Read, Mark, Learn: April 2013

Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

All quotations from scripture come from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, with the exception of the Psalms, which come from The Book of Common Prayer, 1979. Not all scripture passages from the lectionary may be quoted or referenced in a given Sunday's sermon. For more information on the lectionary used in The Episcopal Church, please visit http://www.lectionarypage.net/.

“What Our Sisters and Brothers Have Done”

The Rev. Nicholas S. Szobota

April 21, 2013
Christ Church, West River, Maryland

Fourth Sunday of Easter: Good Shepherd Sunday

As a child, my friends and I played “cops and robbers” or similar games. Usually played outside, to avoid the wrath of one’s parents toward indoor rough-housing, these games involved a good deal of running around and burning up energy. Preparing for the game also involved some negotiation. I recall that everyone wanted to play a cop and no one wanted to play a robber, because the robbers are supposed to lose. I know very few people who like to intentionally choose the losing side, but of course for this game to work some of the players had to choose to lose.

This childhood aversion to losing also has to do wanting to belong to the good side. The robbers lose in the game, because they are bad or evil. The cops win, because they’re the good guys. Perhaps in the real word, evil some times seems to win. This week, despite great evil, good won out in many ways. Good occurred in the resolution of the search for those responsible for Monday’s bombing in Boston, even though one of the suspects died in the attempt to apprehend the Tsarnaev brothers and others died or were harmed as a result of their actions.

In this real life struggle between the good guys and the bad guys, of course no sane person wants to in any way identify with the Tsarnaev brothers and their actions. In fact, I find myself wanting to distance myself from these men in any way possible. One way I notice that I do this is by identifying the ways that I am different from them. Since they immigrated to this country from elsewhere, though younger brother Dzokhar became a citizen, and I was born here as a citizen, I can say I am different from them because they are immigrants and I am not. One could do the same around issues of religion, gender, race, and so on. Any place where they and I differ becomes a means of making them something other than I am, of distancing myself from them and from their evil.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says to those listening to him, “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:25-27) The Fourth Sunday after Easter gets called “Good Shepherd Sunday,” because every year the gospel reading has to do with Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Today’s reading features Jesus making a distinction between those who come from his flock and those who do not. Since the gospel identifies those listening to Jesus as “Jews,” one might suspect that the categories of those whom Jesus accepts as part of his flock have to do with something like a person’s religious group or ethnic background. However, Jesus gives only one criterion for those who belong to his flock: My sheep hear my voice.

How does this apply to the human tendency to distance oneself from those who commit evil acts? Those who commit great evil clearly ignore Jesus’ voice. I think that Jesus cried out to the Tsarnaev brothers, “Don’t do this. You are about to harm your sisters and brothers.” The witness to the heavenly vision in today’s reading from the Revelation to St. John reveals, “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9). The distinctions of tribe, people, language, and the like do not matter in terms of who comes before the Lamb, who is also Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd. Therefore, as followers of Jesus Christ, those distinctions must not matter to us in terms of who belongs to the flock.

Christians must understand the Tsarnaevs and those like them as our sisters and brothers before God. These brothers’ evil acts have marred that relationship, to be sure, and the living brother deserves to face the lawful consequences. God judges what will happen to both of them after death, as God judges each of us. However, they remain our brothers. I do not think this in any way diminishes the evil of their actions, because it means that they ignored the voice of righteousness crying out to them and took action against their own sisters and brothers. Any evil done by one of us, however great or small, is an evil perpetrated against sisters and brothers.

Now, the reverse of this situation also holds true. Any good done by one of us, any good performed because one of us listens to the voice of the Good Shepherd, is good done to a sister or brother. Those who rushed toward the site of the explosions, a story heard over and over again this week, did so out of a response to hearing that Good Shepherd’s voice. Oh, I’m sure some were acting out of instinct or in the line of duty. Some may not even have a concept of God, or Jesus Christ, or the Good Shepherd, or what that voice sounds like. Today’s reading from Acts suggests that doesn’t matter in the least. Although this story occurs in the context of a larger text that has quite a bit to say about Jesus, he is not mentioned once in the passage we have here. Instead, Peter does something very Jesus-like when he enters the room where Tabitha lies dead, prays, and says, “Tabitha, get up” (Acts 9:39-40). Tabitha, who had died due to illness, rises to life again. Jesus performed such miracles, as when he raised the widow’s son at Nain in Luke 7:11-17, but he did that of his own power. Peter does not raise the dead of his own power, but through the power the Good Shepherd whom he follows: Peter prays, and Tabitha lives. Yet, the text gives only an implied sense of Jesus’ activity through Peter. Likewise, some respond to the voice of the Good Shepherd with no clear sense of who calls, yet these too belong to the Good Shepherd’s flock.

The heroes of this past week, and those like them, represent the kind of people that I suspect each one of us wants to emulate. We can take comfort, then, that they are our sisters and brothers. We need not let how they differ from us in matters of ethnicity, religion, race, gender, or any other qualification give us despair that we cannot be like them. May this understanding provide some consolation that those who do evil, including each of us in whatever evils we might commit, are also sisters and brothers. May each one of us seek to hear the Good Shepherd in the acts of those doing good in the world, and, in following them, tune our ears to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and follow where he leads. Amen.

Read, Mark, Learn

Monday, April 22, 2013

The Bible Challenge: Week 16

Sermon for April 21, 2013: "What Our Sisters and Brothers Have Done"