C:sermons/Year-a/Easter4-2011-The Good Shepherd is also the Lamb
May 15th, 2011
Rev. Laura C. Trubyand Rev. Thomas L. Truby
John 10:1-18
(Special note: The scripture here is designated for year B. Year A has the same themes and uses the same chapter from John, focused on the Good Shepherd. Since Mimetic Realism is so new to my people and we have several new people not with us in 2009, I decided to use the same sermon with only minor modifications in 2011. Tom)
The Good Shepherd is also the Lamb
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved. Acts 4:12
Luke puts these words in the mouth of Peter as he is delivering his first sermon to the cultural elite of Jerusalem. He says there is something unique about Jesus. He calls him the stonethey the buildersrejected which has became, to everyone’s surprise, the cornerstone, the key stone, the rock that holds the whole thing together.
Was he just talking about the early church and how important Jesus was to it or is there a broader meaning that applies to the whole world--all the religions, all the cultures, all humanity and for all time? Peter says, in his first sermon ever that no one else is able to offer humanity a way out of the trap in which we find ourselves. What does this mean? Do we believe it? Are we embarrassed by it? Does this mean that other religions don’t offer salvation? If so, doesn’t that set Christianity above the others? Aren’t we in danger of being exclusive and isn’t exclusivity precisely the problem?
The religious elite didn’t like what Peter said and they reject it. Do we like it any better? How does it fit with our radical inclusivity or must we ignore this part of our Bible in order to be open to the world. How does it fit with Portlandthat prides itself in being weird, more open than thou, and where everyone values being able to develop our own unique system of making sense—our personal, “tailored to me” religion? We are not religious. Here we are spiritual.
We like to think that the different religions and philosophies of the world are like food products on a supermarket shelf,and freedom involves being able to look them all over and then choose a cart full or if we find none that suite our fancy, return our cart empty. We may even think freedom means staying in the store and studying the brands without having to choose.
There are many brands of spirituality out there and more appearing everyday. Maybethose brands are just as nutritious and wholesome as our own. Maybe there are better brands but we are too late in our lives to change now so let’s just be open to them all while habitually choosing what we are used to. Many thinkChristianity is a fading brand, marked by tired performance and many poisonings in its long historyand they wonder if they should dissociate from it before it becomes too tarnished.
What do we do with Acts 4:12? Is there any way of understanding this that doesn’t cause us to reject Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists, Hindu’s, Pagans and atheists? If we make a claim for the uniqueness of the Christ, can we avoid falling into the old and distasteful “triumphalism” of we are the greatest that we deplore?
Tom and I have come to believe that the anthropological work of Rene Girardhelps us to revitalize and re-conceive our Christian uniqueness, while at the same time keeping us from falling into the “ours is better than yours” trap. Rene Girard is not a theologian. He doesn’t talk about God except from the human side. He began His career as a literary critic whose discoveries led him into anthropology, mythology, psychology and religion. Being French, he grew up a cultural Catholic though not a man of faith. As he read Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Cervantes and other great works of Western literature he discovered that they all deal with the way humans desire the desire of others.
These classics reveal thatwe all want what the other wants but we think our wanting originates in ourselves and that we are the ones with the prior claim to what we want. This puts us into terrible conflict with each other and we would tear each other apart except for one other thing that Girard observes. When the tensions between us get really bad we humans suddenly turn on a randomly chosen victim and exclude or destroy them. This drains the tensions between us and makes it possible for us to live together in relative peace until the tensions again build. However, for this to work we must remain unaware of it. We must all agree that the one we have cast out is guilty in total of the crime we say they have committed. This mechanism is called “scapegoating,” and, sadly,it makes our working together possible. The cost to the poor victim is incredibly high but a necessary “sacrifice” for the benefit of all. This is how the world works. This is who we are as humans and what we do to each other and ourselves but we can’t know about it. We are inescapably caught in it but we can’t allow ourselves to see it. It is what we fear and can not name. It is the air we breathe and the water in which we swim. It has power over us that we can’t even imagine--until we begin making our escape and that must come from outside ourselves. Without outside help we are absolutely powerless and have always beenpowerless since the very beginning of time. We must be saved from ourselves.
Using today’s Gospel image, the outside help has come in the form of The Good Shepherd who is willing to give up his life for his sheep. This Good Shepherd allows himself to be caught in the machinations of our machine. He did this in the event we acknowledged three weeks ago during Holy Week. He becomes the innocent victim who by his death shows us that this is what we do to keep our jealousies, envies, pride, revenge and rage from destroying any possibility of community. We pour it on someone who is “dispensable” and unable to defend themselves.
Children are handy for this, as are minorities and anybody with some kind of infirmity or uniqueness that sets them apart. We say we do this in faithfulness to our God, sure in our presumption that the ones we cast out are evil and deserving of their fate. Our religion, founded on our projection of God in our own image, no matter what name we give our deity, has nothing to do with the real all-loving,character of God.
Tom and I believe the Christian revelation is unique inits power to reveal our human nature with its proclivity to fall under the spell of sacred violence. And it reveals this, not only through wonderful words, like many of the great teachers of the world; but through Jesus’ willingness to die—it is his death and resurrection thatmakes Jesus unique, not his teaching. No other leader deliberately laid down his life for his followers knowing that this was the only way we would ever even begin to get it. And no other leader was ever raised from the dead to confirm that this “showing” is of God.
There have been other good shepherds but only One willing to become the Sacrificial Lambwho breaks the spell over frozen humanity,as C.S. Lewis showed in the Witch the Lion and the Wardrobe. The New Testament book of Revelation tells us that this sacrificed Lamb sits at the right hand of Godand shows the whole world what God is willing to do to release us from this trap of our own making. And what does God do? God bears our violence andforgives us for it!
Our good friend and brother, Abbot Andrew in his book Tools for Peace says, “Jesus reigns as the victim, not a dead victim, but the risen victim. It is the slain Lamb of God who sits on the throne in Revelation. Jesus does not reign by diverting violence from himself to other people. Nor by instituting a set of inflexible laws. Jesus reigns by orienting society toward sympathy for the victim as the victim.”
The death and resurrection of Jesus had to happen for us to see who we are and what God has done in response. This revelation is not about “our religion” or “our religion vs. your religion” or any “religion” for that matter. It is about the whole human race. It is about our need for redemption from our violence and the true God who acts in response by forgiving useven when “we do not know what we are doing.” This is what Peter meant when he said, “This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ The cornerstone is the rock that holds the building together and gives the whole structure its form. While we rejected that stone, God made it the most important stone in all creation. That stone is named Jesus and he is our Lord. Amen.
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