April 29 , 2007 |
See also: [2001] [2004] |
Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
Acts 9:36-43
The Fourth Sunday of Easter is traditionally known as “Good Shepherd Sunday”; while the other readings for today reflect that theme in one way or another, this passage from Acts seems to have no overt references to shepherds, sheep, or shepherding. Yet a connection can be made. One of the roles of the shepherd is to lead the sheep to pasture (as we see in Psalm 23, below), to open up the environment where those who follow can be nurtured and sustained. This story of Peter raising Tabitha can be understood in just that way: Peter opens up for Tabitha an environment of life when he prays over her; his intercession leads Tabitha into a place of God’s loving presence where Tabitha can be nurtured and sustained and returned to wholeness of life. But of course Peter can only do this because he himself is in an environment of nurture and sustenance: because Peter is following in the way of ministry revealed in Jesus, because Peter is enacting in himself the same eternal qualities of divine love communicated to him by Jesus, Peter dwells in Jesus’ environment, Peter dwells in Jesus’ “field of force,” and so is empowered to do again the same acts of ministry first done by Jesus. On a literary level, Luke is careful to structure this scene as a doublet with Jesus’ raising of Jairus’s daughter (Luke 8:49-56); Peter is here seen to do the same things Jesus did in a similar ministry setting. So also, then, spiritually: as Peter re-enacts in his ministry the eternal objects presented in Jesus’ ministry, the same divine presence and divine life is revealed. Peter, sustained and energized by Jesus, can now sustain and energize Tabitha in Jesus; dwelling in Jesus “field of force,” Peter can offer to Tabitha that same empowerment to re-enact the qualities of Jesus in her life. Peter, in following Jesus as his shepherd, can in turn shepherd others into following Jesus. He exemplifies a “shepherded shepherding” to which all of Jesus’ disciples are called.
Psalm 23
The psalm is full of images of the sustaining environment provided by the Lord-as-shepherd: green pastures, still waters, right pathways, spread tables, overflowing cups, the house of the Lord. The presence of God’s love is so powerfully felt that it transforms even hostile or threatening environments: the “valley of the shadow of death,” the “presence of those who trouble me,” are seen as only finite regions, themselves taken up and redirected within the infinite horizon of divine loving-kindness. The psalm portrays God’s shepherding as the environment, the milieu, in which the psalmist’s own experiences are harbored and allowed to take shape, so that the psalmist is nourished, sustained, and empowered to serve God’s aims of goodness and mercy, not only for himself, but for all who dwell in the Lord’s household.
Revelation 7:9-17
The theme of Good Shepherd Sunday is reflected in this reading most clearly in the image of the “Lamb at the center of the throne” who “will be the shepherd” of the redeemed. In a striking paradox the image combines two poles of a relationship which we often take to be separate: the lamb is the shepherd, the smallest and least is in the position of power, the victim is at the center of the throne, the leader is at one with the led, the one who passed through the ordeal of suffering and death is now able to “wash the robes” of those who must themselves undergo “the great ordeal.” In John’s vision, it is precisely because the Shepherd is also the Lamb, precisely because he has undergone and transformed the ordeal, that he can now lead others to an environment of nurturing and sustenance: he will “guide them to springs of the water of life,” where there will no no more hunger or thirst or scorching heat or suffering of any kind. For John—writing from exile to churches struggling in the environment of Roman imperial power—the important message of the vision of the Lamb-who-is-the-Shepherd is that the Lamb’s environment of life is more powerful than Rome’s environment of ordeal. The followers of Jesus can be strengthened by the vision of the Lamb’s environment, they can draw on and emulate in themselves the ideals of “blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might” revealed in Jesus’ “field of force,” so that they too can stand against Roman oppression with Jesus’ enacting of divine liberation. The Lamb calls us now, in that same way, to stand in the “field of force” of life over against the death-dealing environment of empire in our time.
John 10:22-30
This short passage is the climax of Jesus’ “Good Shepherd discourse” in the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel. Jesus here identifies himself as the one who provides the environment of nurture and sustenance for his followers: “my sheep hear my voice... I give them eternal life and they will never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.” Jesus is able to provide this spiritual environment in which his disciples dwell because he himself dwells in God: “What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” The qualities of divine love which characterize God come to characterize Jesus as well, because Jesus dwells in the divine milieu, doing “works... in my Father’s name”; those who follow Jesus—like Peter in the Acts reading—dwell in that milieu with him, and so come to share in divine characteristics and actions also. To those who want Jesus to “tell them plainly” whether he is the Messiah, Jesus answers that there can be no plainer telling than the divine characteristics of justice, peace, compassion, and life enacted in his works of ministry; those who recognize the divine characteristics of his ministry “believe” in him and dwell in his milieu. Preaching on this passage, we can ask where we today see the divine characteristics of justice, peace, compassion, and life enacted in concrete works in the world; we can believe that the Good Shepherd is acting there; and we can join in that action to dwell in the divine milieu ourselves.
Paul S. Nancarrow is rector of St. George's Episcopal Church in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. and canon theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota. He is a co-author of The Call of the Spirit: Process Spirituality in a Relational World.
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