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4th SUNDAY OF
EASTER
Sheep and shepherds, a pattern for discipleship and Christian
growth, plus an exhortation concerning suffering all become
opportunities for instructive and inspiring sermons for this
Sunday. Familiarity between Head and body, Shepherd and sheep
may offer a common denominator for proclaimers.
Acts 2:42-47—Organizing from the Inside Out ?
Eugene Peterson describes the fate of the 3,000 converts who had
responded
to God’s “Come and See” event on the Church’s memorable
Pentecost birthday: “They committed themselves to the teaching
of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.”
This small snippet of text has become the pattern spawning hundreds,
yea, per-haps thousands of Bible studies, seminar papers, small
groups, and churches across the globe. This passage is
idyllic: simple, clear, and dynamic, which in itself is alluring
in an age of complexity, isolation, and ambiguity.
Psalm 23 --He will Never Leave us nor Forsake us
The Shepherd and Sheep becomes a metaphor for the relationship
between God and believer. Psalm 23 is a most familiar text to us; it
is usually proclaimed in a relational context about God journeying
through life with us, leading us, providing for us, comforting us
through all the twists and turns of life. Our passage from the
Psalms works hand in hand with the John passage.
1 Peter 2:19-25 — Suffering / Endurance
/ Example
Using first century BCE’s common experience of slavery, the writer
teaches on suffering—redemptive and punitive. There is an
appropriate kind of suffering for the Christian vis-à-vis the kind
self-invited suffering that stems from wrong choices. The writer
calls for endurance based on the model suffering of
Jesus. His suffering was selfless, propitiatory (for the
benefit of others), non-retaliatory, and non-violent. Perhaps
that’s where the comparison ends since Christ in his suffering “bore
our sins in his body on the cross . . . ” (verse 24).
John 10:1-10 — Shepherds and Gates
This lesson offers congregations a warm, intimate image of Jesus as
the (Good) Shepherd of Christian disciples. At another level,
however, we also discern a not too subtle warning against
pseudo-shepherds who may have a staff but one that zaps instead of
guides. (These are the kind of shepherds who back the van up to
the fence in the dead of night and jolt sheep up the ramp.) How
to tell the difference? Jesus suggests familiarity through
relationship between the true Shepherd and sheep. Go, thou wise
shepherd-pastors, and do likewise!
