John 10:1-10
Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill …
The Allied invasion of Normandy …
An avalanche rolling down a Colorado mountainside …
A violent storm ripping across Kansas wheat fields …
So Jesus walked from Galilee to the fabled city of Jerusalem … the city of David … the city of kings and queens … gleaming white in the hot sun of Palestine … Herod’s city, Pilate’s city … temple and palace; priests and soldiers … wealth and intrigue … a city of rumors and whispered plots …
So Jesus walked from Galilee to the fabled city of Jerusalem.
Not with armies and charging steeds … nor with spear and sword … but the Word of God, living and active … sharper than a two-edged sword … piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow … to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart … (Hebrews 4:12).
Do not think I have to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34).
In the Gospel of John, a series of miracles … each one a clash between Jesus and the ruling authorities.
Changing water into wine …
The wedding party ran out of wine.
The host underestimated the thirst of his guests … maybe the host was just cheap … now he’s soon to be embarrassed …
Jesus changes water into wine!
This isn’t about weddings and wine; this is a metaphor of comparison.
Israel ran out of wine … nothing left to offer, nothing to satisfy the guests … nothing to give to the world.
Jesus cleanses the temple … overturns the tables and scatters the money …
He tells the esteemed Nicodemus, a leader, a teacher … you’ve got it all wrong … you’ve got to start over again … fresh and clean …
The woman at the well … you Samaritans have it all wrong, too … this water slacks your thirst only for awhile … I’ll give you the water of life, and you will never thirst again.
Jesus feeds the five thousand … the crowds are hungry … desperate for hope and meaning; they’re not being feed in the right now; they’re starving to death spiritually.
Only five small barley loaves and two small fish … that’s all the disciples have, but in the hands of Jesus, the meager becomes more, the little becomes large.
Jesus walks on water in the midst of a storm … Israel is a tiny ship on a large sea … storm-tossed and unable to reach port.
Jesus is the calming presence; the master of chaos … the hope of the world in every storm, and Israel’s hope to regain it’s purpose.
The authorities have their robes in a knot … they wait for Jesus to slip up, make a mistake, overstep the boundaries, miss a beat… the authorities gather in late-night counsels, behind closed doors … plotting, planning, purposing …
Now at last, they have something …
Jesus heals a blind man on the Sabbath …
“You can’t do that here” … not here, not now, not ever!
The perfect crime for conviction …
A violation of law …
A breaking of convention …
“We have him at last.”
The blind man is questioned … his family humiliated …
Jesus is stunned … how can they see a man restored to life and complain about when it was done?
How can they look at such an obvious good and call it evil?
“Can’t you see?” asks Jesus.
But the powerbrokers would have none of it …
Blind as bats they are …
They can’t see the One who stands in their midst …
They can’t see their way beyond tradition and convention …
They’re locked in, and they’re locked up …
Veils of illusion blind them …
Prisoners of their own little world …
They hatch a scheme to remove Jesus …
They work with Rome …
Luke tells us: Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies (Luke 23:12) …
As for the blind man, we’ll kick him out of the temple and send him packing …
As for Jesus, we’re prepared to kill him.
Our LORD says: “You’ve got it all wrong!”
You style yourselves shepherds, but you’re thieves and bandits.
Jesus cuts to the chase … He lays down the gauntlet … He draws a line in the sand.
He saw how they treated the blind man; what they did to the man’s family …
You’re thieves and bandits, says Jesus … you’ve got it all wrong … you do violence to God’s people … more harm than good …
The setting is that of first-century sheep-farming … a community sheepfold … a hired gatekeeper … lots of sheep, and when a shepherd comes to bring the sheep out for the day, the gatekeeper opens the gate, the sheep recognize the voice of their shepherd, and they follow him out to pasture …
When Jesus speaks, everyone would have recognized the words of Ezekiel 34 …
Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.
You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. ….
Thus says the LORD God, I am against the shepherds; and I will demand my sheep at their hands, and put a stop to them. ….
I will rescue my sheep….
I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. …. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down….
I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak….
Remember what Jesus said to Peter?
Feed my lambs … tend my sheep … feed my sheep (John 21:15-18.
Take care of each other …
Love one another …
Build up one another …
Forgive one another … and Jesus said it best of all: I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.
Why is it that religion can go so wrong?
