FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER A

[cappie]

There are two ways that today’s readings teach us about living into our identity as sheep. The first is that sheep exist in relationship to the shepherd. The Bible calls us to recognize that God is the shepherd, and that God shepherds the flock. Furthermore, God is the gate, not us. While there is a supremely human impulse to gatekeep who is in and who is out of our communities, that is not the role of the sheep. Jesus is clear: “I tell you most solemnly  I am the gate of the sheepfold.” Christians over the centuries have argued and even spilled blood on the “right” ways of thinking, believing, and behaving. And those who did not align with the “right” way were cast from the community. But if Jesus is the gate and the shepherd, we are freed from that task of gatekeeping who is in and who is out.

The gate and shepherd work in concert to protect and guide the flock so that it might flourish. Those words from Psalm 23 are clear that even in the valley of the shadow of death, God is good, comforting, and present with us. The role of the sheep is to trust in God and trust that God will bring abundant life. But that abundant life does not always look the way we might imagine it.

Sometimes, the way of God seems like a path only “sheeple” would follow. The author of 1 Peter writes that following God is not always comfortable or easy. Sometimes, following God’s radical path of love and justice can bring discomfort, pain, and even unjust suffering. No matter where we are in the world or who our community is, it is good to share. It is good to look after each other. It is good to belong to a flock.

  In an age where every school or institution markets itself as creating leaders, the Bible offers a different lesson. Sometimes, it is good to follow. Sometimes, it is good to be caught up in the contagious fervour of love in an interdependent community.

We hear Jesus tell us in this Sunday’s Gospel reading, “ I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full.”  Jesus tells us that he himself is a sheep gate. He is the one through whom we need to pass in order to enter the sheep fold. If we enter through him not only, will we be saved, but we will find pasture. Jesus teaches us here that abundance of life is not so much something that we can control, do, or create. Rather it is something that stems from where we find ourselves. Abundance of life comes from being in the sheep fold, with the other sheep, and having entered through Christ.

But what does that actually look like? How do we find Jesus as that sheep gate, and enter into his abundant life?

I can think of few better descriptions than those we have been hearing over the past few weeks in the first reading at all our Masses in Eastertide form the Acts of the Apostles. In those readings, Luke tells us about the life of the earliest church after the resurrection of Jesus. He tells us the followers of Jesus, “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Those earliest disciples found Christ’s sheep fold in their life together; it was through their common life of service, prayer and sacrament that they were able to stay close to Jesus, the gate through whom they had entered into eternal life in baptism.

So having life in all its abundance is actually a very simple thing – it is about receiving a gift from Christ, the gift of life in him for ever. It’s about learning to give up our thirst for control and individual autonomy, the delusion that we might earn God’s favour, and instead trust that our entry into the sheep fold is something Christ gives as a loving gift, in whom we find all the pasture we could ever need.

May we ever follow where God the Good Shepherd leads, learning to recognize where God is calling us, especially when abundant life does not conform to worldly standards of wisdom.

 

[BarbTherese]

Thank you