Not a Hired Hand – 26 April 2015 – Fourth Sunday of Easter

If on this Sunday after the Resurrection you are a bit weary of talking about the Good Shepherd, try focusing on the Hired Hand who runs away. Ask: Who is that hired hand today? In every corner of the land – not just in sheep country – who is it? Who is turning his back on the vulnerable sheep? Who is arguing against safety nets for the hungry? Who does not want to contribute her riches to the commonwealth, the common good, the collective enterprise known as government or church or charity?

By giving a portrait of the hired hand, the preacher will be describing the tough realities of our social, economic, personal, familial, and political circumstances. In contrast to the hired hand, that Shepherd described in John's Gospel looks mighty good – one to whom we can safely give over our lives. 

In these two moves, the preacher will have laid down 1) the situation in which this world finds itself and 2) the hope for this world given to us by the risen one who is our trustworthy caretaker for all time.

John 10:11-18

Arguably one of the most famous passages of John’s gospel, Jesus’ identification of himself as the “good shepherd” follows the healing of the man born blind in chapter 9. In that story, the man comes to deeper and deeper insight about who Jesus is: He is a man (v 11); he is a prophet (v 17); he is from God (v 33); he is Lord (v 38). In chapter 10, Jesus adds to that knowledge and, in his description, Jesus echoes God’s identity as the shepherd of Israel in Ezekiel 34. But where God contrasts himself with the bad shepherds who did not pay heed when the sheep were attacked, Jesus adds the adjective “good” to his identity and contrasts himself with hired hands (those who are not the shepherds and care more for themselves than for the flock). In addition Jesus will gather sheep “that do not belong to this fold,” a reference to the gentile community, and “there will be one flock and one shepherd.” – Mary Katharine Deeley

The love of God in Christ Jesus keeps expanding. It is abundant, luscious, huge, enfolding.

In keeping with that love, the Acts account of the disciples points to Jesus as the true healer and 1 John focuses on the love that can abound because of God’s love. All of these readings contribute to a portrait of the fullness of this Good Shepherd who is not a mere hired hand (uninvolved, unconnected, uncaring, uncommitted) and could never be so small.

Acts 4:5-12

In the early life of the church, the apostles’ miracles were often sources of controversy, not because they healed people but because they insisted on attributing the miracle to Jesus and preaching him as already raised from the dead. The leaders of the synagogue considered such talk heretical. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead, but concluded that it would happen on the “day of the LORD” (Joel 2:1b) and would be the reward of the just and faithful Jew, certainly not to someone who had been branded a blasphemer. Other Jews, such as Sadducees among the leaders and elders described here, did not believe in resurrection of the dead at all, considering the concept to be utterly foreign to Mosaic Law. In addition, in verse 12, Peter flatly contradicts the Roman claim that the emperor is a source of salvation. Winning friends and influencing people was not the apostolic agenda. Proclaiming what they had seen and heard was. – Mary Katharine Deeley

1 John 3:16-24

The first letter of John challenged first-century Christians to connect the depth of their relationship with God with the depth of their love for one another. In John’s theology these two concepts are inseparable and those who think they can love God without loving their brother or sister are branded liars. The letter also corrects false ideas about Jesus that were circulating at the time—that Jesus was not the Christ or was not truly a man. For John, authentic love and moral behavior is known only in the context of the crucifixion and revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 John 3 points to the incarnation as proof of God’s love for us and exhorts everyone to be righteous as Jesus is righteous. – Mary Katharine Deeley

Mary Katharine Deeley, Ph.D., is the d­irector of Christ the Teacher Institute of the Sheil Catholic Center, the Roman Catholic campus ministry at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. She is the author of many books, a frequent speaker on diverse topics, and a pastoral advisor.

Homily Service 39, no. 6 (2006): 2-11.

Thomas – 12 April 2015 – Second Sunday of Easter

When a gifted former student of mine in worship and preaching, Pastor Mark Rigg––now serving a Lutheran (ELCA) church in Pennsylvania––preached this Gospel text one spring, he turned our attention away from Thomas’s inability to believe and toward noticing that Thomas receives faith from the Risen One. The story is told in such a way that Christ appears already knowing Thomas’s announcement that he wants to see and feel the marks of Jesus’ suffering.

Jesus invites Thomas into exactly what Thomas needs.

The visceral nature of this faith-creation is one way we can come to think of the meal of bread and wine. It is as if, in the meal of Jesus’ body and blood, we become Thomas, again and again being given what we, perhaps, did not even know we needed.

Fritz West’s approach to the story of Jesus and Thomas (in Homily Service 2006) extends the image by connecting it with other narratives in our tradition.

John 20:19-31

How do persons come to believe? Through the gift of the Holy Spirit. John 20:19–31 fulfills promises concerning the Holy Spirit that Jesus made in the Farewell Discourses (John 14:15–31). The two passages may be read in parallel. Above all, the promise of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16, 26) is fulfilled in its bestowal (John 20:22). This makes of the church a new creation, for the verb to breathe echoes God’s breathing life into the first human (Genesis 2:7).

Further, the Holy Spirit brings gifts: peace (John 20:21, 26; cf. 14:27), sight (John 20:24–29; cf. 14:17), and presence (John 20:19–29; cf. 14:18). This last is Jesus’ gift to Thomas, who asks for his presence and receives it—graphically.

What about us, who have no opportunity to see Jesus in the flesh with our very own eyes? How can we believe? This passage assures us that Jesus will give us what we need. Thomas did not believe because he had the opportunity to stick his intact finger in Jesus’ open wound, but because Jesus gave him what he needed to believe, a pattern found throughout John’s gospel (John 4:1–26; 5:1–9; 9:35–38; 11:1–44). Thomas’ declaration of faith “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28) shows that he truly saw the Father in the Son (John 14:7).

Jesus gives us what we need to believe as well: the witness of the disciples on the wings of the Spirit. In another tie with creation, the disciples’ testimony moves beyond the word of an eyewitness to become the Word of God. In breathing the Holy Spirit into the disciples, Jesus empowered the church to witness to him as he had witnessed to the Father. As his revelation gave sight to believers, so can their testimony. – Fritz West

Acts 4:32-35

“To each according to need,” central to communist ideology, is also here in the Acts account of  how the followers of the risen one first lived together. Those with property sold it, “laid it at the apostles’ feet…” and distributed it.

Instead of merely handing out charity to the poorest, they invited everyone to own everything together, share everything, and no one, as a consequence, was poor any longer. “There was not a needy person among them.”

This is an image of church that ought to utterly scare us who live in the competitive, individualistic, economy-worshipping First World. Share?!!! Everything?!!! What would that be like?

To believe so strongly in the resurrection that all trust is thrown into reliance on God’s Spirit moving in the community is an unbelievable prospect. As G. K. Chesterton is known to have said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult, and left untried.”

1 John 1:1––2:2

“…[I]f we walk in the light as God is in the light, we have communion with one another…”

Let the preaching on this day offer countless possibilities for surprise and delight that could come to us were we, in our homes and churches, to follow in the ways of our ancestors, to ask for the faith we long to have. This might be a Sunday for dreaming about impossible answers to intractable problems––like poverty. Faith in a resurrected truth can lead to . . . What?!

Fritz West is pastor of St. John's United Church of Christ, Fountain City, Wisconsin, and liturgical writer and author of Scripture and Memory: the Ecumenical Hermeneutic of the Three-Year Lectionary (The Liturgical Press, 1997).

Homily Service 39, no. 5 (2006): 46-55.