How is it that folks so well educated and trained can miss the point so completely? The Pharisees, the Sadducess, the Priests and the Scribes … the best of the best – Yale, Harvard and Stanford … they had Moses and the Prophets … but they got it wrong!
How could the church invent the Inquisition? How could the church harbor within itself such terrible thoughts and do such hideous things?
Why did so many German Christians succumb to the Nazi lie of God and Country?
Why did Christians defend the evils of slavery … deny women a place in the church … and these days, bar the door to gays and lesbians?
Why does religion run out of wine?
Why are the crowds so hungry?
Why can’t religion calm the storms and heal the blind?
Jesus dares to tell the truth! He’s a truth-teller!
As of late, I’ve been thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr … just last week, the 40th anniversary of his assassination on a Memphis motel balcony …
He told the truth … “I have a dream,” he said - a dream where the content of character prevails over the color of one’s skin …
I think of Mother Teresa … she told the truth, too … she lived compassion and mercy, she lived tenderness and kindness … and now with her diary printed, further truth: just how hard it was to live for Christ … how dark her thoughts … how sad her soul … the burdens she carried for the sake of Christ.
I think of Thomas Merton … a monk in the hills of Kentucky … who told the truth to an anxious world … censors tried to hush his voice, but ways were found to circulate and publish his letters and essays …
I think of William Sloan Coffin, Jr., Presbyterian pastor, chaplain at Yale, anti-war activist … he told the truth and lived the ways of peace … he loved America, but he loved America enough to tell the truth and show us a better way.
I think of a friend from the early Seventies, the Rev. Jim Sommerville and his wife Ricey … they were working in the Kanawha River Valley of West Virginia, organizing the poor to help them gain leverage against the coal companies … ten years earlier, in the Sixties, Jim and Ricey were forced out of their church, out of their home, because they told the truth about racism and segregation … they reminded their church of something better, something brighter …
When a newspaper breaks a story about inflated CEO salaries even as the company lays off 600 (LA Times, April 12 re CBS) …
When politicians go to bat for LAX hotel workers …
Books and film help us, too … Upton Sinclair’s Oil, or John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath – films like Motorcycle Diaries, Michael Clayton, Good Night, Good Luck or Stop-Loss tell us the truth.
Folks in our own ranks …
Morrey Plotkin teaching us God’s Word … opening the pages of the text thoughtfully, prophetically … reminding us of God’s call to justice.
Dode Jonegewaard showing us something better in the open housing struggle, issues of choice and women’s rights, and justice for gays and lesbians …
Colleen Cronin and George and Clare Burr – dedicated and devoted … suiting up and showing up … reminding us that God comes first …
Our Flocks and Groups Alive, Mary Thompson and the Deacons … choir members and Faith Band … they live the truth; they sing the truth …
Folks here and around the world … millions of truth-tellers …
They love and they help …
They pray and they share …
They visit the sick, and they visit the dying …
They challenge prevailing notions … they awaken dulled minds … they stir the conscience …
They go to soup kitchens and build Habitat Homes …
They dig wells for clean water …
They gather clothing for the needy …
A million billion good people adding grace to the universe …
Grace added …
Every kindness, every good intention … adds grace to the universe …
Every time the name of Jesus passes our lips, grace is added …
Every flower watered … Every meal cooked …
Every hand held, every pat on the back, every smile and every word of good cheer, adds grace to the universe.
Jesus adds enough grace to make up the difference for all of us …
He tells the truth … He lives the truth …
And He’s the truth today …
He confronts pretense and power …
He unsettles our little kingdoms and takes down the walls our ego builds …
He reveals corrupt religion when religion falls in love with itself …
His grace reaches the lost … His mercy restores the fallen …
His love penetrates hardened hearts …
He calms the crowd that would stone the woman …
He calls Zacchaeus down from the tree …
He challenges Nicodemus to try it again, and get it right this time …
Jesus is our gate … swinging wide in both directions …
Our gate into the Father’s heart …
Our gate into hope and peace …
The gate to life and the gate to love …
The gate to heaven … and a gate to the world …
The gate to service and the gate to sacrifice …
The gate to purpose and the gate to peace …
I’m ever-grateful to know Him …
I’m honored to serve Him …
And I know that you are, too!
Every day, His grace holds me …
Every hour, He forgives me …
Night and day, He restores me …
And makes all things new …
I’m one of His sheep … and so are you …
He’s our Gate … Amen and Amen!
