Saturday, April 16, 2016

IV Easter, April 17, 2016



Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter
Year C  ~  April 17, 2016

Holy Trinity & St. Anskar

for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their Shepherd,
and He will guide them to springs of the water of life
.

+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity

The Lamb will be their Shepherd.
The Jews … said to him, 
“… If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly."

I ask you to keep these two verses in mind as I try to talk about this difficult passage. It is difficult because it seems to be about an invidious distinction between Jews and the followers of Jesus. If that is its meaning, then it were better not to read it in Church – just throw up our hands and acknowledge that it comes from a time when relations between Judaism and the Church were sour and inimical. But if it is only anti-Jewish polemic, then it has nothing to say to us now. If we are to find any meaning in it, we must interpret it carefully.
But first, as always, it is important to recognize the context: the Portico of the Temple, called Solomon’s Porch, and the Feast of Dedication. These are not accidental details, because they deliberately set the framework in which we are to find whatever meaning there is to find. The location and timing of this unpleasant dialogue is significant. The Feast of the Dedication refers to the rededication of the Temple after its defilement by the Greeks a couple of centuries before. Antiochus Epiphanes (a crazy man, who thought he was God) had set up a statue of Zeus (who he claimed to be) in the Temple, which incited the successful revolt of the Maccabees. They were rural nationalists – religious zealots like the Taliban –  who drove out the Greeks and their Jewish collaborators, called “Hellenists,” and restored the Davidic monarchy.  The Feast of Dedication was about that revolution, still celebrated as Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, because the small amount of oil found in the Temple miraculously burned for eight days. One of John’s themes set forth in the Prologue is Jesus as Light of the World. So here He is at the Festival of Lights.
But Solomon’s Porch was also the place where the restored Kings issued their decrees and judgments. So there was Jesus, walking on the Porch during Chanukah. Was He a deliverer like Judas Maccabæus, sent from God to throw off the foreign yoke? Most Jews felt the need for such a Messiah because their kings had become corrupt collaborators – like the Hellenistic Jews of the Maccabees’ time. In fact, many did not consider King Herod a Jew at all.  So, those the Gospel calls Jews quite reasonably wanted Jesus, if He were the Messiah, to declare it publicly from the Porch of royal decrees during the Feast of Dedication.
But He wouldn’t.
Indeed, it may be that He could not say anything to those who asked because they could not recognize Him in any case. This is not because they were Jews in the religious sense (many Jews did accept Him, and almost all of His first followers were Jews). But the Jews who believed Him were the poor and the dispossessed. They were like sheep, who would follow Him wherever He led, although they had no idea where they were going. But the Jews who would not or could not believe were the leaders – the upper classes – the religiously sophisticated, who lived in the Capital, Jerusalem.
Let’s also remember that the word here is Judæans, that is, residents of the central-southern part of Palestine, as distinct from the Samaritans or the Galileans. The so-called Jews here were not so much the representatives of the Hebrew religious tradition as representatives of the educated, urban elite in Jerusalem of Judæa.  The Fourth Gospel uses the term, Jews, in both senses. Sometimes it means the Hebrew religious tradition, and sometimes it refers to the geographical location.
Anyway, the Jews in this passage were not wicked opponents of Jesus They were willing to imagine that the Messiah might come to free them from the Romans. They may have been a little dubious about His coming from Galilee, but they remembered that the Maccabees had also been hill-billies, so maybe the Messiah could be a Gallilæan.
Furthermore, Jesus did signs and wonders. On the other hand, wonder-workers were not that unusual. There were plenty of charlatans around, then as now, and devout people of good will had to exercise discernment. If well-informed Jews were to accept Jesus as Messiah, He would have to claim it openly. This was NOT an unreasonable way of thinking.
     But Jesus would not tell them He was the Messiah. Why? After all, He HAD already told the Woman at the Well in Samaria that He WAS the Messiah. He also told her that salvation came from the Jews, so why not tell the prominent Judæans openly?
I think the problem is that anything Jesus could have said would have been misleading. If He had admitted that He was the Messiah, they would have misunderstood, thinking He was going to claim the throne the Maccabees had restored. On the other hand, it would be untrue to deny that He was the Messiah.  Anything He could say in response to their question would have been a lie. His works would have to speak for themselves.
Jesus is NOT the Messiah that anyone expects. He is the Lamb Who is the Shepherd. And that is just nonsense, until religious consciousness is expanded. Nonsense because it is a message from another dimension. Over and over, the Church has had to learn this lesson. We have had to unlearn our own early Community’s messianic expectation that Jesus would return the day after tomorrow, “before this generation passes away.”  We have had to repent of the triumphalism that claimed the Spirit as the exclusive possession of the Church. The reality of Jesus’ messianic identity remains beyond our imagining. Those pious Judæans who asked Him to speak plainly represent US. Telling us plainly will not make us believe. If we are to follow Him, we must trust Him as sheep trust the shepherd, without any plain and open indication of where He is leading, without any firm certainty, only because we recognize His voice.

…for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be
their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of
the water of life.

Obviously an allusion to the 23rd Psalm – “he leadeth me beside the still waters.”  But now it is the Lamb Who does the leading. The Lamb has become the Shepherd.  The Lord of Whom David sang has become a Lamb, a Lamb that was slain, a sacrificial Lamb, Whose Blood does not stain robes but washes them completely white. This same Lamb is now on the throne of the Apocalyptic vision, the throne is the throne of God. But the Lamb is at its center and the Lamb is now the Shepherd. David’s Shepherd becomes a sacrificial Lamb, Who in turn becomes the Shepherd. Who says “I and the Father are one. ”
This is WAY more than the Judæans on Solomon’s Porch could take in. It is way more than we can take in. The Death and Resurrection of the Messiah changes everything. Everything is new and strange. WONDERFUL beyond imagining, but still strange. If we insist on a plain, open explanation we cease to be His sheep. We can’t follow Him unless we accept how very strange the real Messiah is:  the Shepherd of Israel, leading Joseph like a flock, a Shepherd Who lays down His life for the sheep. The Shepherd Who is a Lamb, the Paschal Lamb that was slain, a sacrificial lamb raised to the center of the throne as Shepherd to guide us to the springs of the water of life.

ALLELUIA!
SALVATION BELONGS TO OUR GOD
WHO IS SEATED ON THE THRONE,
AND TO THE LAMB!

ALLELUIA!

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