Who Am I Now? 5.3.20

Who Am I Now?

A Homily on John 10:1-18 and Psalm 23
by Griff Martin

For Good Shepherd Sunday  (and the Eighth Sunday of Online Worship)

May 3, 2020 

*This document comes from an oral manuscript.

Preaching always happens in context… this is the lesson that is coming most alive to me these days. Scripture reads differently these days and is coming alive in new ways. Before this Easter season I had never paid attention to how often in all of these resurrection and post Easter stories, the disciples are hiding in a locked room. Before this Easter I had never paid much attention at all to Jesus’ command “do not touch me.” Before the past 8 Sundays, I don’t think the word quarantine or pandemic had ever appeared in a sermon I preached and I am certain COVID19 had not. 

But that is the reality of this day… and if preaching does not speak to the reality of this day, then what does it do? It’s why sermons don’t do well as leftovers, what spoke last time you preached this text should sound different this time because the world has changed because that is the nature of the world and because you and me and our community has changed because that is what we do… we learn, we grow, we do some things better, we do some things worse and we react to the bigger world around us. 

Preaching happens in context… and this is true for Jesus’ preaching as well. 

It’s the fourth Sunday of Easter and each year on the 4th Sunday of Easter we have what is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. And each year on this 4th Sunday following Easter we have the same Gospel text, John 10, one of Jesus’ sermons.

And it happens in context and we often forget that context which leaves us with a truly bizarre sermon where Jesus goes to a long length to compare himself to a shepherd to a bunch of fisherman who are not shepherds. And then we all try to hear that sermon as a bunch of people who are not shepherds. 

And I have to tell you, reading Jesus’ sermon in our context this week I kept thinking, I can’t think of anything less relevant than this bizarre shepherd sermon in these bizarre times. 

And then I remembered the truth of John 10, which is there was originally not John 10. John did not sit down and number his story into sentences and verses. That does not happen until the 13th century for chapters and 16th century for verses. This was done for efficiency and ease, which are not theological virtues and the divisions have really caused more headache and separated that which was never meant to be separated.

Our text today is one of those, the division between 9 and 10 divides that which should not be divided. John 10 continues the sermon that Jesus has just begun in John 9. So we have to read this sermon in context of that. 

This is the story of the blind man who is healed. Jesus is going along the road and he sees a blind man and Jesus heals him by spitting in the ground and telling him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. The man does so and can see. He goes from being the blind man to the one who was blind. The neighbors are all confused and this begins a real scene and it’s not long before the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees are called in and they are not sure what is going on.

What everyone knows is that something they thought was a constant… The blind man being blind… had changed, and there was no reasonable explanation for it and no one could make sense of it, including the man’s parents. And the religious leaders were already out for Jesus because he was saying things that made them and the political powers of the day extremely upset because they were being called out and thus looking for any way to trap him. 

Eventually the blind man, who has done nothing but have his sight restored, is run out of the temple. 

And Jesus has been absent in all of this.

Until the man is thrown out of the temple and the minute the healed man is thrown out of the temple, Jesus finds him. Because that is what Jesus does, Jesus stays pretty close to the exit doors to accept those the church won’t accept. 

The man can’t place Jesus because he never saw Jesus. So Jesus introduces himself. He begins with stating he is the one who helps the blind to see and then glancing over at the Pharisees who have left the temple for the Parking Lot Meeting after the Meeting but walk out to find Jesus and this man talking, which of course gathers a crowd. Jesus says to the blind man, "I am the one who helps the blind to see," and then to the Pharisees, "and the one who reminds others how blind they truly are."

Right there Jesus gives a brilliant take on the story… One comes to see and a lot of others go blind. 

And then Jesus continues, explaining who he is and that explanation is the John 10 text, that explanation is the Good Shepherd sermon. This sermon is the end of the story that started in chapter 9, it’s not as if out the blue Jesus says, “hey I am the Good Shepherd.”

Now, shepherd is still a very odd phrase. The disciples are fishermen, the religious leaders are city people, this takes place in a busy city… no one around in this scene is a shepherd and Jesus typically uses brilliant metaphors that people around Jesus understand. To the fisherman he speaks of fish, to the parents he speaks of households, to the farmers he speaks of trees and plows. 

