Sermon for April 25, 2021 - The Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B, The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello

Easter Four – Year B

April 25, 2021

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

Acts 4:5-12

Psalm 23

1 John 3:16-24

John 10:11-18

“How do you know if something is ‘of God’?” 

This was the question one of the members of my discernment committee asked me when I was in the ordination process.

We often say we are working to do God’s work in the world, but how do we know that what we are doing is, in fact God’s work?  How do we know it is not the work of our own self interests slapped with the “God’s Work” stamp of approval, like the “certified organic” label at the grocery store?

Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, is now famous for his pithy litmus test in this regard.  He says simply, “if it ain’t about love, it ain't about God.”

This makes good sense, and it feels right, as we know that God is love itself.

But what if my understanding of love includes sending someone I claim to love to reparitive therapy to “pray the gay away?”  If I do something out of my love for them, regardless of how it affects them, does the fact that I am doing it out of love mean it is of God?

How do we know something is “of God” if we do not all agree on what it is God desires for the world God has made?

In today’s reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus isn’t only offering a picture of himself, of God, as simply any shepherd.

He is the Good Shepherd, he tells us.  And he is setting himself apart from others who neglect and abuse their role as a shepherd of their sheep.

The thief is a shepherd, too, inasmuch as the thief leads the sheep where the thief wants.

The hired hand is a shepherd, insofar as the hired hand feeds the sheep when they are hungry, checks the gate to make sure it is secure and watches out for thieves.

Jesus’ characterization of himself as the Good Shepherd is meant to be heard not by itself, but over and against the other images of the thief and the hired hand.  

Jesus is trying to help the crowd discern how it is they might know whether someone, or something, is of God.

How do you know something or someone is of God?

God is not the thief.  God is not the hired hand.  God is not simply a shepherd, any shepherd.  God is the Good Shepherd.

The Good Shepherd, we are told, lays down their life for their sheep.  Elsewhere we hear that the Good shepherd leaves the 99 and goes after the 1.  The Good Shepherd rescues the sheep from the ditch, even if it means breaking the rules and doing it on the sabbath.

Tragically, far too many have grown up being taught of a God who is more thief than Good Shepherd.  Too many have learned of a God who seeks not abundant life for them, but to steal them of themselves, to rob them of the very life God has given them to live.

Others have known an image of God that is closer to the hired hand than the Good Shepherd.  This is a God whose love is conditional.  A love that is shown only when things are easy, when we are compliant, when we do not stray, or doubt, or struggle or sin.  This is a God who is noticeably absent just when a shepherd is needed the most.

The church is not immune from being the thief, or the hired hand.  In fact, if your experience of God has been anything other than that of the Good Shepherd, it is because a church taught you that kind of God was possible.

Anytime the church has been on the wrong side of God’s dream, as it has been more often than it cares to admit, it has betrayed its calling to be a Good Shepherd for the people who entrust it with their spiritual lives.

And the church isn’t alone in this.

Our lives are filled with thieves, hired hands, and Good Shepherds.  

Has anyone ever made you feel less than?  Has anyone ever made you feel diminished, ashamed, unable to live your truth fully and with love and joy?  You have known a thief.

Has anyone ever left you feeling used, exposed and abandoned when your presence no longer served their purposes?  Has a friendship or relationship fallen away when it was no longer convenient for the other person?  Then you have known a hired hand.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus gives us not just an image for himself as one who would physically lay down his life so those he loved might be free from the power of death; he gives us a litmus test for how we are to know whether a friend is of God, if a relationship is of God, if a church is of God, if our very understanding of God is, in fact of God.

How do we know if something or someone is of God?  They are the Good Shepherd.

Their love for us is greater than their love of their own status or power or greed.  

Our experience of being in relationship with them, whether an individual, a community, an institution or even with God, leaves us feeling as though we have been in the presence not of a thief, or even a hired hand.  Not just any shepherd, but with the Good Shepherd of which Jesus himself serves as a human and a divine example.

How do we know something is of God?  How do we know what it means to be in relationship with a Good Shepherd and not a hired hand or a thief?

When Jesus offers himself as the Good Shepherd, he draws on the example given to him and his followers, and to us, in the stunning imagery of the 23rd Psalm.

How do we know something or someone is of God? We might use the 23rd Psalm as our guide.  We might use it to ask ourselves if the relationship we are in, the institution of which we are a part, and especially the God that is being taught to us, meets the Good Shepherd standard Psalm 23 illustrates, and Jesus embodies.

Do they leave you feeling like you have everything you need to be the person God made you to be?

Do you feel as though they are leading you to rest as in green pastures and sit beside waters that are still?

Do they revive your soul?

Are they with you through it all?  Are you more able to face life’s greatest challenges because they are there with you in it?

Do they shower you with abundant love, no matter what others think of you?

Do you feel your soul replenished and revived until it spills out, overflowing, of your heart?

That’s what the psalmist tells us being in relationship with God feels like.  

That’s what Jesus tells us we should expect from any relationship that claims to be “of God.”

That is what love, that is the Love of God, looks like.

Or, to put it another way:

If it ain’t Good Shepherd love, it ain’t God love.  

The Lord is my shepherd.  And my cup runneth over.

AMEN.

1 While all direct and indirect quotes are always cited, there are sources I read regularly in preparation for sermon writing.  Chances are thoughts have been spurred by these sources and so I list the usual suspects here:  David Lose, In the Meantime, The New Interpreters Bible, Sacra Pagina

© 2021 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello