Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter
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By The Rev. Emmanuel Akyeampong
Minister for Worship and Formation in the Memorial Church
Ellen Gurney Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies
ppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, April 30, 2023)
Could you please pray with me? We thank you, Lord God, for this opportunity to come together as the body of Christ to share your word. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, Lord, our God and our redeemer. Amen.
While parables feature prominently in Jesus' teaching in the other gospels, they are rarely used in John. And today's pericope comes close to a parable in the Gospel of John.
The context for today's reading from John is Jesus' healing of the man born blind in John 9. A miraculous act had created controversy because it had been accomplished on the Sabbath. The Pharisees or religious authorities, eager to condemn the perpetrator of this miracle, and the blind man astonished that a man who had healed him of his congenital blindness could be seen as in error of the law.
The healed man's insistence that something miraculous and unparalleled had happened to him, and that the agent for this act must be an extraordinary person, a man of God, and his dismissal by the Pharisees who consequently expelled the healed man from the synagogue sets the stage for Jesus's teaching about the good shepherd.
By expelling the formerly blind man from the synagogue, from community, from spiritual and social nature, the Pharisees had behaved exactly opposite to what is expected of a shepherd.
In John's gospel, there is often a pattern of the performance of a sign, followed by a dialogue and then a monologue by Jesus. Here the sign is the healing of the blind man. The dialogue discusses what has ensued, as the Pharisees interrogate the formerly blind man, as the Pharisees questioned the parents of the formerly blind man to establish that he was indeed born blind. And after the formerly blind man's expulsion from the synagogue, his dialogue with Jesus as some of the Pharisees listen in. The stage is now set for Jesus's monologue.
Jesus called himself the good shepherd, an image associated with God and kings in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel are often referred to as God's sheep. Jesus' appropriation of the image and the role of the shepherd in John had messianic implications.
Jesus speaks about the relationship between the good shepherd and his sheep. The sheep know the voice of their shepherd. The sheep would not follow a stranger. Indeed, they would run away from the stranger.
Jesus is here describing the nature of a sheepfold, an enclosed courtyard used for keeping animals with a door and a doorkeeper. Different flocks occupy the sheepfold and the sheep follow the voice of their shepherd when he or she comes to take them out to pasture. I underscore she as females also shepherded sheep, and Rachel who Jacob married in the Old Testament was a shepherdess.
The doorkeeper knows the shepherd and the sheep know the voice of their shepherd. The shepherd thus enters the sheepfold by the gate and calls his sheep who follow his voice. The good shepherd protects his sheep from the thief and the bandit. Thieves and bandits enter the sheepfold surreptitiously to steal and to destroy. Thieves seldom enter by the door or by the gate.
In verse 7, Jesus calls himself the gate or the door for the sheep. In the ancient Mediterranean, there is evidence that sometimes the shepherds would act as a gate by lying down across the mouth of the sheep enclosure at night to prevent the sheep from straining. Jesus' I am statements in today's reading is typical of John's gospel, which includes declarations like I am the bread of life, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the way, the truth and the life, and I'm the true vine.
Though it was the healing of the blind man and the subsequent dispute with the Pharisees that set the context for today's pericope, verse 10 suggests that Jesus' teaching on this occasion went deeper than his disagreement with the Pharisees. Jesus declares that "the thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly." Did Jesus mean that the Pharisees only came to steal, kill, and destroy?
Jesus had his disagreements with the Pharisees calling them blind men leading the blind, but I don't think he considered them deliberately wicked and destructive. In verse 15, Jesus will say that "I lay down my life for the sheep."
But what is the use of a dead shepherd to sheep? Here Jesus is signaling to the atoning nature of his impending death and how that would bring abundant life. It is the devil who comes to steal, to kill and to destroy. It is the devil who through sin brought death. So it is the death of the shepherd and not just the willingness of the shepherd to fight off predators that protects the sheep from death. While death threatens the world, Jesus' death brings life to the world.