And this instance he uses an image that is completely out of place unless he knows who he is speaking to and knows that those who are religious leaders, who he has very much given the side eye to in this text, they know the First Book and they know all the imagery of shepherds… from David to Ezekiel to the 23 Psalm (the Lord is my shepherd). 

They know through the stories and Psalms that shepherds were roles of care, that shepherds knew their sheep, there was an emotional connection that was beautiful and real. It was based on care and community, belonging together, being together. 

And yet theses same religious leaders are looking for a Christ who is a King, a powerful figure, wealthy in worldly good and power, one who inspires fear, who rules with an iron fist, who makes demands, a strong leader who is powerful. 

And they are looking for the wrong thing. 

The Lord is my shepherd, the Lord is standing right in front of them and they are missing it.

I think too often we paint the story of the Gospel with Jesus as the hero and the Pharisees as the villains. And Jesus did not come to give us a story with a hero and a villain. They aren’t villains, they just missed everything because their egos were so driven by power and control, by what they thought they knew and what they selfishly wanted, which means they are us.

And this brilliant story gives us a chance to redeem that…. This story starts off with Jesus unknown by the blind man and characterized poorly by this entire group and then in the story everything they know changes when a blind man receives his sight and Jesus in all his grace offers them a chance in the new normal to know him better, to know him as the Good Shepherd who is there to give abundant full life. 

This is a move Jesus uses over and over in the Gospels…. Things are this way, then things are this way and in the midst of that is the opportunity to know Jesus fuller and truer. 

And that is not entirely a Jesus thing…. It’s a crisis thing, crisis always gives us the opportunity to take an inventory of what we believe, what we live, what we know. We have all been through that, life knocks us down and when we get back up amazingly we seem to be only carrying the essentials, the knock down gave us a chance to let go of things we had been carrying that we never should have carried in the first place.

We are in the middle of a knock down right now… this COVID19 pandemic is giving us a pretty huge knock down and we are starting to hear murmurs about what life will look like on the other side and I think that is a pretty good opportunity for us all to ask the question Jesus is asking in this text, who do you say that I am? 

And who do you say that I am with your lips and who do you say that I am with your lives? 

I believe these days that we are living in and have been living in the past few years are the most important days any of us will ever live in terms of the future of the church and Christianity. I believe for too long the church has fallen for a poor version of Jesus and we have gone back to the Pharisees model of Jesus as king, Jesus as power and in return we have tried to get as much power and wealth as possible. 

Which might mean Jesus is right outside our doors and we have missed him. 

And this time, as we are looking to begin creating a new normal because that is all we have now is a new normal… when life returns things are going to be different, no question… so as we prepare for that new normal, we are being given the grace of the opportunity to have Jesus ask us, who do you say that I am? 

And how do you say that with your wallet, with your generosity, with your schedule, with your priorities, with your friends, with your family, with those who live outside your church, with those who share pews with you?

It’s a chance to remind ourselves that Jesus never said I am the good king and you should build a big kingdom. Christianity was never about that. Jesus said I am the Good Shepherd, I am the one who came so that all may have life abundantly.

And right now we have a chance to get our lives, our church, our faith back to the Good Shepherd who loves and cares for all.  And it really is that simple… It’s not about power or prestige or popularity, it’s about love for all. 

Christianity can be read as the history of us trying to tame Christ, to make Christ into who we want Christ to be… God maybe this time we can give that up, we can realize that never worked and it’s never going to work and instead we could let the Good Shepherd make us into who Jesus wants us to be. 

This week I heard Dr. Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon General, interviewed and he talked about his daily prayer: that he would think, do and say things that tilt the world to love. This is Good Shepherd talk… love and fullness for all, no exceptions and no exemptions. Yourself included, but so is everyone else. 

The story starts off with things this way, then things are this way, and at the end Jesus says, "but I am this way."

I think the same thing is happening today, things were this way and now things are going to be that way and we have Jesus saying again, "but I am this way."

I am the Good Shepherd, I am the one who wants abundant full life for all. Will you join me? 

Amen and Amen. 

*artwork: Jesus the Good Shepherd by Jyoti Sahi