How puzzlingly out of place today’s Gospel appears; out of place because for the past three Sundays, since Easter Day, we have been reading from the post-resurrection accounts of the Risen Lord appearing to his disciples. Today, however, we are brought back, via John’s Gospel, to the conclusion of Jesus’ public ministry, to the time preceding the events of his Passion. Jesus is in Jerusalem, at the Temple, for the Feast of Dedication (10.22). Accusers close in around him, “…`If you are the Christ’ [they say,]…`tell us…’” (10.24).
Two questions arise. What is the Evangelist seeking to accomplish in this confrontational account where doubt/unbelief, much like that voiced by the Apostle Thomas in the upper room and standing before the Risen Christ (20.19ff), are pitted against Truth? And, why is the Church presenting this material to us in hindsight, as it were, during this season of Resurrection?
Let’s begin to answer those questions, first, by looking at the Feast of Dedication. What is it? The Feast of Dedication on the Jewish calendar commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in 164 BCE. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV had forbidden the Jews from practicing their religion and had forced them to worship Zeus, an altar to whom had been erected in the Temple, profaning it; much like the desecration of Notre Dame in Paris during the French Revolutionary period when the cathedral was secularized and declared “a temple of reason”. A Jewish revolt, led by Judas Maccabeus, successfully overthrows Antiochus. The Temple is rededicated. And, true worship of the God of Israel is restored. An eight day feast, which we know as Hanukkah, celebrates this event, where the impossible becomes possible. The festivities are marked with the lighting of lamps and joyful celebration in a feast which proclaims God’s triumphal re-entry into the life of Israel as its faithful savior and protector; the victory, in other words, of the One, True, and Living God, who again delivers His People from the perilous waters of apostasy and captivity to foreign powers and deities.
Therefore, what the Evangelist is doing today is a remarkable portrayal of Jesus in the light and understanding of this ancient feast, a feast well known and understood by the Jewish readers or hearers of the first century when today’s Gospel, the last one written (90 CE), was compiled. John, or whomever the author of this particular account may really be, in other words, is conveying the idea/teaching that Jesus is amongst us like Judas Maccabeus; which is to say, a leader called and empowered by God to be victorious in restoring true worship to Israel, and in so doing, turn the heart of a nation from idolatry back to the God who declares Himself to be the One God before whom there is and can be no other. But, unlike Maccabeus, Jesus is obviously, to us at least who know the entire Gospel story, someone greater.
The works Jesus performs, which is to say the teaching and signs of his ministry, particularly, forgiving sin and healing, he declares he does “…in his Father’s name” (10.25). This declaration of divine authority, what is also son-ship or his messianic status, is a proclamation/revelation of his unique and intimate unity with God, a disclosure met with disbelief, a scandal and blasphemy to the sensibilities of the religious authorities of the time, who will see Jesus convicted, condemned, and crucified. Furthermore, the author of today’s Gospel wants us to see that Jesus not only brings restoration of true worship to an unbelieving world, but he, because of the unity he shares with his Father, is actually the new Temple and the final, perfect sacrifice offered therein once and for all; his Passion and death, thereby, bringing into being a new People of God, a people Jesus refers to as “`my sheep…’’ (10.27): Christ being their shepherd (ref. 10.27). In Christ, today’s Gospel, therefore, tells us, God is doing something remarkably and radically new, rupturing both time and history in and through this God--man Jesus. God’s Word that brought creation into being is, in the Fourth Gospel, Christ made flesh, a mystery in which impossibility becomes possible. And, in restoration of the Truth about God, that Truth being that God is love, Jesus establishes this world’s re-creation, which is to say, the salvation of humankind by and through the saving Word of the Father; a mystery throughout John’s Gospel conveyed particularly in images of light and miraculous transformation/healing that pepper the text as signs and revelation of joyful Good News, an end time in which God is finally and fully amongst us in a new way, fulfilling the prophecies foretold long ago.
