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The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Fourth Sunday of Easter
Year B RCL
Acts 4:5-12
Psalm 23
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18 
Pat Tillman was a professional football player who in May 2002, eight months after the September 11, 2001, attacks and after completing the fifteen remaining games of the 2001 season which followed the attacks (at a salary of $512,000 per year),[3] Tillman turned down a contract offer of $3.6 million over three years from the Cardinals to enlist in the U.S. Army.
Tillman participated in the initial invasion of Iraq and was eventually redeployed to Afghanistan where he eventually died by friendly fire on April 22, 2004 at age 27. Pat Tillman death and the Pentagon initial cover up and manipulation of it is available on the internet and the controversy surrounding it has not yet ceased.
Pat enlisted after the September 11th attacks and he did initially as a patriotic duty, to protect America, he later grew disillusioned with the war and questioned its legitimacy. He had arranged a meeting with Noam Chomski upon his return to the US, meeting that never took place.
Attempts made by the religious right or other groups to capitalize on his death had been foiled by his family and a foundation has been set up to honor his memory. To say that Corporal Tillman selfless sacrifice honors him is a truism while brings shame to the Army who tried to cover up the circumstances of his death.
I have told you the story of Pat Tillman to put a contemporary face to the Good Shepherd. It is fascinating how some cultural myths are resilient and open to re-formulate themselves that they still have currency in our day. I referring to the cultural myth of the “Noble Death”.
Jerome H. Neyrey in the "The 'Noble' Shepherd in John 10: Cultural and Rhetorical Background"
lists Aristotle’s criteria for a noble death. He says among other things that the death have to benefit others, not for the purpose of seeking self-interest -The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep -, it produces honor and it was undertaken voluntary I lay it down of my own accord.
As the early church came into existence, it did within a pre-existing cultural pattern inspired originally by Greece and imposed by Rome and peppered by the influences of the many cultures that were under Imperial control. Therefore we are to re-read the Good Shepherd story under the prism of the noble death, it may explain the recurrence of “lay down life” motif that appears five times within six verses. Reading the passage that way puts aside Victorian sentimentalism that have contemporarily turned the Good Shepherd into a sweet guy carrying a very clean white sheep of Sunday School memory. It puts the passage within the boundaries of the Passion and the Cross, and therefore within the historical reference to conflict and trauma in first century Palestine. Like Pat Tillman, Jesus was killed by his own people.
It is not that the Pat Tillman and the image of the Good Shepherd coincide or need to coincide, but that the motif of the Noble Death, popular in the Mediterranean basin and still pervasive in our time provides common link. It is the fact that this motif is also the central point of reference of the story. Jesus lay down his life for his sheep while confronts the evil of this world, that eventually kills him, and by killing him -the innocent- brings shame upon itself. So the Noble death is a form of ultimate victory. Pat Tillman’s memory will last longer that the Pentagon bureaucrats and right wingers who wanted to manipulate his selfless deed. We are the testimony of the force of ultimate vitory of Jesus, while we sit here Sunday after Sunday to hear more about Him.
Let’s examine the image of the Good Shepherd. Shepherd it is an ambiguous image. On one side, David is the archetypical shepherd and God is referred to as Shepherd of Israel very often, for instance during Jacob blessing of his children who stand as prototypes of the twelve tribes, when he blesses Joseph he makes an oblique reference to God as a Shepherd. Psalm 80 and 23 also contain similar references. In the prophetic tradition, we find the leaders of Israel criticized as unfaithful shepherds that scatter the people and God as the faithful shepherd that gathers them up.
On another, actual first century Palestine shepherds were considered by some as a subclass, one that lives in the murky bottom of society and although noticeable it is willfully ignored. Shepherds aroused suspicion, since they were often perceived as rough, unscrupulous characters, who pastured their animals on other people's land and pilfered wool, milk, and kids from the flock. Shepherds spent considerable time with the sheep alone and were open to charges of sexual deviance.
"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Today is Sunday of the Good Shepherd, always the fourth Sunday of Easter. The Good Shepherd is probably the earliest image of Jesus in existence, before the crucifix or perhaps even before the fish. Why is the first is open to debate, but certainly as Fred Craddock said: The community that produced the Gospel of John was comforted by this gentle, protective image of Jesus when they felt ostracized and persecuted, turned out and abandoned, by the very people who claimed to be God's servants.