As part of the upper room discourse in John, Jesus would issue his disciples a new commandment: to love one another as he had loved them. John in his first epistle of John, would remind believers to model the sacrificial love of Jesus. John wrote, "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 brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?
In our reading from Acts 2, we see the early church in Jerusalem practice the selfless love that Jesus advocated. All who believed were together and had all things in common, they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need. And the early followers of Jesus would extend this love and generosity in their relations with the gentiles.
Indeed, it was this extravagant hospitality of the early church that caught the attention of gentiles. Historical accounts from the early centuries of persecution before the conversion of Emperor Constantine speak to this Christian spirit of generosity and compassion. In the year 250 AD alone, the relatively small Christian Church in Rome gave regular support to 1500 distressed persons. Outside observers noted the extent to which poverty was reduced in the vicinity of Christian communities.
Christian generosity was not limited to fellow believers only. The Romans were amazed at Christian generosity leading the Roman Emperor Julian, the last non-Christian Roman emperor to comment that no jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileans by which he means the Christians support not only their own poor, but ours as well.
The early Christians were involved in public charity, performing roles that were expected of government. In our times, we see the very wealthy assuming these roles, sometimes in partnership with government. We all recall at the height of COVID in New York City in 2020 how Patriots' owner Robert Kraft arranged for the Patriots plane to go to China to procure much needed PPE for the state of Massachusetts and how a Patriot truck then delivered PPE to New York City.
Africa has a small cohort of billionaires in a continent with the largest number of poor in the world. With great wealth comes great responsibility and expectation, and governments and communities look to these billionaires for assistance. Outside of South Africa where racial exploitation of people and the expropriation of land by Europeans from the mid-17th century has created intergenerational wealth, most of Africa's billionaires are first generation rich, so they look at the billionaires in the west to emulate how the wealthy should behave.
Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest man values his relationship with Bill Gates and the Dangote Foundation partners with the Gates Foundation in its health work and in other areas. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation established by the first African who owned a telecommunications company invests in leadership. Each year it gives the Ibrahim Prize for achievement in African leadership, the sum of $5 million to an African president who just steps down at the end of her or his term and governed in exemplary fashion.
The foundation of the woman described as the richest woman in Africa is not named after herself. She named it Rose of Sharon Foundation. Clearly, this is a devout Christian. She also literally took the mandate of her foundation from the Bible.
James, the brother of Jesus would declare in his epistle, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world." This is literally the Church of Rose of Sharon Foundation, widows, single mothers and orphans. A close relationship has developed between me and the founder of Rose of Sharon Foundation.
To return to the story of our blind man in the Gospel of John, last year darkness invaded the life of my friend. She began to lose her sight. We have had many conversations. As a devout Christian who has given so much to people and made a difference in the lives of so many ordinary people, it is understandable to ask God why her? She of all people? For a while she remained home bound. Then she began to venture out, even went back on international travel and resumed some of the work she does.
I have been one of those who have encouraged her to step out. I don't know what it feels like to lose one's sight, but I believe life is more than sight.
The Friday before Palm Sunday, I received a call from my friend. She had been on a retreat for lent, praying over the lives of people on her long prayer list. I was happy to hear that. It was as if my friend was informing me that though she may have difficulty seeing, her spiritual vision is still 20/20. There are many ways she can continue to lift up people, including through prayer, and she has been a shepherd to many, including me.
You are all shepherds, a role demonstrated through acts of love and kindness, big and small. My wife tells me I'm always working, which unfortunately is true. My face brightens when she walks into my study and places in front of me a cup of coffee from Starbucks. Acts of kindness, you could do that for your roommate, hold up desperately trying to meet a deadline. The thank you or God bless you you receive when you drop a couple of dollars in the bowl of the homeless who surround us in Harvard Square, vacating your seat on the tea or bus for an elderly person.
You can create a prayer list and put people on it. How can we as shepherds challenge ourselves through acts of kindness to be the ray of light that brings a smile to someone's face? The early Christians showed us that you don't require much to be a giver. Let us go out seeking ways to give and to serve others as the Holy Spirit leads us. Amen.