Year: 2012

“And they came to the Valley of Eshcol,
and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes,
and they carried it on a pole between two of them”

This Sunday is known as Good Shepherd Sunday because of the traditional Gospel reading at Holy Communion on this day about Christ the Good Shepherd. It is a familiar and a comforting image but I fear we overlook its radical meaning. It is one of the great images of God’s providential care for his wayward and wandering sheep, meaning you and me. It is an image, too, which belongs to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ bears us in his arms. The same arms that are stretched out upon the cross are the arms that have embraced our humanity, the arms which gather us into the love of the son for the father. He carries us into the hands of the Father.

The great image of God’s care, its greatness lies in the cure it provides. The cure is the triumph of God over human sin and death. Christ the Good Shepherd, after all, is the “Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world” as we pray constantly in the Liturgy. The Good Shepherd is the one who has laid down his life for the sheep, for you and for me. The image is rich in meaning and quite powerful in its symbolism.  We live in the care of the Good Shepherd who has triumphed over human sin to carry us home to the Father.

But the image is even stronger because we live in that care now in the power of the Risen Christ. God’s providential care is the active principle which sustains and maintains creation redeemed and restored, the active principle which sustains and maintains our redeemed humanity. In a way, so many of the biblical images of God’s providential care meet in the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. As I Peter 2 puts it, we “are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls.”

We live in the care of the Good Shepherd. Yes, but how do we relate to that care? Are we grateful and alive in the joy of redemption as the community of the redeemed? Or are we a pack of complainers? Do we rejoice or do we murmur? Do we give praise or do we mock? These are the questions which are also set before us, the questions which speak directly to human freedom and dignity. I fear that the therapeutic culture which, on the one hand, calls us to take care of one another and wonderfully and rightly so, yet, on the other hand, creates a culture of dependency, a culture of the depressed and the walking dead. Which will we be?

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“Jesus said, I am the good shepherd”

It is a familiar and a comforting image but I fear we overlook its radical meaning. It is one of the great images of God’s providential care for his wayward and wandering sheep, meaning us. It is an image, too, which belongs at once to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ bears us in his arms. The same arms that are stretched out upon the cross are the arms that have embraced our humanity, the arms that gather us into the love of the son for the father. He carries us into the hands of the Father.

The great image of God’s care, its greatness lies in the cure it provides. The cure is the triumph of God over human sin and death. Christ the Good Shepherd, after all, is the “Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world,” as we pray so often in our Liturgy. The Good Shepherd is the one who has laid down his life for the sheep, for you and for me. The image is rich in meaning. We live in the care of the Good Shepherd who has triumphed over human sin to carry us home to the Father.

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Mary’s word opens us out, quite literally, to the words of the Incarnate Christ, “the word made flesh,” but most especially and, perhaps, most tellingly to the words of the Risen Christ. It is not too much to say that the words of the Risen Christ inaugurate the most dramatic change in human outlook and understanding that there has ever been. The effect of the presence and words of the Risen Christ on the disciples leads to the intense recollection of all the details of the Passion of Christ and, by extension, to the accounts as well of all the other words and deeds of Christ including his nativity that comprise the Gospels and, then, the other writings that make up the New Testament.

In other words, there is something dramatic and compelling about the Resurrection. Death and Resurrection are two of the foundational themes and principles of Christianity, though not entirely unique to Christianity. There is, in late Judaism, the idea of the resurrection and resurrection, too, is a feature of the Islamic religion. But for Christians the focus is on Christ, on his death and resurrection. And Christ is the primary teacher of the Resurrection.

What is that teaching? That we are more though not less than our bodies, which is probably good news for some of us. That we are not the “slave[s] to fate, chance, kings and desperate men,” as John Donne puts it, the mere pathetic victims of the fatalistic determinisms of our social, economic, political and therapeutic culture. No. We are freed to God in whom we find the very truth of our being and life, the God in whom we become who we are truly called to be and in whom we are more and not less than ourselves.

This is, I think, pretty amazing and quite profound. It is the case historically and theologically that the Resurrection effected the greatest sea-change in human culture imaginable. It quite literally changed the world. And it changed the world because it changes our outlook. It changes our minds and it changes our thinking.

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Mary’s word to God at her Annunciation is found in Luke’s Gospel. Readings from Luke’s Gospel also provide the Gospel readings at Holy Communion on Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday, the story of two resurrection appearances by Jesus: the one, on the road to Emmaus; the other, the story we have heard this morning about Jesus appearing “in the midst of his disciples” in Jerusalem. It serves as a complement to John’s account of Jesus appearing behind closed doors in the second lesson read at Evening Prayer on Easter Day and in the Gospel for the Octave Day of Easter, “the same day at evening” as we shall hear next Sunday.

In both accounts, there is this twofold emphasis on the Word explained and interpreted and the presence of the Risen Christ who teaches us about the reality of the Resurrection. “Behold, my hands and my feet, that is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and blood, as ye see me have.” That direct encounter is not the end of the story here, however, for two more things follow. First, Jesus asks if they have any food. “And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honey-comb.” Somehow, the holy tradition of the Church avoided turning this moment into something ritual and sacramental! Just as well.

But secondly, and importantly with respect to our Marian theme of letting the words of Christ define us, Jesus says, “these are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me.” Then, as on the road to Emmaus, “opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures.” The Greek words emphasize the opening of their hearts and minds and the idea of comprehending something thoroughly. There is something intense and intentional about the teaching. Beyond rumour and report, beyond fantasy and fabrication, beyond even the evidence of the senses, there is this primary emphasis on understanding the Resurrection through the pageant of the Scriptures, explained and interpreted.

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