However the text itself disabuse us about the warm and fuzzy feeling that starts to grow on us, because the text indicates to Jesus and the cross through the not so oblique words of “he laid his life for us”. However any sentimentality is dispelled by the context of this passage. Jesus speaks of thieves, bandits, strangers and wolves, and the violence and risk . The setting isn't a nice, quiet pastoral hillside, peaceful and calm. No, here we read of confrontation with authorities and questions about Jesus' authority, and danger is in the air around these religious leaders.
Craddock continues: In every age since those earliest days of the church, there have been "shepherds" who abandoned their flocks and failed to live up to the image of the good shepherd. Contemporary example could be the pedophile scandal in the church. However, as Craddock reminds us, it's also true that in every age, there have been faithful ones: "Before Roman sword or Nazi boot, burning cross or constant harassment, economic pressure or political reprisal, they remained with the sheep."So the first element of the story is the protective element, against the back drop of violence which the wolf represents.
The wolf has been identified with Satan, “ruler of this world” , Jesus dying at the hands of his cosmic enemy enhances the honor due to the “ruler of the word” and the shame brought upon the so called “ruler of the world”.
I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. At the beginning of Johns’s Gospel, the evangelist places the story of Jesus in both cosmic and historical dimensions. Jesus is described as the pre-existent Logos and simultaneously as the Holy One if Israel who has pitched his tent amidst his people. The historical event Jesus for the Johanine community is the contemporary moving in of God into our neighborhood, our building, our city. The Incarnation means that God lives here. The Incarnation means that God the Creator of all Reality has decided on “his own accord” to become creature, to become sheep. God in Jesus The Good Shepherd knows what is to be sheep, what is to be snatched, terrorized and eventually killed by the wolf.
Belonging to Jesus, knowing him and being known by him, shapes us as a community of faith. Bernard Brandon Scott interprets this text as saying that the "community is founded not upon doctrinal unity but upon God's knowing us and being for us. We do not achieve that, but it is the way God is. God is for us. "In our essential belonging, our being is bound up with the entire flock: with believers who break bread and recite prayers with us, and with those sheep whom Jesus knows and God sees, but whom we can scarcely bring ourselves to acknowledge and welcome, let alone live alongside or die to protect." The second element is the intimacy.
I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them
also For Jesus to say, 'I am the good shepherd,' would have been an
affront to the religious elite and educated. The claim had an edge to
it. A modern-day equivalent might be for Jesus to say, “I am the good
undocumented migrant” ; “ I am the good gay, lesbian, transgendered
person” ; I am the good black person” ; “I am the good menial worker”,
“I am the good Mexican infected with swine flu””
I had in a church once a very odd couple, both were obviously with
serious emotional problems. A member of the congregation, professional
type, came to me and said what are we going to do about this people? To
which I replied, I pray to God for professionals like yourself with two
kids, a dog and a house with a white picket fence, but he responds to
my prayers by sending me all sorts of mental cases and you know, this
is not my house, nor yours, is God’s house and he are servants in this
household and our job is to serve, so put up and put on the apron.
Barbara Essex observes: "Jesus did not exclude people based on the
standards of the day....He embraced the outcast, the oppressed, and the
overlooked....John makes it clear that the work of gathering the flock
belongs to Jesus and God-we are to provide a space where all are
welcome. The community that John envisions is open and celebrates its
diversity as a gift from God."
And yet, it's not up to us to decide who's in or who's out; this text
tells us that Jesus has "other sheep" elsewhere and that he intends to
draw them in, too. Charles Cousar writes that "in any case, the flock
is not yet finally fixed. It is open-ended. There are always others who
recognize the shepherd's voice and enter the fold." The third theme is
inclusion.
This is also the Sunday of the Good Shepherd and Sunday of Immigrant
Rights. I was speaking with a member of this parish who went on
holidays to Florida, she has lived and worked in this country for over
fifteen years, but she like many, has no documents. She is an illegal.
She had a wonderful time while in Florida and left last Thursday at 7
pm, on the following morning, a mere few hours after she returned to
New York, the entire family where she stayed during her holidays was
arrested by Immigration, the minor children, US born citizens, where
already at school. She hugged me crying and asking for my prayers for
this family now in a detention center. She was grateful that she was
spared and able to return, but worries about her friends.
Archbishop Romero, champion of the poor and prophet of peace and
justice in El Salvador, was shot on March 24, 1980, while saying mass.
He had just read from John’s Gospel: "Unless the grain of wheat falls
to the earth and dies, it remains only a grain. But if it dies, it
bears much fruit" (John 12:23-26), and preached about the need to give
one’s life for others as Christ did:
A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't
unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin, a word of
God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being
proclaimed: what gospel is that?.
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