Christopher Thomas
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B – 4/25/21
Acts 4:5-12
Psalm 23
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18
There’s no place you can go that I won’t come get you.
Love.
It’s one of, if not the most nebulous substances to define, confine, refine, in our feeble, foible-filled attempts to propagate that which refuses to be contained by a Hallmark greeting card, love.
When asked who God is, God responds, very simply, I AM; and across the tome of canon, I AM simply (HA!) means love.
I AM – that I AM…
Love.
I AM – the bread of life…
I AM – the good shepherd…
I AM – love…
Love knows no bounds, bonds that wed Chronos and Kairos together, inextricably, forever.
What makes love “unconditional” for you? For a significant part of my somewhat self-aware adult life, I have struggled to nail that one down, because I think some workable definition of “unconditional love” is helpful to my place, our place in the human condition, and how each of us relates to God (theology), and to the world around us.
The best that I can come up with is this:
There’s no place you can go that I won’t come get you.
That feels good to me. Now, I’m going to confess that I believe that grandparents are about the most special people on the planet. They parent in ways that parents simply cannot. When they operate at their best and finest, they are the most influential people in bringing up the next generation. I say this because I had two of the most incredible (not perfect) grandmothers that you might imagine, and the older that I get, the more they grow in their iconic stature. They were my first, tangible, identifiable demonstration of this concept of “unconditional love.”
It’s not so much because they allowed me to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, although my mother may think differently; no, there were plenty of boundaries that included actions and consequences. There was something about those relationships that instilled the belief that I, through no action of my own, was worthy of love, even when I wasn’t acting particularly loveable.
I can’t remember an example of a time when my grandmothers preached to me about faith or Christianity. Not one single instance comes to mind. Rather the beautifully imperfect lives they lived sang to me time and again of their deep devotion to Jesus Christ and the Christian life, faith, and witness. I’ve thought about that a lot, about how, not just through their words, but through their actions; they formed my own imagination as to how I felt and continue to feel, about myself, and how I fit into the world around me. They were good shepherds, in their own way.
It should be no great surprise to us that the good shepherd metaphor, the one that we consider today, is so central to not only our Christian faith, but throughout Hebrew scripture as well. Images of God’s abiding love manifest a deep sense of great comfort. The good shepherd image, and all that it implies, brings us comfort because of what it says so directly about our relationship to our protector, defender, and provider, and therefore to the world around us. It speaks of unconditional love, of the willingness to lay down life, to give up that which is most precious, for the benefit of someone else.
Jesus takes up this metaphor, along with several others, in not only defining his work in the world, but in charging those of us who would come after with what our work should be as well. In today’s text from John, Jesus names himself the good (kalos) shepherd, and proceeds to define what that means, over and against those who are hired hands. There is a depth of intimacy and caring that reaches so much more deeply than someone hired to do a job.
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
The good shepherd knows her sheep, and they know her.
The good shepherd actively seeks, gathering up those who are not part of the fold.
There’s no place you can go that I won’t come get you.
Comfort. Security. The warmth of embrace.
If only the metaphor, if only Jesus, if only God, were so simply, and completely comforting, to us, in our own time, and in our own space, and in our own way, then it would be so easy to define, and confine, and refine this thing called “unconditional love.” But you know as well as I do that Jesus never stops with our comfort. Jesus always calls us beyond our comfort. Our comfort, our being “found-ness,” is only the beginning, and hopefully the end, of the story. There is a world of challenge in our own responsibility as shepherd that inhabits our time between the alpha and the omega.
Unconditional love, God’s love, the love demonstrated by Jesus, the I am the bread of life, the I am the good shepherd, is ever-expanding, multiplying love because it demands, requires, necessitates that same willingness, that same generosity to self-sacrifice. “No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord!”
Unconditional love is a choice that you cannot help but make. You could choose to do something else, and yet you simply will not, or cannot, or do not, because a love stronger than death overcomes you. That is shepherd as opposed to hired hand.
How will we know, how will we recognize, when we, too, are in full accord with this kind of love, this unconditional love, that overtakes the shepherd for the shepherd’s fold?
“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a sister or brother in need and yet refuses to help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth, and in action.”
Darnella Frazier listened to the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, and acted. Darnella Frazier was that teenager who happened upon George Floyd under the death-dealing knee of a Minneapolis police officer one fateful morning. Darnella Frazier had the presence of mind, and the courage to listen to and to listen for humanity crying out for breath, and Darnella Frazier, had the strength to act. Darnella Frazier risked safety, and security, and threats, her own sense of well-being, and stayed the course in recording the event that ultimately changed the course of history. A simple act. A courageous act. A sacrificial act. The act of a shepherd.
How often do we encounter these opportunities in our own daily existences? How often are we presented with the opportunities, simple chances to BE the good shepherd, to someone else, someone who is different from us, who is suffering, or sorrowful, or lonely? I promise you, it is happening, constantly, and consistently, for every single one of us. How often do we pass that homeless person on the street, and feel some deeper sense of connection, and yet choose to ignore the feeling? How often do we know we should act, but we choose inaction, because it is more convenient? How often do we choose to look the other way with injustice because it is simply too inconvenient to demand anything different?
These, and more, are all OUR opportunities to BE the good shepherd. And Jesus is calling us to BE the good shepherd to ALL of God’s people.
If you want to know what unconditional love is, BE unconditional love.
There is no place you can go that I won’t come get you!
Amen.
