+ In nomine Domini.  Amen.

with a warning label the sermon hopefully is one of teaching more than preaching. 

Let’s review:

This is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, there are three more Sundays of Easter to go in this season that lasts 49 days and ends with the Feast of Pentecost, which takes place this year on May 11^th. 

The Gospel stories which we have read thus far have all been from what is called the resurrection narrative and I have described them as a series of One Act Plays.  Recall what they were:

Easter Sunday the Gospel was from Matthew’s version where Magdalene and Mary the Mother of James visit the tomb, find it empty, see and hear an angel telling them not to be afraid, that Jesus has been raised, go to Galilee and tell the others.  The women with hearts stunned and happy take off to do that, and run into Jesus himself who tells them not to be afraid and to go indeed to tell the others what they have seen.  That was Easter Sunday, the First Sunday of Easter.

The Second Sunday of Easter, the Gospel was John’s version of the story of “Doubting Thomas” (as it’s commonly known) or as I like to call it … “Jesus’ Two-fold Appearance to His Frightened Followers.”  The message consistently given by Jesus to his followers in this resurrection appearance is: “Peace be with you, Be filled with God’s Spirit, Tell the Story, Forgive one another.”

The Third Sunday of Easter was last Sunday and the Gospel was Luke’s version of things, where two people walking on the road to Emmaus are met by the risen Jesus, have a conversation, go into their home to have a meal, and when Jesus takes the bread and blesses and breaks it in a Eucharistic moment, they know who it is, and when Jesus vanishes from their sight, they describe the experience as if their “hearts were burning inside themselves” and they go to tell the Eleven about their experience.

And now we are at the Fourth Sunday of Easter, and our Gospel is John’s version of things.  What we would expect is another story from the resurrection narrative, told by the author of John.  But in the wisdom of the Lectionary the chronology is interrupted and what we have is a parable, a teaching from Jesus.

Now yes, because of the words of this story, this Sunday is called “Good Shepherd Sunday”  … Jesus being the Good Shepherd.  And that is true to a point, because Jesus uses the image of a Shepherd in this part of John’s version of the story.  And the theme of the Good Shepherd appears only in John’s Gospel (written as you will recall somewhere in the last decade of the 1^st Century, perhaps around the year 90 … the other Gospels written 10 to 20 years before).

You see what happens because of the Lectionary that we read from, we frequently get the Gospel Story for a particular Sunday in a capsule, out of context.  On the one hand that’s a good thing, because we get to learn a lot of Gospel Stories; but on the other hand, it’s not so good, because what we have is a collection of Gospel Stories disconnected from their place within the whole Gospel that we are reading from … this morning it is John.

In other words, it’s like pulling a plant up from the ground and leaving part of the roots back in the earth.

So the job of the Preacher is to keep reminding you that this Gospel Capsule is taken out of the rest of the story, and in order to make sense of it, must be put back in place.

So let me do that.  This Gospel Story is from the 10^th chapter of John.  It begins at verse 1.  What comes immediately before this story is a story we had 7 weeks ago on the Fourth Sunday in Lent … in the 9^th chapter of John … the story of the Healing of the Man Born Blind.  And that story ends right before today’s Gospel Story begins.  And the way it ends is important, because the whole scene in which the healing of the man born blind takes place has to do with the Pharisees, the religious leaders who want nothing more than for religious life to be pure and meaningful, but who have come to insist that it can only happen under strict rules and directions.

The 9^th chapter ends with some of these religious leaders coming over to Jesus and asking him, “We are not blind, are we?” And Jesus responds, “If you were blind you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”  And this makes sense only if you recall that the whole question about the man born blind was what sin had his parents committed, or had he committed in order that he was born blind.   So Jesus in typical Jesus-fashion, again from the pen of the Gospel Writer John, turns things around … always a teaching moment, now for these religious leaders, the Pharisees. 

End of the story … but no, not really!  End of the story because when chapters and verses were assigned to the books of the New Testament (in the 15^th and 16^th Centuries) it was to make things easier for the reader.  That’s the blessing.  The curse is that we therefore tend to see these stories as plants pulled out of the ground, missing some of the roots.

It would be better if we had a text with no verses, because then we could see the connection between this story in the 9^th chapter of John, and the story we have read this morning. 

Because now that you know this connection, you can see the first 10 verses of the 10^th chapter of John for what it really is, a continued response of Jesus to the Pharisees.  So in my own words, it goes like this.

Some of the religious leaders came up to Jesus after the whole encounter of the man born blind whom Jesus healed and they asked him, “What about us?  Is it possible that we are blind too, but in a way that we are missing the whole point of our desire to make life pure and meaningful?”  So Jesus answered them, “Well, if you were blind, you would not have anything wrong with you, but since you keep insisting that you have the true insight into what makes life pure and meaningful and you do this by compelling people to obey so many rules and directions, then if that’s the way it is, you are carrying around more sin than you can imagine.”

And then he went on to talk about himself using this image of sheep and the corral where the sheep are kept.  He began, “Very truly I tell you, anyone who doesn’t come into the corral by the gate, but climbs over the rocks that make the corral, or the branches that make the fence of the corral, that one is there only to steal the sheep.  The shepherd is the one who comes in through the gate and the sheep know that, and they recognize the shepherd, they know what he looks like, they know his voice, they are comforted because he is their shepherd, and not a stranger, and they will follow him anywhere.”

The little group from the Pharisees didn’t quite understand this and so Jesus tried again, “I am the Gate, you see.  There have been plenty out there who were not the Gate, they climbed over the rocks and crawled through the fence, trying to steal the hearts of the people, and they acted like thieves.  But the people didn’t listen to them, they were waiting for something more, and what I have to offer is that something more, it is life and life that is abundant.”

And then the Lectionary strikes again, leaving off those words we all know because after saying this, Jesus says, in John’s telling of the Gospel, lest there be no mistake about it, “I am the Good Shepherd.  The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

So go home today, pull out your Bible and read chapter 9 and 10 of John’s Gospel together.  And you will see the theme that is emerging, now in these last few Sundays of the Season Easter, which go beyond the resurrection narrative in order to explain just how important this Jesus is … today, a Good Shepherd, and next Sunday a step jumping ahead in the chronology of the John to some of the most comforting words from Jesus, in Chapter 14.

To be continued …