easter 4 Year C

John 10: 22-30 NRSV text
Psalm 23 NRSV text
Acts 9: 36-43 NRSV text
Revelation 7: 9-17 NRSV text

Who is Jesus? That’s the question that is buzzing around Jerusalem, and is raising huge concern among the Temple authorities. John reflects the same anxiety, puzzlement, resistance and murderous anger that we find in the Synoptic Gospels, but somehow crystallises the urgency of the question more acutely here than the other evangelists do. To ask the question, “Who is Jesus?” is to ask the question, “Who is God?” That is what bites the religious authorities so hard!

Jesus clearly taught and acted with power and authority. So the question is, whose power? And if the answer is that it is God’s power, that is extremely problematic – because it would mean that God was acting in completely unexpected ways. Jesus was demonstrating the sort of power and authority that had people instinctively reaching for the category of Messiah – the long-awaited saviour. The problem was that Jesus wasn’t behaving and teaching in the way that they expected the Messiah to do! The real problem is that Jesus ranged himself against the religious leaders, teachings and expectations of his day. He didn’t fit the mould. He was concerned with the wrong sorts of people, and dismissive of the “right” sorts. He operated peculiar boundaries of “in and out”, so no one really knew where they were with him. That is why it was easy to see that something enormously significant was happening in and through Jesus: it just wasn’t at all clear that it was God!

John’s way of dealing with this issue (his equivalent of the Messianic Secret) is to portray it in terms of the signs and sayings (the miracles coupled with the “I am” sayings) and Jesus’ constant claim to have come “from above” – ie from God. And there’s the rub for his listeners: Jesus’ actions (the signs) point clearly to his being from God; his teaching, priorities and boundaries point in different directions. How, then, to match up his “works” and his words? That’s the issue in today’s passage. And remember: if Jesus is from God, then God is doing something new and something different and unexpected. It means the end of religion as the authorities (and people) knew it. And that meant the end of their position and power. Huge issues are at stake for them in the answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?”

We see that tension played out in chapter 9, with the story of the healing of the man born blind. The problem that the authorities face is thrown back at them by the man himself: “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing!” (9:30-33).

The former blind man’s answer boils down to this: if Jesus is doing the miraculous things he is, it can only be through God’s power. Therefore, when all is said and done, there can only be one possible answer to the question: Jesus is from God. End of discussion!”

Sheep, shepherds and sheep folds: who’s in and who’s out?
Boundary questions are important. They define who’s in and who’s out – and that’s about the shape of the universe. If we know who’s in and who’s out, we can say what is good and bad, what is just and unjust, what is deserved and undeserved, who has what rights and who hasn’t. It also answers the question of what God is about, too: we know what God does and doesn’t want, what we can expect of God, who will be rewarded, who will be punished, who needs to be listened to and who needs to be ignored, dismissed, silenced or even eliminated. So boundary questions are key – and Jesus was an inveterate boundary-breaker!

The trouble was, you couldn’t ignore the guy! He wasn’t just a great preacher and clever debater: he walked around doing astonishing things – the sorts of things that had never been done before. It boiled down to this for good, faithful Jews: either Jesus needed to be recognised as God’s Messiah, or he was the antichrist and it was the religious duty of every good and faithful follower of Yahweh to get rid of him. That, at least, was Paul’s position, prior to his journey to Damascus. It’s the view we find reflected here in John’s gospel, too.

Jesus deals with the boundary question by invoking the image of sheep, the sheepfold and the shepherd (10:1ff). It’s a well-loved image – both for those of us who grew up on Psalm 23 and for the Jews of Jesus’ own time. It wasn’t only a pastoral image of protection, provision and comfort: it carried with it all the Royal Davidic King/Messiah stuff. It was pastoral and political dynamite.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He is to be distinguished from all other claimants to the role and title of Shepherd. And Jesus has his own flock. Some sheep belong to him; others do not. It’s not sheep vs goats here, but distinguishing between sheep and sheep! Jesus makes it simple: “My sheep hear my voice. They’ll run from a stranger, but follow me” (10:4b-5). It’s not a case of branding his sheep and laying claim to them that way; it’s about mutual knowledge: “I know my own and my own know me!” (10:14). Furthermore, says Jesus, I am the Good Shepherd because I lay down my life for the sheep, and the Father loves me because I am the Good Shepherd in this self-sacrificial way!” (10:17-18). In other words, the question of who is in and who is out boils down to this: do you belong to Jesus’ flock, or not? To be in Jesus’ flock is to be in with God – and not to be one of his flock is not to belong to God, either! That’s an astonishing claim, when you think about it: what you believe about Jesus is the key to what you do and don’t believe about God. Astonishing, maybe – but it’s clear to his opponents that that is exactly what he is claiming. No wonder they’re battling with this one! They’re not at all sure of Jesus, and if the stakes are as high as he claims, it’s time to bottom the question once and for all.

