Fourth Sunday of Easter

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Introduction:

The Easter readings so far have been along the lines of, yes, Jesus is truly risen and of this we are witnesses, this truly was and is God’s Son, the Beloved, God really does love us ‘so much’. Moreover, the Resurrection means that Jesus is ‘still around’, and that we also can experience his powerful and tender presence, and in all kinds of ways: in the greeting of peace, in the liturgy of the Word, in the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the wine, in our love for one another, our hospitality to the stranger, in our prayers and in his powerful presence in the events of everyday life.

The emphasis now moves to the question of, so what? Who and what does this make Jesus in relation to us? And who and what does it make us? Today’s readings can be read as a series of meditations on these questions.

First Reading

Filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter preaches Jesus as Healer and Saviour. This is a continuation of the healing ministry practiced already before his death, continuing in his name and by his power through disciples like Peter and John: not just of physical healing, but the deep healing and making whole of ourselves and our relationships and our world in which true salvation consists and which he came to bring. The resurrection means that this does not come to an end with his death. Indeed it becomes all the more powerful, and operative in all places and times. Jesus is Healer and Saviour, for us and for our sorry and needful world.
In consequence of his death and resurrection, Jesus is the stone which the builders rejected become the keystone/cornerstone. This use of our responsorial psalm text is a favourite of new testament writers, according to Acts 4:11 used already in the early preaching, and indeed used by Jesus himself after the parable of the vineyard (Mt 21:42, Mk 12:10, Lk 20:17) because of such obvious application, utilized also by Paul (Ephesians 2:19-22) and the First Letter of Peter (1 Peter 2:7, also relying on Isaiah 28:16). But it is more than just a commentary on his death and resurrection, you killed him, God raised him up. It gets to be used as a way of expressing Jesus’ enduring significance. And the ambiguity of translation, reflected even in today’s readings, is even to our advantage. In consequence of his death and resurrection, Jesus is for us both keystone and cornerstone. In consequence of his death and resurrection, he has proved to be the keystone, like the keystone of the arch which keeps the building up, without which our building would come crashing down.
Alternatively, we can think of him just as easily (and more commonly) as the Cornerstone: in consequence of his death and resurrection he is become source of fundamental orientation in our lives and the lives of our communities and indeed for our world, so that without him we would be disoriented lacking all direction and purpose. As in that famous text of St Paul, but presented more positively: “So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place of God.”

Second Reading (1 John)

Who and what, then, does this make us? In consequence of the lavish love of God manifested in Christ Jesus we have become God’s children, called so because that is what we now are. And we are this, whether other people like it or recognize it or not. And even this is not the end, there is more to come: we are already the children of God, but what we are to be in the future has yet to be revealed, becoming more and more like the risen Jesus.
This is a theme central to the Gospel of course, as well as St Paul, and a central consequence of the incoming of the kingdom of God. It’s already a central theme of the Sermon on the Mount: how to be the sons and daughters of the Father in heaven, who makes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on just and unjust alike, how to be compassionate as our father is compassionate, how to pray. As disciples of Jesus we are to him brother and sister and mother, and children of our Father who is in heaven.
In John’s Gospel it becomes something like the key deliverance of the whole Jesus story: Jesus tells Mary Magdalene on the dawn of the resurrection: “go tell my disciples, I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God.” John 20:17. Jesus’ life and ministry, suffering, death and resurrection is that whereby Jesus’ Father becomes our Father, and we become really and truly God’s children. The resurrection means: it is true, we are God’s children, God is loving compassionate Father, Christ is brother and we brothers and sisters together, and this all in consequence of God’s lavish love.

Gospel: (Christ the Good Shepherd)

This passage in John’s gospel is also prepared already in the Synoptic picture of Jesus: Jesus having compassion on the multitudes, because they are like sheep without a shepherd, going after the one lost sheep in preference to the ninety-nine who don’t need finding, his sense of mission to the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel, to seek out and save that which was lost, to take God’s love beyond boundaries and margins and distinctions.
In John’s Gospel, this, in combination with a rich biblical background on the theme of God as shepherd promising to come himself to shepherd his people, gives way to a post-crucifixion, post-resurrection generalization. In fact I think this is how we should read a lot of John’s gospel, especially the long speeches of Jesus like this, as meditation after meditation on who Jesus is for us.
In consequence of his death and resurrection, Jesus is revealed as the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. But this is not just what he was: it is who he is, and who he is also for us, including the other sheep he has which are not of this fold, namely the Gentiles: they too will listen to my voice, and there will be only one flock and one shepherd.
He is not just back then, but for the disciples post-resurrection and ascension and eventually for us the continuing good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. That’s who he is, someone who thinks of us as his very own, someone who knows us better than we know ourselves and who puts his life on the line for us. I am the good shepherd he says to us also: unlike the hireling, whose own the sheep are not, I have concern for my sheep, I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for my sheep.
According to today’s readings, then, this is finally also a statement of what it is for Christ to be risen: that the relationship he had with his disciples, with his ‘little ones’, with his ‘lost sheep’, his lambs, and his various brothers and sisters and mothers is available also to us, and even more so, across all times and places and across all boundaries and margins and distinctions. Christ is our Good Shepherd.

Jesus is Healer and Saviour, Keystone and Cornerstone, his Father has become our Father and we God’s lavishly loved children and Jesus’ brothers and sisters, part of his family, he is Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, someone who knows us better than we know ourselves, seeks us out when we are lost, puts his life on the line for us.

Particularly when strung together like this, this becomes very lovey-dovey, something lovers might say to each other. And in a way it is something like that and it is meant to be: these people are using biblical texts to explain and express how they experience Christ, writing out of their experience, not just for the fun of it or by way of some theological exercise. And as John makes clear at the end of his Gospel and the beginning of his first epistle, these people are writing, eventually, so that we might have the same experience in our lives and in the life of our communities and to put this experience into action, mediating Jesus as Healer and Saviour and the rest also for the sake of our sorry world.

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