Community: 4th Sunday in Eastertide

Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10

Oh the Mountain sheep are sweeter

But the Valley sheep are fatter.

Therefore we deemed it meeter

To carry off the latter.

Part 3 of Eastertide 2008

This week we have sheep and shepherds: Our favorite image of Jesus and his disciples in the 1st Century, and the church and its bishops ever after, presiding over their “flocks” with their ceremonial shepherd’s crooks. First we have the 23rd Psalm, read at times of personal or community crisis. Then we find in 1st Peter, reference to Isaiah 53 and the words used by G.F. Handel in one of the choruses from the Easter portion of the Messiah. (At least one choir director of my experience thought the musical emphasis produced on the English phrasing to be particularly amusing: “All WEE like sheep . . . have gone astray.”) Finally, we have John 10:1-10, in which the sheep/shepherd metaphor is explored, ending with John’s Jesus declaring that “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

Emphasizing the comfort of the sheep/shepherd motif is certainly far less confrontational than considering the possibility that some 1st Century Christian communities actually practiced communism and increased their numbers thereby. Nevertheless, this 4th Sunday of Easter mandates a look at the nature of community and leadership.

The shepherd metaphor is not particularly flattering, nor encouraging to 21st Century hopes for global democracy. The people are sheep, who listen only to the known voices of their leaders. The people will not listen to anyone who comes in over the fence instead of through the gate. They will run away from that one, but will follow the true shepherd. Then John’s Jesus tries to explain what he means and says he is the gate. Presumably God is the gate-keeper who opens the gate so that Jesus the Shepherd can call the names of each one in his flock, and they will hear and follow.

Because of the infamous cherry-picking by the Elves that put together the Lectionary for this Sunday, half of John’s argument about the nature of the good shepherd is left out (John 10:11-18). In that section, the pivotal phrase, “lay down his/my life for the sheep” is repeated four times. Jesus claims the power to lay down his life and to take it up again as “received from the Father.” By the end of the discourse, Jesus the good shepherd is seen to be in partnership with God the gatekeeper, even on behalf of “other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” Here the metaphor breaks down. Unlike those other strangers, from whose voices the sheep will run, Jesus can jump the fence. “[T]hey will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” The question arises, just who are the thieves and bandits here?

It is absolutely essential that these passages not be read as anti-Jewish. They are certainly anti-something. Whether the creator of John’s gospel was writing from within a Jewish context or from a non-Jewish pagan or Greek context is under current investigation by biblical scholars. For the purpose of this discussion, which it was doesn’t matter. John was probably railing against “thieves and bandits” in rival fledgling Christian communities who were siphoning off members using various interpretations of a developing Christianity. Perhaps John was referring to the likes of the leaders of 1st Peter’s community. The sheep may run away from the thieves and bandits who jump the fence, but they cannot escape if the thieves grab them and carry them off.

The secret for a successful community that relies on commonality such as described in Acts lies in the certainty and trust that individual members have in the kind of realm described in Psalm 23. Even though the majority of 21st Century, largely urban Christians have no clue what sheep are like, the 23rd Psalm attributed to the Great King David resonates with other pastoral imagery of God’s peaceable kingdom of distributive justice-compassion. Such trust allows the individual to walk through the valley of the shadow of death itself because evil is held in check by one’s own integrity, partnership with the Creator, and trust that distributive justice can and does work.

With mutual trust, there is no need for authority. Or, as Paul puts it in 1st Corinthians 15:56, “the power of sin is the law.” Extrapolating 1st Century Paul to the 21st Century is always a tricky exercise. Paul may have been talking about Jewish law that insists on physical signs to prove membership in a community; he may have been talking about Roman law, which solidifies retributive imperial power. But the relevance that remains in Paul’s suggestion is that law expressed as power-over others prevents individuals from full participation in establishing just systems in a community, or participating with God in restoring distributive justice-compassion on earth, as in God’s realm.

Interpreting Isaiah’s servant song (Isaiah 53) as ransom or substitutionary atonement theories, as 1st Peter does, has been accepted theology for nearly 2,000 years. But being a servant-leader does not mean piously and passively accepting abuse from the powers and principalities that impact the wider society, as 1st Peter implies. Without the second half of John’s parable of the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, Jesus’s leadership falls far short of his dramatic demonstration of kenotic service found in Chapter 13. Jesus’s leadership model is the servant-leader who transforms societies because the servant-leader empowers others. 1st Peter’s theology amounts to heresy because leadership vested in the authority of human institutions acting with power-over others can never lead to distributive justice.

The Elves also conveniently skip 1st Peter 2:18, which advises slaves to “accept the authority of your masters with all deference,” whether they are kind or “harsh.” This is unacceptable on several levels whether in a 1st or a 21st Century context. Slavery is outlawed world-wide in the 21st Century, although of course it is practiced in all kinds of ways, ranging from sub-standard wages to human trafficking. Shall Christian communities indeed decline to work to eliminate this injustice? Following the slavery example, pious 1st Peter implies that if we allow injustice to not only exist, but to proliferate, “if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.”

1st Peter repudiates Isaiah’s suffering servant, negates the meaning of Jesus’s own death, and cheapens the courage of self-less martyrs to justice in all times and circumstances. Being an empowered partner in a community dedicated to the great work of distributive justice-compassion is not a passive role, subject to blindly following the leader. Kenotic servant leadership arises from and creates kenotic communities that bring about God’s Realm of distributive justice-compassion through radical abandonment of self-interest. But such radical abandonment is far from passive, and cannot happen without profound trust in the presence of justice and life. Participation then means active non-violent resistance to the normalcy of unjust human institutional systems. But beware of mixing the metaphor, as John risked doing with his parable, and the Elves have done with the choice of readings for this week. It is far more difficult to follow the true shepherd through the gate than it is to be kidnaped over the fence.