4 Easter C April 21, 2013
Acts 9:36-43 Ps.23
Rev 7:9-17 John
10:22-30
Being among
good Christian folks such as yourselves and as people who are well-informed
about your faith, I would like to pose some questions seeking short answers of
the one word variety, yes or no. Is
Jesus the Good Shepherd? Yes? Is Jesus the Lamb of God? Yes?
Well, now you have me really confused?
Can Jesus be both Shepherd and Lamb?
Is that acknowledging contradictory metaphors?
It is indeed
and it is no problem for language users.
We do amazing things with language.
Such contradictions only show the limits of any metaphor but it shows
how versatile we are as metaphor makers and users as we continuously look to
receive and create new metaphorical insight about our faith in the art of
living.
We use
language to transform geography. We use
language to relocate cities. By the time
the Gospel of John was coming to significant textual form, the city of
Jerusalem had been destroyed. Members of
the various religious parties of Judaism had to flee Jerusalem. Some Jews went to Jamnia and they began a
program to purify Judaism of all Hellenistic influences. Other members who were following the teaching
of Rabbi Jesus were forced out of Jerusalem and other parts of Israel as
well.
Some scholars
believe that the chief writing agents of the Gospel of John ended up in
Ephesus. Ephesus was an ancient city
that was the largest city in the Roman Asia province.
How does
language recreate geography? Some say
that followers of Jesus in Ephesus referred to that city as a New
Jerusalem. In the migration of people
resettling in a new location, we are well aware of people bring the location
names of their native countries to their new place of residence. People love their homelands; even though
economic conditions and hostilities drive them from their lands they have
enough nostalgia for the homeland to try to remake it in the new place.
Ephesus as
Jerusalem is quite a stretch though.
Unlike the Jewish purists who tried to restore their religion to a purity
without Hellenistic influence; the followers of Jesus in Ephesus as we know
them from the writing of the Gospel of John did exactly the opposite of the
Jewish purists. They sought to find a
way for cultural aspects of the Greco-Roman world to be baptized and used in
the presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
One of the ways to resist the world was to take methods of the world and
baptize them for the presentation of the Gospel. This was an engaging method of evangelism and
it has accounted for the greater success of the various forms of the Christian
faith in comparison to the worldwide success of the spread of the Jewish faith.
We find in
the appointed Gospel lesson a scenario that mixes a cultural presentation with
a seeming historical event. It would
seem as though Jesus is walking in the portico of Solomon at the Temple in
Jerusalem and he is in dialogue with Jewish interlocutors.
Does anyone
find it strange that Jesus is presented as being questioned by the Jews? In his own time, it really would be just one
Jew, Jesus talking with other Jews. But
how does it happen in the Gospel of John that Jesus is talking now to
“Jews?” Suddenly the Jews were presented
as foreign enemies of Jesus. This
presentation should tell us how Gentile the Christian movement had become even
while there were some Jewish patriarchs of the Jesus movement who were trying
to translate the Judaic context in ways so that it could be grasped by the
larger number of Gentile persons who were following Jesus.
There are
specific presentation elements that would give us an indication of a marriage
between Athens and Jerusalem. John is
written in the koine or common Greek
that was left over from the conquering of the world by Alexander the
Great. Alexander tried to bring the Greek
polis to the entire world. Local residents would speak their own native
language but would learn a common Greek for politics and commerce. This low Greek, lingua franca became the language
of choice for writing the New Testament.
The Greek
world for portico is Stoa. Stoa or
porch was the place where the founder of the Stoic philosophy began to do his
public teaching. Jesus was walking and
discussing in the stoa, a colonnade walkway
that ran the length of one side of the Temple complex. The Greek philosophical school of note
occurred in the colonnade walk ways called “parapatoi.” The philosophers eventually were called the Peripatetic
school or those who taught by walking about.
This is the very Greek word used for what Jesus was doing in the portico
of Solomon; he was walking and in dialogue. (περιπατέω peripateō ) This image would have recognizable symbolic
meaning for the Gentiles of Ephesus.
The
Peripatetic School was the classical graduate school of Greek philosophy. A student or disciple would gather around a
known teacher or philosopher who held court on the porch as he walked and
taught. And one can see the conscious
blending of teacher from the Greek wisdom perspective with the Hebraic notion
of the shepherd. David was the
quintessential shepherd but in the Gospel of John, Shepherd and Sheep is
presented as this intimate relationship between master and devotee, teacher and
student. And this notion would find a
hearing in the Gentile Greco-Roman world that had this long tradition of
graduate school for advanced learners.
In the Gospel
of John, Jesus was presented as the wisdom teacher par excellence. None of the other Gospels has the long
teaching discourses like the Gospel of John does. The Gospel of John presents to the readers an
occasion to identify with the disciples as they progressively learn to follow
their teacher and come to understand the inner wisdom of his teaching. The Gospel of John is founded upon a blend
between the Hebraic and Greek wisdom traditions. The chokmath or Sophia of the book of
Proverbs is seen as the eternal word or logos in the Gospel of John. In the beginning was the Logos, the
Word. There are few words that are more
directly from the Greek wisdom perspective than the word logos. And John’s Gospel is built around the Logos.
Logos is so pervasive
and so versatile it allows the full play of metaphors for evocative purposes;
purposes of evoking insights to influence and change our life and help us live
better. So indeed, Jesus can be a wisdom
Shepherd of God but also a Lamb whose life expresses the essence of sacrifice,
of laying down his life for others as a way of celebrating a relationship with
God.
John the
Divine in his vision of the end sees irony; the Lamb in the center will also be
the Shepherd. Being a shepherd comes through sacrifice. Sacrifice or laying
down of our lives for each other is what rises to the top of all value. Sacrifice or giving of one’s life is what
makes the Shepherd worthy of the sheep.
A teacher who shares all is what makes a teacher worthy of the student.
If Jesus was the Good Shepherd who had sheep who knew and heard his voice; it is also true
to say that his sheep went on to be shepherds and wisdom teachers. They too made disciples; the end and teaching
of their lives was to bring salvation or health. In the story of the rising of Dorcas one
finds the essence of the dynamic purpose of shepherd; it is to restore people
into the conditions of service. Dorcas’
life was characterized by service and she lost it but with Peter’s ministry she
was restore to being able to serve. This
parable is metaphorical of the function of those who are trained in the wisdom
tradition of Jesus. We are called to
enable each other to serve. We are truly
unhealthy when we do not serve. Health
is being able to serve.
The Gospel of
John is a successful wedding of Jerusalem and Athens; it is a blending of
Hebraic wisdom tradition within the language forms of the Greek wisdom
tradition. This blending accounts for
the long success of the Gospel.
We are still
blending the good news in the wisdom tradition as it can be made relevant to
our lives within our post-modern world.
I am committed to this blending of the Gospel of Jesus Christ within our
current time and place. Let us be in the
wisdom school of Jesus today and let our lives express the wonderful health of
service. Amen
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