“Give it to us straight!”
They buttonhole Jesus in the temple, in late December, during the festival of Dedication. “Ok, you’ve kept us guessing long enough. It’s time to come clean: are you the Messiah? Yes or no?” (v24).

It’s a direct question. It receives a direct answer, too – though not in the terms in which it was asked! Jesus’ response boils down to this:

1. Yes, I am.
2. The problem isn’t that I have been obscure: the problem is that you simply won’t believe what I tell you!
3. It’s not a matter of theological debate: it’s a matter of the heart, of faith and of a predisposition to believe the unexpected about God.
4. The very fact that you ask the question in those terms shows that you are incapable of “getting it”.
5. The people who “get it” do so because they hear my voice as though I was the shepherd and they were my sheep.
6. That means you aren’t part of my flock.

Being part of the flock (John 10:27ff/Psalm 23)
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand” (10: 27-28). Jesus is the Good Shepherd who looks after the flock. He is prepared to lay down his life for them – as indeed he will do. What does the shepherd give the sheep? Eternal life!

Jesus, as we have noted, invokes the image of God the Shepherd King of Israel (as in Psalm 23). Being part of the flock, therefore, is to be drawn into intimate relationship with God. And that is what eternal life is all about. It’s not just about living forever after death – it’s about the quality of life that intimate relationship with God brings. In Psalm 23, the sheep are fed and watered, given peace, protected, saved from death, and feasted.

Note how the image shifts in the psalm from a peaceful rural pasture to a royal banquet in verse 5. We move from a field to a table. The psalmist moves from seeing himself as a sheep to a treasured member of God’s royal household. It ends with that affirmation: “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long!” In other words, this isn’t a psalm celebrating the promise of eternal life to come (ie after death) but eternal life (ie life with God) here and now!

That is what Jesus promises his flock: life with God, starting now. Jesus’ mission of eternal life is not a divine rescue mission – “Scotty, beam me up!” escape from the world. It’s about life in all it’s fullness (John 10:10). We are so used to (mis)hearing the phrase “eternal life” as “pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die” that the gospel becomes little more than a celestial fire insurance policy and we become little more than jumped-up insurance salespeople.

It’s worth noting that if this was all Jesus was offering, he wouldn’t have provoked the opposition he did! Jesus lived under the Roman occupation. His people weren’t looking for a short-cut to the hereafter: they were looking for liberation! When they talked about salvation, they meant weren’t interested in some promise of future bliss: what they wanted was God’s promises of “life in all its fullness” now! And if they were offered anything else, they would reckon Yahweh was short-changing them and going back on all the promises they were living by.

A prophet of the hereafter could be safely ignored: the problem with Jesus was that he claimed that all God’s promises of salvation through the Messiah were happening here and now … through him! That’s what made Jesus a stumbling block! There wasn’t any way of circumventing him in order to obtain God’s promised salvation. And Jesus says as much in John’s gospel: “That’s how it is, folks! There’s no way to the Father but through me. You can’t dodge round!” (John 14:6).

“I and the Father are one!”
Jesus tells it straight. “Can’t you see? I do the things I do in God’s name and power (10:25). They’re clear signs of the fact that I am from God. But you don’t want to recognise that – because what I say isn’t what you want to hear! You’d like to plug into all the promises of God and all the benefits – but God is using the Shepherd to call God’s flock together! You can’t get away from it, and you can’t drive a wedge between who God is and what God is doing, and what you see and hear from me, because I and the Father are one!”

Jesus’ hearers reach for their stones (v31). “So for which of my good works will you stone me?” Jesus asks. “Not for your good works, but because you’re claiming to be God!” they reply. And they’re right! Jesus is making this claim. John’s gospel makes absolutely explicit the claim that permeates the synoptic tradition: that Jesus is more than a man of God – he is God as a man! He is the Logos in human flesh.

Today’s passage makes clear John’s own justification for this startling claim. Once we recognise that God is working through Jesus, the old categories available just won’t work. Jesus is more than a messenger and prophet. His life and self-sacrificial death are the means by which God saves all of creation. Just as we are dependent upon Jesus’ willingness to answer “Yes” to God in Gethsemane, so is God! The startling truth about salvation is that there is no other way for God to do it – and that means that if Jesus won’t play ball, God is up the proverbial creek.

It won’t do to say that Jesus is extraordinarily obedient to God – because Jesus changes our idea of who and what God is! Jesus sets many of the old ways and truths aside. That’s why he caused the sort of outrage that led to his death! On the old reading, Jesus wasn’t obedient to God! He was breathtakingly, blasphemously disobedient! That’s something we’ve lost because we are on the other side of the story. Today’s texts tell us what it was like for those who lived on the cusp!

