April 21, 2024 – The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Fr. Cal Calhoun

In the Name of God: the God of all creation, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

This 4th Sunday in Easter is called Good Shepherd Sunday. Our readings and our Collect of the Day reflect that focus. In our reading from Acts, Peter is called on in front of the council, to defend their actions, their healing of the crippled beggar who used to beg at the gate of the Temple called the Beautiful Gate. This all is fine to me until we get to the last sentence: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

You see, I struggle with a God whose plan of salvation would eliminate, in today’s world, roughly half of God’s human creation. In this case, I can justify it by saying, well these are Peter’s words and we know that Peter is not perfect. We know that Peter can get it wrong. But then there are Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” That quote gets thrown around a lot.

But today’s Gospel gives me hope. In today’s gospel Jesus shares the image and symbolism of the good shepherd. A shepherd, a leader, a guide, a protector, willing to lay down his life for the sheep. That’s us, the sheep, I think? And, in truth, Jesus has done just that, laid down his life in order to take it up again. We are just a few weeks from our journey with Jesus to the cross, and, thank God, the journey with Mary Magdalene and Peter and John to the empty tomb.

But the bit of this that gives me hope is this: when Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them in also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” That helps me a lot. Now this seems to contradict what Peter says, indeed what Jesus says in this same Gospel of John. Same book, same author, right here in John, we have what seems like a contradiction. Truth is Scripture is full of contradictions. Which is why taking a quote and running with as if it captures all there is to say about God, is by definition a flawed approach. Scripture is a complicated source of revelation that we need to spend a lifetime engaging, hopefully with others, to learn from and with them, to assist our journey with God.

I find it interesting that Jesus doesn’t say here, that it is MY job to bring them in, to bring those sheep in the other fold to Jesus, he says he’ll do, he’ll bring them in. Jesus doesn’t say what that will look like. How that bringing in of those not of this fold will look. But this is one of the pieces of scripture that leads me to believe that God has a plan of salvation as inclusive and diverse as God’s own creation. And just because I think this Scripture points us that way, doesn’t mean I have any idea what that broader plan of salvation looks like. But I trust that God has that worked out.

You see, for me, Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life. For me, Jesus is the good shepherd. But I know there are billions of people who have never heard the name Jesus, and billions more who have heard it, but will never embrace it because of where and into what they were born. It doesn’t seem like the plan of a loving God, to leave those folks out in the cold. So I have to believe that God has a plan for ALL God’s children, even if I don’t know about it, even if I don’t understand it.

Because this I know and believe: God can save whoever God wants to save, whenever God wants to save them. If it were not so – God would not be God. Scripture is pretty clear on that. And to say anything else, is building a box of our own making to put God in.

I’m afraid discussing the bit of this Gospel that has been most compelling to me, might cause me to miss the primary point of this example of the good shepherd.  Br. James Koester of SSJE says this about the Good Shepherd: “The good news is that we don’t need to be perfect. We only need to be found. We give thanks that the Good Shepherd continues to search for us, so that” today, and tomorrow, and every day after, “we will be found, gathered into his arms, and brought home.” Amen.

Year B  –  The Fourth Sunday of Easter  –   April 21, 2024   –   The Rev. Cal Calhoun