Fourth Sunday of Easter; 30 April 2023; Easter 4A (RCL); Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; a Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10.
The image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is one of our favorites (we’ve all seen stained-glass windows depicting the shepherd carrying home the lost lamb on his shoulders), and the Fourth Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday. The collect evokes that image, and we always have a reading for the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel — the Good Shepherd discourse.
However, Jesus doesn’t use that figure in the reading for this year. Instead, he says, “I AM the door (or gate).” It’s not the figure we expect. What does it mean for Jesus to be the door?
This chapter follows immediately upon the last scene of the healing of the man born blind, with no change of audience. That means Jesus is addressing, not his disciples, but the Pharisees. That’s a huge shift in perspective from the way we are used to thinking Jesus is speaking. This discourse is not meant to be a comfort to Jesus’ followers, but a challenge to his contestants.
In the middle scene of the healing of the man born blind, his parents refuse to answer the Pharisees, because they (the Pharisees) had already taken the decision that whoever confessed the Christ would be excommunicated from the synagogue. John is putting the shoe on the other foot; his community has not been expelled, but Jesus is the gate through which they go out. If we want to read this as an allegory, I suppose that makes God either the gatekeeper or the shepherd.
That begins to make sense of thieves and bandits. Jesus is not accusing the Pharisees of being thieves and bandits, but others who have come before him who have tried to lead Jews away from the synagogue, away from their way of life. Perhaps John has in mind the Hellenizing Jews who accepted Greek ways of life under the Seleucid dynasty, or other Messiah-pretenders, or those who made their compromises with Rome. If we want to push the allegory far enough, then the synagogue is the sheepfold from which the sheep need leading out.
I wonder if Exodus imagery lies in the background here. The people of Israel needed leading out of their slavery in Egypt, and John certainly adduces aspects of that story throughout his Gospel (the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us; Jesus is the true bread which comes down from heaven). If so, the homiletical questions would be, from what do we need leading out? And where do we go in and out and find pasture? And who is trying to lead us astray (thieves and bandits)?
The little snippet we have of Acts on this Sunday gives a hint about what gate the early Christians passed through. Their refusal to participate in the worship of the civic gods would have cut the off from all kinds of sustaining relationships (buying meat in the market would become nearly impossible, as well as club-membership and any number of other associations). Their sharing everything in common is not some kind of utopian ideal, but forced on them by necessity. And their isolation from, and abuse by their neighbors would account for Peter’s admonition to accept suffering without objection.
Baptism leads us out of one form of citizenship, and into citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. We will always be going from the one and coming into the other.