Being Related to Power, Wealth and Knowledge

4 Easter B  April 25, 2021
Acts 4:5-12  Psalm 23
1 John 3:1-8     John 10:11-16

Lectionary Link

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, and it is an opportunity for us to ponder how biblical writers used their metaphors.  Biblical metaphors can be very fluid; they change to be expressive of the significant ideas which they represent.

So, what about Jesus as a Good Shepherd?  Wouldn't it be more literally true to call him a good carpenter?  He probably worked with his daddy Joseph the carpenter.  We have no record of Jesus herding sheep.  But the chief model for the Messiah, King David was a shepherd who poetically believed that God was his Shepherd, as we recite in the famous 23rd Psalm.

But in biblical metaphors, Jesus is also called the Lamb of God.  Can we appreciate how fluid metaphors are?  Jesus is both Shepherd and Lamb of God.

Why did the early church explain the life of Jesus as a Lamb of God?  The essence of the life of such a Lamb is sacrifice and sacrifice is a chief element of shepherding, or one who lays down one's life for one's sheep.

For me, Good Shepherd Sunday presents us with insights about how we are related to power in our lives.  One relationship to power is seen in the image of the sheep.  A sheep represents those without the power of enough knowledge, wealth or privilege in life situations.

All of us find ourselves powerless at times in that we are in need,having needs both ordinary and great.  Our social order is divided into the division of labor with people having expertise in different areas.  If I am stranded with a car failure on the side of the road.  I am powerless and need the help of someone to aid me.  If I am sick, I need the knowledge of a physician to be my shepherd back to health.  If I am a student without knowledge, I need a shepherding teacher to lead me into further knowledge.

It is good to remember that in some areas of life each of us is powerless because, we experience situations when we need the significant knowledge, wealth and experience of others.

And what should being sheep teach us?  It should teach us the ability to have empathy for people in need.  And what can this empathy which we learn from human need teach us?

It can teach us how to properly use the power, knowledge and wealth that we have to help shepherd people in need.

Jesus is the Model Good Shepherd because he was also the Lamb of God, who lived his life sacrificially for us.  Sacrifice is needed in our lives to counter selfish power, selfish knowledge and selfish wealth.  In our identity with the sacrificial life of Jesus Christ, we are given power to become good shepherds to those in need who can benefit with the particular gifts and strengths that we have.

Let us remember that the model of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is not meant to limit shepherding to Jesus Christ; but rather to lead us all into the important shepherding roles that is given to us by virtues of the God-given gifts that God gives to us to bring a fuller reciprocity within our community life, the reciprocity of the common good.

If we have learned anything this past year during the pandemic and during a time of renewed reckoning about the uneven practice of racial justice; we have learned that our world, our country, our state, our city, our parish and neighborhoods need enlightened and sacrificial shepherding.  We need the mobilization of the strength of our gifts to be shared for the rising of the level of the well-being of people with whom we live.

The Good Shepherd reading also warns us about the human failure at shepherding; when people with wealth, knowledge and power become selfish exploiters of those who do not have wealth, knowledge or power, we experience human community at its worst.  We are reminded by the illustration that there are thieves, robbers, or mere hired hands who are not engaged with others in loving regard; rather they act from the motive of exploitive selfishness.

And this should be a warning to us, because we know how easy it is to be selfish.  We are also tempted to stay away from need or ignore our own privilege at the inadvertent expense of those who do not have equal advantage.

I feel like the Good Shepherd metaphor is a piercing realistic analysis of power and how we should be rightly related to power, wealth and knowledge.

The model of the Good Shepherd is a exhortation to us that where we've been given much, much is required of us in applied shepherding to the manifold needs of the world.  Why?

Because when we are in need, we want good shepherds for us.  But when we are given knowledge, power and wealth, we need to be follow the model of Jesus as the sacrificial Good Shepherd.

Jesus did not come to be an exclusive Good Shepherd; he came to model and share with us the task of shepherding which has to be continually done for the manifold needs of the world.

So, the Good Shepherd is calling us to be good shepherds in our world today.  Amen.