Sermon: The Fourth Sunday of Easter, 2007
Community Church of Wilmette
April 29, 2007
Alleluia! The Lord is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
There is an icon of Jesus that I keep beside me when I prepare sermons. In the icon, he stands there with the scriptures in one hand and his other hand offering a blessing. I keep him beside me for several reasons. One is the simple reminder of the basic reason why I am preaching in the first place: Jesus asked me to. Through the church, the Body of Christ, I was asked to preach. Within the inner reaches of my heart, where I like to think that Jesus and I meet occasionally, I was asked to preach. So Jesus sits beside me as I prepare to preach.
He’s a demanding partner in the whole endeavor to be certain. Sometimes I imagine him saying things like “No really, I would never say that.” or “There you go. You are with me and I am with the congregation.” I never know what the comment will be.
I garner a certain kind of strength from the icons in my house. I have several. They each reveal something about a person or story from scripture. They each play in my imagination, in my heart, and become partners in prayer to God. But the icon of Jesus offering his blessing with one hand while holding the always-challenging scriptures in the other is perhaps the most provocative icon I possess. It’s almost as if it possesses me.
It seems so strange to say any of this about a picture. And in this case it’s really about a print glued to a thin piece of wood. It’s a simple object. But there it is. In this day and time, I can think of no more powerful a partner and guide than this particular window into Christianity. This is a time when the church needs to show itself as a blessing to the world and not a crutch for the weak or an oppressive institution bent on keeping women, minorities or anyone else in their place (wherever that might be). All I say from the pulpit should have the quality of blessing to it. But there is the other hand of Jesus.
There is a challenge implied in this icon. Jesus holds the scriptures in his left hand. The copy he holds is covered in gold and jewels. It’s a lovely book…perhaps a bit grandiose for your average community church, but then again I’m a Baptist talking about icons. So, maybe the rules have changed a little. But there they are, in his hand…the challenge of the scriptures is not to be taken lightly. And there are many challenges implied.
Can I make sense of words from two thousand years ago? That’s a challenge.
And if I do, can I bear up under their message to us now? It is hard to love the Lord, your God, the Great I AM, in a world that might question your intelligence or sanity for believing in God in the first place.
It is challenging to say that God loves all of us in this world that sometimes shows so little love.
It is challenging to cry “mercy” in stead of asking for vengeance.
It is challenging to proclaim that the poor are Christ in the world.
It is challenging to proclaim that no institution, government, power, corporation, principality, can save us from anything…True courage is to accept it.
that it is only God who can save us…
that true judgment is the ability to recognize salvation when it is offered.
And all this is just the tip of the iceberg…held in Jesus’ hand.
The icon is great company in all of this. I should say that Jesus is great company in all of this. The icon points me to Jesus. The icon shows me this powerful reflection of Jesus. The icon is a window into some place I am only beginning to live into. I take great comfort in this image of Jesus, in the blessing and in the challenge.
God blesses me.
God is not yet done with me.
This morning we are met with an image of God…an icon of sorts. This is Good Shepherd Sunday. The passages this Sunday are all about this image of God…and it is a powerful one. Second and third century Christians lived under the shadow of The Good Shepherd. Churches that archaeologists have uncovered from that period often have mosaics of the Good Shepherd placed prominently within them. For those Christians, the image was both a blessing and a challenge.
In most of the Roman world, Christians from this period in history were being persecuted, imprisoned and killed for their beliefs. All of the apostles would be martyred. In generations that followed, many would suffer such a fate. So, images like the one offered to us in the passage from Revelation, and promises voiced by Jesus in John’s Gospel would take a central place in the faith of those generations of the church.
You will pass through the great tribulation, says John the Revelator.
Even death cannot separate you from the Love of Christ, says John the Gospeler.
The early church was wrestling with forces that were beyond their ability to circumvent. They were, in their way, subversives.
They gave to the poor. They created group homes for widows and orphans. They rescued the abandoned girl children from homes that did not want them because they would be an economic burden. They would not bow to the Emperor of Rome as a god. They would not swear such fealty because they believed that God was above any emperor, any king. They healed. They lived together in community.
This is what put them in danger. Their way of participating in the civil life of the empire was atypical. Some even thought that they were dangerous. They were considered superstitious on one hand, atheist on the other. Some onlookers admired them for their good works but balked at the reason behind the good works. So, the church looked to the Good Shepherd, the Lamb upon the Throne.
Sometimes I wonder if I have fallen into the trap of thinking of the Good Shepherd as just a pleasant image of God. When I have preached on this passage in the past, I have spoken about sheep…how they are clever…and how they are not. I have spoken about shepherds and how they were rough and tumble youths but yet gentle with their charge. I have romanticized the Good Shepherd into a bucolic image of agrarian pleasantness. But now I see it differently.
The early church claimed the Good Shepherd not just because they needed some assurance that they were going to heaven or that their robes would be washed in the blood of Jesus and be made clean. It is not an image proposing escapism. They needed the strength of the image to continue the work of the Gospel in the face of incredible difficulties. They knew the bone crushing power of empire. They knew that the work of the Gospel could lead to their deaths. And the image of the Good Shepherd, the mystical vision from Revelation, empowered them to stand in such a world and proclaim the Gospel nonetheless.
Jesus met with those who were on the outside. Those who follow him will be seen as odd, outlandish, crude, impossible, strange, subversive, and potentially a danger to the status quo.
As strange as Revelation may seem to us now, there is no other book in the Bible that so clearly describes the power of empire and the troubles that arise when we challenge it proclaiming that God sits in judgment of the empire and asks us all to give ourselves over to love and gentleness. The vision describes an ongoing cultural and cosmic shift of perception. The vision of John of Patmos is a pastoral response to a people caught in the midst of strife.
There are empires…there are forces set against God either by design or accident. And they believe that they sit in judgment. They believe that they can define humanity. They believe that their definitions of reality can remake the world. They believe they offer salvation…of one kind or another.
And don’t think that we escape this trap by virtue of our proclaimed allegiance. The church, too, as an institution, has fallen into this same trap again and again. Roman Christian Imperialism, The Crusades, American Evangelical Protestantism are just a few of examples…fundamentalism of any stripe, liberal or conservative has this same failing. We have to be wary of this trap. We have to look to the Good Shepherd.
Judgment belongs to God. Life belongs to God. Our safety, our salvation, belongs to God. It does not rest in our hands. It rests in the hands of Jesus, the Good Shepherd.
So, what I would ask of you all this morning is this: Do you have an image of God that blesses and challenges you. Do you have an image of God, an icon that can hold all of the strife of the world within it?
The genocide in Darfur?
The massacre at Virginia Tech?
The daily bombings in Iraq?
Military invasion?
Poverty?
Cruelty and brokenness hidden behind doors in our suburbs?
All our feelings of insecurity?
Do you have an icon that can challenge this world? Do you have an icon that desires to bless and renew the same world, a world in turmoil? Do you have an icon that will uphold you as you participate in the renewal of this world?
If you do not, I ask you to look to the Good Shepherd. Begin there. See how he suits you. See how he challenges and cares for you in the midst of your work for the Kingdom.
The King of love, my shepherd is.
My shepherd will supply my need.
Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death…
Alleluia! The Lord is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Thanks be to God.
Posted by tripp at April 29, 2007 08:28 AM