And, here, then as now, amidst a world of unbelief, is the Easter tie-in: that something new, that impossibility made possible, is in today’s Gospel voiced/promised by Jesus the Good Shepherd (10.11) of his sheep, “…I give them eternal life; and they shall never perish…’” (10.28). In other words, to the sheep of his fold, to those who hear his voice and follow him, which is to say, those who are faithful and walk in the ways he has shown us of mercy and forgiveness, Jesus promises life in a new dimension, what is termed eternal life. Only from eternity can eternity come, and eternity is Christ’s perfect unity with His Father! This is the promise/gift of Easter.
Furthermore, and as bonus good news, Jesus goes on to declare that no man can “…pluck…[his sheep] out of…[his] Father’s hand’” (10.29). In other words, the sheep of Christ’s fold, you and I, enjoy a special protection, one given by our good shepherd, who gives his life for his sheep. This protection is a blessing/gift of divine faithfulness and power over which no enemy, even death, may ultimately triumph, because as Christ puts it, “`I and my Father are one’” (10.30). This promise, based in the mystery of divine unity of Christ the Word of a new creation, and witnessed in Jesus’ self-offering through his passion and death, is the light of Christ resurrected. Today’s Gospel, I am saying, is Easter in a different guise, a foretelling/prophecy of the victory and triumph of the eternal kingdom of God now amongst us, amidst our doubt and unbelief, and now being more fully revealed in the people, places, things, and events of daily life and human history. This is also God’s judgment over a fallen world, captive to fear, violence, and death, but now redeemed in Christ and through him anointed with the breath of the Holy Spirit; a world whose powers are at last overturned and subverted, now shot through with God’s amazing grace, the essence of God’s being; Love. So the good news we hear veiled in today’s Gospel is intended for our comfort, our peace, because it is none other than the Easter proclamation of hope and salvation from the Incarnate and Crucified Son of God who has made our flesh and this world an intimate part of the Divine plan of Salvation by the God who has written His Holy Name upon the human heart and upon the creation itself, in the blood of the Cross; a claim that is made upon one and all, making us sons and daughters of the Living God, making of the kingdom of this world the kingdom of Heaven.
“But the heart…” [warns the prophet Jeremiah] “is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (17.9). Like the Temple in Jerusalem, Jeremiah reminds us that the heart, too, can be overtaken, captured, and turned to be an altar of false or idolatrous worship: a warning the Psalmist echoes, when he commands, “there shall no strange god be in thee neither shalt thou worship any other god” (81.10). Yet, that is the human predicament, precisely what happens and what we do. We are creatures whose hearts, like the altar of the Temple in Jerusalem under Antiochus, are sometimes overtaken by strange gods to whom we bow down and serve.
In Jerusalem of the second century BCE, the apostate god was Zeus. For us, what might these strange gods and altars of untruth be? Timothy Radcliffe, the Dominican writer, in his book, What is the Point of Being a Christian, says there are three idols worshipped in our culture: “…the cultivation of unlimited desire; the absolutization of private property; and the deification of money” (p. 145). Dutch theologian, Hans Kung, in his book, Signposts for the Future, answers the question somewhat differently, saying, “…money, pleasure, power, and success” (p. 40). James Allison, in his book, The Joy of Being Wrong, frames his answer to that question by saying human beings are captives of mimetic desire, which is to say, internally driven to have what they do not possess but see in another; a dynamic much like covetousness and acted out in exclusion, persecution, and in the extreme, murder/death. Whatever we term these false Gods/untruths to be, they deform our humanity, leading us further into fear, violence, and death as desperate and futile attempts to bring about life. Each of us, I think, gives our heart in part or in whole at times to untruths, sincerely, yet blindly held.
About this drift into unfaithfulness, Scripture tells us God simply lets us follow our “…own imaginations” (Ps 81.13); which is to say, God lets us have our disastrous and tragic consequences; our nightmares and desperate alienation, all being marks of life in the modern world. But, Christ tells us untruth/falsehood cannot create life anymore than death give life. And, fear and death are what was in the eyes and hearts of those whose unbelief accused and scape-goated Christ in today’s Gospel, just as death was in the eyes and heart of the mad gunman in Virginia; a distinction within us all that is only a matter of degrees or the cover of mental illness. But, in God, and we know this because of Christ, there is no fear, no death, only eternal love. And, this love, which is God’s Truth to make possible for us that which is impossible, is also the story and witness of the Cross of our Lord and God. In refusing the false Gods and false sacrifices of the kingdom of this world, I am saying, we turn in faith to Christ in order to discover a unity with God and with one anther in which we receive our fullest selves, our true and intended nature as creatures of a Heavenly Father. God, in other words, seeks our transfiguration, our transformation, our change into the vesture/armor of eternal life; clothing us with salvation so that we might be light/love unto a darkened and oft times unloving world!
