Easter
4 2015 (Year B)
Father Adam Trambley
April 26, 2015 St.John’s Sharon
In this morning’s second reading, John writes, “We know love
by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives
for one another.” The two parts of this
statement are important for us, and more than a little bit overwhelming. After Lent and Easter, we know that Jesus laid
down his life for us, but here John lays out one implication of Jesus’ activity
for us: that we ought to lay down our lives for each other, as well.
This fourth Sunday of Easter is sometimes called Good
Shepherd Sunday because Collect of the Day, which is the prayer we say at the
beginning of the services, talks about Jesus as the Good Shepherd of God’s
people, and some of the readings have a similar theme. The twenty-third Psalm is one of the most
familiar parts of scripture, and talks about the Lord as our shepherd, and
Jesus appropriates that shepherd image to himself in our gospel. Jesus describes the good shepherd in the same
terms that John uses in his letter. “The
good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” Jesus says.
For Jesus, the quality that distinguishes him as the good
shepherd is precisely that he is willing to lay down his life for his
sheep. The hired hand doesn’t have that
much love for the sheep. If the wolf
shows up, never mind a lion or a bear, the hired hand is out of there. Let’s face it; sheep taste better to wolves
than scrawny lads hired to guard the sheepfold.
When the hired hand runs away, the wolf will leave him alone and go
after the sheep. But the Good Shepherd would rather die than let the wolf get
his sheep because he loves his sheep and they are all special to him. He knows them each by name and they recognize
his voice.
One way the Good Shepherd has laid down his life for his
sheep is through Jesus’ passion and death.
Human beings through their own sin and disobedience decided to invite
the wolf into the sheepfold. God wants
what is good for us, so when we disobey him, we are basically inviting the
powers that want to destroy us to come in and have at it. We could eat the green grass that Jesus has
led us to, but instead we want to try chewing rocks. We could lie down beside the still waters,
but we want to play hide and seek by where the wolves are sleeping. We could follow along behind Jesus, but we
think the grass is greener on the other side and wander off and get ourselves
lost. When all those things happen, our
Good Shepherd does not abandon us to face the consequences of our own errors. Instead, he himself deals with our situation,
going as far as to lay down his life so that death could no longer threaten
us. Ever since Jesus died and rose
again, we never have to worry about facing death by alone, because even in
death, Jesus is now with us. Not even
death can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord, and if
death can’t, nothing else is able to, either.
Jesus died fighting off that big bad wolf on our behalf.
But just because Jesus has overcome death, doesn’t mean it
isn’t threatening to us. The
twenty-third psalm has this powerful verse: Though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you
are with me. A lot more paths lead
through the valley of the shadow of death than we might wish. Death casts his deep, dark shadow in far too
many places. An earthquake in
Nepal. Bombings in Syrian churches. Plane crashes. Car accidents. Terrorist attacks. Cancer diagnoses. The slowly accumulating ravages of time that
just wear out our mortal bodies.
Looking up at the steep cliffs on either side of us while we go through
such experiences is more than a bit scary.
The threats are many and the way ahead is not always clear. The shadows confuse us, depress us, and
threaten to take away our hope. But with
our Good Shepherd, we don’t need to lost hope.
We do not need to lose our way.
And we do not need to be afraid of any evil. Nothing that happens to us will ultimately be
evil, because Jesus is with us and evil can’t win when he is there. Evil can’t win, can’t touch us, can’t harm
us.
Sometimes in those dark valleys, we confuse the real evils
from the vagaries of human life. The
real evils that Jesus is always protecting us from are things like hatred and
resentment toward whoever or whatever we think got us into this unpleasant
situation to begin with. That hatred and
bitterness is the kind of hardheartedness that leads us to kick God out of our
lives and turn way his saving love.
Another evil is an amnesia about God’s love for us as his children,
where we forget what God has done for us or that he is always on our side. Still another evil is selfishness that can
beset us when we are threatened, where we think we are entitled to whatever we
want because the going is difficult, instead loving each other and trusting God
to give us what we need. Real evil
separates us from God and one another, and it damages the soul.
We might associate whatever natural processes are causing us
difficulty, or are threatening our health, as evil, but they are not
necessarily evil. They may just be part
of how life works, even if we don’t understand why the world is set up that way. If God chooses, he can protect us from any
threat and heal any illness, but for some reason that we can’t comprehend, he
doesn’t always. But even in those cases
where things don’t seem to work the way we would want them to, we can trust
that even in the valley of the shadow of death, even in the shadow of death we
find on the other side of our own deaths, we shall fear no evil for God is with
us, and, as the last line of the psalm states, “I will dwell in the house of
the LORD for ever.” Even if the valley
of the shadow of death leads us through our tombs instead of around them, Jesus
is still with us, ensuring that no evil can harm us after we die any more than
it did before we died. Jesus ensured
our protection even after death by laying down his life for us on the cross,
descending to the dead, and then rising from the grave. We celebrate that resurrection throughout
this Easter season, as well as every day of our Christian lives.
To return to First John, just like Jesus laid down his life
for us, we are to lay our lives down for one another. We don’t lay our lives down for quite the same
purpose as Jesus did. We aren’t capable
of overcome the powers of sin, death and the devil once and for all. We aren’t the Messiah, but we are supposed to
think and act like Jesus, our Messiah, did.
Jesus’ attitude was that it was worth giving up everything, including
his life, for people who were messed up, sinful, disobedient, recalcitrant
slobs like we are. Nobody who Jesus died
for was worthy of his death. Nobody was more important than him, as if he were
the secret service agent taking a bullet. Nobody was even close either to the
glory of his divine nature or to the sinlessness of his human nature. But Jesus
didn’t care. He died for us who are so far
below him, emptying himself entirely, carrying his cross, and washing our feet
along the way. We are called to follow
Jesus, talking up our cross, washing feet, and laying down our lives for one
another.
Very few people are called to go so far as to die for
someone else. But our attitude, to be
like Jesus’, is that we ought to love anyone and everyone enough to lay down
our lives for them if need be. We are
supposed to remember that everyone we meet, from our most beloved family
members to our worst enemies at school or work to the most annoying people we
meet in line, is someone that Jesus loved enough to die for and that we should also
consider them as someone we would die for if necessary.
Since there are limited ways to actually help someone by
dying for them, John provides an immediate concrete example of how we can take
a step toward dying for another. He
writes, How does God’s love abide in
anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet
refused to help? John has just
lowered the bar dramatically. If you
aren’t called to lay down your life for someone, you should at least help
them. If you see someone who is hungry
and you have food in your pantry then feed them. If you have clothing and someone has no shoes
or no coat, then give them what they need.
If you have a checkbook with anything in it and there are people who are
homeless or victims of a natural disaster or refugees or in any other kind of
need, then write the check and send it to somebody someplace that will do
something. If we don’t, John says, we
clearly don’t have God’s love abiding in us.
Certainly there are also other ways for us to help people in
need that come even closer to dying to self.
We could give our time, perhaps our most valuable commodity, to
others. We can give our hearts to them,
listening to those who need friendship and love. We can pour out our souls in prayer before
God on behalf of those in need, which is its own type of dying to ourselves for
the sake of another.
Note why John says we should people: not because they
deserve it (because they might not); not because if we give generously, we will
receive generously (although we probably will); not because by helping people
we help Jesus (even though we do). John
says to help people in need because it is one component of laying down our life
for someone else, and we are supposed to follow Jesus in doing just that. And since Jesus laid down his life for us and
has taken away any evil that death could do to us, then we can confidently lay
down our lives for others, or even just give them what we need, confident that
as we follow Jesus, we need not fear any evil.
Through Jesus’ Good Shepherding, Jesus loves us and lays
down his life for us. We fear no evil,
even in the valley of the shadow of death because he is with us. We can follow Jesus and help others in their
time of need, laying down our lives for them in imitation of Jesus who laid
down his life for us.
We know love by this, that he laid down his
life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.
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