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.
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."
“… 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!