Herein, I am reminded of one of the duties of the preacher; to state that God in this world and in our lifetime wants something more for us than fear and death, and something more from us than fear and death; all of which is to say, in either case, something greater than disfigurement.
Think of this expectation in the context of the Gospel. For example, frequently, our Lord refers to us as sheep. Sheep are sacrificial animals. That is their ancient and primary purpose, long before that of being lamb chops on our dinner table! Sheep in Israel are living offerings/blood sacrifices to God: Christ himself being not only the Shepherd of the sheep but also the Paschal lamb, the perfect and spotless sacrifice that marks the new exile of a new people of God. Sheep-hood, I am saying, is an identity we all share as Christians, something we have in common through our baptism. We are therefore sacrificial animals, an identity, which tells us about our purpose in God’s eyes and our spiritual need to keep our heart ready and available for God. Therefore, what God wants from us, God’s will for us, I am saying, is sacrifice; not blood, not murder, but a different understanding of the word, more in the context of surrender, mercy, and forgiveness – a spiritual death or yielding to God’s love; love as sacrifice. This strange death we must do daily, so that we might live differently than the way we have been living or differently than the way of the world, so that we might come to know the Power of God’s love, a power that works in us to do what we cannot accomplish by our selves, because it is a power that comes from what is eternal. God, we discover, wants us to let go of our fear, all those resentments and hurts, both small and great that clutter and fill our hearts, all those false gods of whatever name we serve, so that we may live in unity or fullness with Him, loving God, neighbor, and self as one, as His Son, Christ did. In this love, all that is imperfect is perfected. Old life is cast away and new life is received; what we call resurrected or eternal life. And, to live one’s life day by day in this faithfulness is to walk in a new creation, transfigured life, spiritual sobriety, if you will, and what Scripture terms the kingdom of heaven.
The Church teaches that Christ both is and brings this new creation through transfiguring love. The deathlessness of God opens heaven for us, because God is so completely other-ly loving than we are.
For example, a friend pulled me aside after the 9 AM liturgy a couple of Sundays ago, and said, “This new creation you talk about looks to me a lot like the old one.” Let me answer. True it does; for example, much like bread and wine at the Eucharist still look like ordinary bread and wine.
Herein, I am reminded of something said by Bonhoeffer, that “the kingdom of God is still in the dawning…” (p. 205, A Testament to Freedom, as quoted in A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 159). This is to say, that the good work God is doing is already here but not yet fully revealed, a mystery still hidden in God yet unfolding in the course of the people, places, things, and events of daily life and human history. Faith teaches us that at some points in our journey with God, we must simply take Christ at his Word, and let our hearts be comforted with that assurance which reminds us that some things are no longer as they superficially/externally appear to be; be that consecrated bread and wine, or the world that has been taken upon the cross by the Christ. As Christians, we believe that at the Resurrection God turned life inside-out once and for all time in an act of love for a world that is trying feverishly and frantically to live outside-in!
In Christ, God has revealed a new and living way, a way through fear, violence, and death - our ancient adversaries to whom we have so often given innocent blood in futile sacrifice, yet God is transfiguring all of this and each and all of us. The cross of the crucified one of God, is, I am saying, God’s promise of no bad news, only the need to turn our will and lives, our hearts, over to the Care of God, what the Church throughout the ages calls repentance, the mystery of Love from which true power can, does, and will come. I have known it. You have known it too. And, to experience it, is by the grace of God, to experience the power of Easter, something more than an empty tomb, a way of life in which Christ now lives in us. And, we must seek in this world to live more fully in him, walking in love as he loved us, sheep of his fold and keeping, joyful, that ultimately there can be no bad news because of the one who is “…the way…the truth…and the life…” (14.6), the one in whom and from whom Easter is eternally dawning!
To each of you; Blessed Eastertide.
