, mad with thirst, had pressed on into the eternity of salt lakes and mirages. Here God was manifesting himself: It would not do to turn one's back on him."
The time came for them to leave that place, but the Bedouin refused. To do so would not honor the wondrous miracle God had wrought before their very eyes. They were certain that, if they just waited long enough, the waterfall would finally give out -- that "God would grow weary of his madness." Their guide finally told them, in exasperation, that this waterfall had flowed from the side of that very mountain for a thousand years -- and was not about to stop flowing for them now.
That's the way it is when you live in a culture of scarcity. When true abundance looks you in the face, you just can't believe it. You can't take it all in. You try to second-guess God, the giver of every good and perfect gift.
-- Source: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, p. 143; quoted by Belden Lane in The Solace of Fierce Landscapes (Oxford, 1998), pp. 203-204
***
Wendell Berry has a novel called Jayber Crow. It's the life story of a rural Kentucky man, told in his own words. The narrative of the story covers most of the twentieth century. By the time this small-town barber and gravedigger retires, to live in a humble fishing shack by the side of a river, the calendar's moved forward almost to our own time.
Jayber spends a good deal of time just sitting by the side of the river, watching it flow. His needs are simple -- he doesn't even have indoor plumbing in his house -- but he's happy. He rows out into the river on a summer's day, sets his fishing lines, catches enough for dinner and a few to give away to his friends, and feels his life is complete. God has fed him from the abundance of creation.
But Jayber's aware his laid-back perspective on life is not the only one. There's another perspective out there. Listen, as Wendell Berry describes it, in Jayber's own words:
"It might seem to you that living in the woods on a riverbank would remove you from the modern world. But not if the river is navigable, as ours is. On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work.
This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for -- or maybe even see -- an old man in a rowboat raising his lines.
The fishermen have the fastest boats of all. Their boats scarcely touch the water. They have much equipment, thousands of dollars worth. They can't fish in one place for fear that there are more fish in another place. For rest they have a perfect restlessness.
I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. 'Buy a car,' it says, 'and be free. Buy a boat and be free. Buy a beer and be free.' Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself?
-- Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (New York: Counterpoint, 2000), pp. 331-332
***
The relationship between Palestinian shepherds and their sheep is a very special one, even to this day. It is close and intimate in ways that are hard for us to imagine. The shepherd "calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." The shepherd leads them by walking ahead of them. Trusting their shepherd implicitly, the sheep follow.
That is not the way sheep are herded in many parts of the world. In Scotland, the famous border collies do the job, running around and around the herd, barking and nipping at their legs. In the wide-open spaces of the American west, some shepherds operate by helicopter, frightening the sheep with the drone and draft of the rotor blades. Yet that's not how it was in Jesus' day. The shepherds led their sheep by walking ahead of them.
This is still true in Palestine today. There once was a busload of tourists, traveling through Israel. Their Arab guide had just finished telling the visitors about how the Palestinian shepherd always walks ahead of the flock, when one of them looked out the window and saw a man driving a herd of sheep with a large, menacing-looking stick. Delighted with the opportunity to be one-up on the guide, he pointed out what he saw.
The guide immediately stopped the bus, bounded down the steps, and ran over to the man with the stick. The passengers could see the two men talking, waving their hands in the air. Finally, their guide turned and walked back to the bus, a big grin on his face.
Once aboard, the guide turned to the tourists and proclaimed in triumph, "I have just spoken to the man. Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to know that he is not the shepherd. He is the butcher."
***
When Christian missionaries first came to the arctic regions of Alaska, they struggled to tell the Christian story to the Inuit people, the ones they called "Eskimos." It was no easy task because life in Bible times was so different from anything in the Inuit experience. The story of the good shepherd posed particular problems, for none of the Inuit had ever seen a sheep. Finally, one of the missionaries learned of a strange and noble practice of the Inuit people that communicated this truth.
In times of severe famine, in the endless, dark days of arctic winter, it sometimes happened that a brave young man would go off across the ice, armed only with a pointed stick. He would walk until he encountered a polar bear, the deadliest animal of the arctic. The hunter would do whatever he could to provoke the bear to anger. Finally, the bear would rear up on its hind legs and raise its deadly claws to strike. At that moment, the hunter would set the blunt end of his pointed stick in the ground, and brace it against his foot. When the full weight of the bear fell down upon him, it also came down upon the stick. Pierced through the heart, the bear was sure to die -- but not before it had the opportunity to finish off the hunter.
The next day, the villagers would follow the hunter's tracks, until they came to the place where the two bodies lay -- the bear's and the one who had slain it. And in the frozen bear meat they would find enough food to survive the famine.
It is this story the missionaries used to tell the parable of the good shepherd. And that is how the story of the good shepherd became, in the Inuit language, "the story of the good hunter."