For John, then, the only thing that will do is to recognise that Jesus is God in human flesh. This is the Son of God – the Son of the God whom Jesus calls Father. And his argument is two-fold: (1) Jesus is Son of God by virtue of his pre-existence. (2) That is only something we can possibly know from Jesus’ life and teaching and actions and death. We learn it by reading the Signs – something we do from experience. And if we have eyes to see, the signs tell us that Jesus is God incarnate. Again, though, this isn’t a piece of theology: for John, it means to hear God calling us through the Shepherd to become part of God’s flock, and to experience eternal life – now!

The Shepherd is the Lamb (Revelation 7: 9-17)
Ok, let me give it straight: I think that Revelation is written by the Fourth Evangelist, whom I am happy to accept is John, the Beloved Disciple. I also happen to think it doesn’t make any difference to the way in which we ought to read Revelation alongside John’s gospel. Whoever wrote the two books belonged to the same school, shared the same theology and used the same symbolism and imagery. So I will refer to the author of both as John – and it doesn’t matter whether or not you prefer to put “John” in inverted commas. We need to read John’s gospel and Revelation as a unified whole in much the same way as we do Luke and Acts.

Here in Revelation chapter 7, we have another “who” question: “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” These, the seer is told, are those disciples of Jesus who have come through suffering with their faith intact – the martyrs. Like Jesus, they have not shrunk from the Way of the Cross. They are the sheep, who have faithfully followed their Shepherd. This vision is about what being part of Jesus’ flock entails, if you like. It’s an antidote to the suggestion that being part of God’s flock is always about rural idylls and royal feasts. It’s also about cost, pain, suffering, hunger, thirst and being pegged out in the sun to die (v16).

And then, in verse 17, we get the almost playful inversion of imagery: Jesus the Lamb becomes the shepherd, guiding the sheep to springs of the water of Life. Here is the meaning of Jesus’ statement in John 10:11 made plain: “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”.

Jesus is the Lamb – the One who has died to take away sin, and who has been raised to glory. The Lamb is the chief among sheep – and so God’s flock has a Lamb as a shepherd! The point is this: The Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep doesn’t just ask us to follow: he paves the way. He doesn’t ask us to go where he won’t go, or suffer what he won’t suffer. All that happens, happens to this Lamb, in order that the rest of the flock might be saved.

Faithful sheep (Acts 9: 36-43)
Being part of Jesus’ flock is following the Lamb/Shepherd. The other side of the same coin is that people ought to recognise Jesus in and through his followers (us) because of the obvious similarities. For Luke, the Church’s role is to continue the mission of Jesus. That’s why Pentecost happens. To be Church is to be in mission – and recognisably the same mission as Jesus. That is why he records the raising of Tabitha in a style that rings all the bells of Jesus’ raising of Jairus’ daughter. Just as the disciples on the Emmaus Road recognised the risen Jesus through the taking, giving thanks, breaking and giving of the bread, so people are meant to recognise Jesus through the Church-in-mission.

But that means that we need to be involved in the same mission as Jesus was. That isn’t as silly or obvious a statement as it sounds. The Christian Church worldwide generates billions of dollars sustaining incalculable numbers of projects, activities, causes, charities, events and so on. The key question is, are they the same sorts of things that Jesus would do? When American Christians give millions of dollars to the Israeli government to fund the settlement of the West Bank, is this Christian mission – or opposition to Jesus? When Christian leaders in Britain support the invasion of Iraq, is this Christian mission – or opposition to Jesus? When we spend time and energy beautifying our Church buildings, running our programmes, and attending our countless meetings, is this Christian mission – or opposition to Jesus?

These are serious questions. How might we know the answers? We need to recognise the parallels between the Christian Church and the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. Like them, we’re deeply resistant to God doing surprising things that would disturb our fundamental beliefs and ideas about God and God’s ways. And this is more in evidence than in the same sort of unease that challenges to our inherited notions of boundaries generate.

We need to recognise, like them, that Jesus tramples boundaries – especially boundaries of in and out. Jesus is always disturbingly inclusive where religious people like us instinctively want to be exclusive. Just look at the paralysis and self-implosion that the sexuality question has the power to effect! Like the religious leaders, we need to recognise that we have huge vested interests in the way things are – in the way those boundaries are erected. The first step on the way to clearing our vision (if we’re the blind man of John 9) or clearing our ears so as to hear the voice of the Shepherd (if we’re the sheep of John 10) is to recognise our instinctive aversion to hearing new and startling things. We need to recognise that we’re comfortable with God startling other people (in ways that we know and can regulate!) but woe betide God shaking our particular perch!

It’s when we’re looking out for that tendency that we read today’s passage with a predisposition to grapple with the question of whether we’re the Jewish leaders, rather than the faithful sheep. Then we’re alive to the crucial warning: when it comes to answering the question, “Who is Jesus?”, it’s often the Christian Church that has the greatest difficulty in answering faithfully!

Amen.