Walking with Jesus: Fourth Sunday of Easter

Acts 4:8-12; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18

We are in the Easter Season and realizing how grateful we are to God, the Father, for sending us Jesus to let us know how much we are loved each moment of each day, and that He always has had a plan for us. God constantly lets humanity know about this plan. He has been spoon-feeding this to us; we’ve been slow in our acceptance of His nourishment. He has loved each person from the moment of creation and has promised life forever with Him.

Moses shares a tremendous story of the fall of Adam and Eve. It describes the transition of the first man and woman from a state of truthful obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience. We’ve been through this during our growing stages. We wanted what we wanted, whether it was good for us or not. We felt that we knew what was “good” for us. We thought what we “desired” was good and would lead us to happiness. So very often it didn’t because we were only thinking of ourselves. Yet God consistently showed His care and concern … showering His love and forgiveness in spite of our selfishness and refusal to help others. The bottom line is that our first parents lacked trust in God. Salvation history has recorded this, page after page, in its annals. God loves … we sin … God forgives. Jesus Christ came to win back that trust by giving His own life to atone for our sins. He showed us that the Father is love and can be trusted. God has a plan promising everyone heaven if we believe in Jesus Christ and follow God’s commandments. God forgives us … protects us. God never abandons us … never. This has been brought out consistently in the pages of our Scriptural heritage as God’s people.

Ezekiel is a priest and is first to receive the call to prophesy outside the Holy Land. He has been called the “father of Judaism” who spells out the devastation of the people’s rejection of living as God’s people, resulting in their being conquered and deported by Nebuchadnezzar in 597. The leaders have not been leaders. “Thus the word of the Lord came to me: Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Thus says the Lord God: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves! Should not shepherds, rather, pasture sheep? You have fed off their milk, worn their wool, and slaughtered the failings, but the sheep you have not pastured. You did not strengthen the weak nor bring back the strayed nor seek the lost, but you lorded it over them harshly and brutally.” [Ezekiel 34:2-4] God promises to shepherd the people Himself. [Ezekiel 34:1-31]  David follows this a few generations later and describes what has been accepted as the most wonderful description of God … as our shepherd, leader, caregiver, lover. Psalm 23 has been known for centuries as a comfort and solace to all: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff — they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.” [Psalm 23:1-6]

Traditionally the Fourth Sunday of Easter is called Good Shepherd Sunday because its Gospel is always from the tenth chapter of John. So dedicated is the Good Shepherd to His sheep that He is willing to lay down His life for their protection and happiness. This, of course, is exactly what Jesus does. As Fr. Pat McCLoskey OFM writes: “The dedication of the good shepherd cannot be measured by pay; it is a commitment of the heart.” So what are we to do? How do we respond? In a section called “Christ the Friend” where Jesus is speaking to us in The Better Part: A Christ-Centered Resource for Personal  Prayer, Fr. John Bartunek writes:

I know My own and My own know Me. When I created you, I built two needs into your soul: the need to love and the need to be loved. If you don’t learn to love, you will never flourish, and if you don’t discover that you are loved, you will never learn to love. Love is always a two-way street — an exchange, an embrace. It’s much harder for you to let yourself be loved than it is to love, because to be loved, you have to let yourself be known. You cannot be loved fully by someone who doesn’t know you fully. This is why every earthly love is precarious; you never know if the person who loves you will continue to do so when they know you better.

I know you through and through, completely, even better than you know yourself. I know all the things you keep hidden from others, all the things about you that you barely understand yourself. I know you so thoroughly because I gave you life. I brought you into existence, and I have been holding you and sustaining you every instant of your life. I know you uniquely and totally, so I can love you as no one else can. You never have to worry about my love waning, because I have already shown you, while you were still a sinner, still a rebel, that my love endures to the end, even to death on a cross. You have nothing left to fear. Nothing is hidden from Me, and yet I still love you without an ounce of ambiguity or reluctance. I know you, and now you know Me. I love you, so come now and love me.

So I reflect on:

• If I were more aware of my need for God, which Christ likens to the sheep’s need for the shepherd, how would that affect my everyday attitudes and choices?
• What has my faith cost me so far? The most terrible answer I can give is: ”nothing.”

Sacred Space 2021 reads:

“Sunday reminds us that we do not come to God alone; our worship draws us into community and identifies us as sheep of the Good Shepherd. Being thought of us a sheep is not to demean us but to rescue us from thinking too much of ourselves. Jesus calls us to humility and trust, cautioning us against those who work only for what they get and warning against whatever might snatch or scatter us.

“The shepherd keeps the sheep in view, regarding them and seeing beyond them. I ask God for the humility I need, that I might listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd, allowing Him to lead me and trusting that He is leading others too — even if in ways I don’t understand.”