Jesus speaks about something much deeper than shepherds and sheep — he embodies the very sacrificial love of God to show us how it’s done.
the good parent stands up for all children
Easter 4B | Acts 4:5-12, John 10:11-18
Parents and children. That’s what we’re going to talk about this morning.
But as we go along, we’ll cover some other ideas which will help us. We’ll talk about the healing of a disabled man, the power of a name, shepherds and sheep, the nature of hell, and when a protest isn’t a protest.
First, parents and children.
I am both a parent and a child. I am one of the people entrusted by God to have both of these identities. And no matter how hard I try to separate them, I can’t. There is no time now in which I can ever only be a child.
I spent the first 27 years of my life as a child, the next two as a child and a spouse, and every moment since as a child, spouse, and parent. And for the rest of the hours I spend on God’s green earth, I will be those things.
Even when my parents are gone. Or god-forbid other deaths change that equation, all of these identities will remain with me. Like these connections remain with you in your lives.
And the most beautiful part about these identities is they all inform each other. Being a child helps me understand being a parent to my children just as much as being a parent helps me understand being a child to my parents. This is the elegant, embodied beauty of our Spirit-filled creation.
And this is the same beauty in the Father/Son and Creator-God/Jesus relationship. A relationship which helps us understand our relationship with our divine parent as God’s children and how we can share that same love with each other.
This is the love Jesus preaches and the love we’re called to preach. A love which isn’t always understood.
the healing of a disabled man
There’s a cool story we’re following in Acts right now, but our lectionary isn’t doing us any favors. It’s not only chopping it all up but cutting out the most important part.
Back in chapter 3, there’s a guy who is physically disabled. He can’t walk and he can’t work. He has no opportunities. And it doesn’t tell us any more than this, but we can make some educated guesses based on cultural norms of the time. We know what parents then thought of children born with disabilities in a culture with no system of welfare and no middle class.
He was probably used to being thought of us less than worthless.
He was probably thought of as the product of sin.
So the fact that some people carry this disabled man to the busy gate to panhandle is actually an act of compassion. But Peter is now full of the Holy Spirit and he’s seen how Jesus treated small mercies in light of great systemic injustice. So he’s thinking not good enough.
Now, we might be tempted to end the story there: the man is healed and jumps up and walks with them. If we were worried about ruffling people’s feathers, we’d stop right there, but Peter doesn’t. So neither do we.
Peter takes the man into the Temple — the place he couldn’t go because twisted theology believes more in genetic karma than the love of God — and shows the people the very grace of God.
Peter is doing the very thing Jesus did weeks earlier — confronting the sacrificial system of the Temple with its excess and systemic oppression by showing what God is really up to in the world. God isn’t the divine receiver of offerings, but the liberator and creator of love in even the darkest of places.
the power of a name
Thousands of people see this go on and hear Peter preaching about how Jesus is transforming these human systems which oppress and impoverish people and thousands of them come to believe.
But it’s also really inconvenient for the people in charge; of course, the Temple authorities can’t stand this. So it’s no surprise when they arrest Peter and the apostles and stick them in jail overnight. They don’t know what else to do.
So when they bring Peter before them to question him and they ask by whose authority he’s speaking, they aren’t prepared to wrestle with the answer. They can’t see their own problem.
Maybe they were the ones who carried the disabled man to the gate so he could beg. They thought they were helping. This was all they could do. The poor are just going to be poor.
This is why Jesus’s name is so radical — because with it Peter is able to do what Jesus does. He doesn’t just heal a dude so he can survive a little longer in a corrupt system which will steal the life of another man disabled from birth. He walks that dude into the Temple to confront a system which keeps poor people poor and the powerful free of guilt.
Like Jesus did, Peter stands up for the weakest, the powerless, who have no voice, no vote, no influence to change a system designed to exploit them. Even when it puts him in real danger.
shepherds and sheep
This is what we hear from the lips of Jesus in the gospel — that he is the shepherd who puts his life on the line for his sheep.
And I was reminded this week that sheep are herd animals. Partly by instinct and partly because their mothers train their babies to stay with the flock. Because staying with the flock provides sheep there greatest protection.
This is also why sheep need a shepherd to guide and protect them. To go after the one who is lost and prevent the whole herd from following a rebel off a cliff.
And while only a couple people here have any real experience with sheep, the image still resonates. Maybe we’re used to it because Jesus talks about it all the time. Something about it, though, speaks to our herd mentality and longing for a guide, a shepherd to lead us.
Like children waiting for a parent to show up.
the nature of hell
This week I watched the Netflix film Come Sunday. It’s based on the real life of Carlton Pearson, a Pentecostal bishop who discovers the love of God and loses his church because of it. If you haven’t seen it, you should.
The real-life Carlton Pearson tells of that moment when everything changed. Of holding his baby in his arms and seeing on TV these babies who are other people’s babies being carried. But these babies are Rwandan victims of genocide.
The tears streaming down his face, he runs to the Bible for answers because everywhere he looks, he sees people going to hell for things they didn’t do.
And a voice which can only be the voice of God asks him
“Is that what you think?”
God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Divine Mystery, the Great I Am, YAHWEH, all the names we call God pushes him to see how wrongheaded he’s been, how stubborn and naive he’s been. Why would he think all of these children are anywhere else but in the loving embrace of God? Why would a parent want anything else for her children than to be home?
Wouldn’t the Mama or Papa Bear go straight down to hell to bring her babies home?
But these Temple authorities of any age can’t stand being wrong. They’ll shackle Jesus however he shows up.
when a protest isn’t a protest
You may have seen on the news this week about a school near Bay City, Michigan in a small town called Auburn. But it’s close enough to Bay City that they call their high school Bay City Western. Hop on 10 and you’re in Midland in under 15 minutes. Take Saginaw Road and you’re in Saginaw in fewer.
Nearly 400,000 people live in the Tri-City area, so this isn’t the middle of nowhere.
But this week, students and former students, and probably parents have been waving the Confederate battle flag across from the high school, some bullying minority students on the premises. In a frightening three days, the community has struggled to figure out what to do, breathing a sigh of relief on Friday, when the protesters didn’t show up for a fourth day.
Protest is a funny word to describe this moment because it isn’t clear what flying that flag in mid-Michigan is trying to communicate to the powerful. Given the racial slurs and snapchat messages that these minority students received saying they had the “wrong skin tone” to live in that community, it doesn’t sound like Jesus standing up for the weak.
It sounds like the priests and Sadducees sticking up for the Temple and Evangelicals sticking up for Hell.
And I’m reading about a community I lived just a few miles from and staring at pictures of my own babies, and I’m wondering how we think protecting a system which steals other people’s babies from them is just. Is this what God wants from us?
But I don’t need to hear the voice ask me “Is that what you think?” Because I already know it isn’t.
God is Love
Parents protect their children. The good parents protect all the children. Not just their biological children. Or the white children. Or the “country” children. Every last one of them.
The children
…other children are bullying,
…who only get the meal they get for free at school,
…locked out of their homes by their parents,
…who walk past flags and monuments erected to hurt them,
…who have to wait with a teacher because they were forgotten,
…so desperate for a parent they put up with abuse,
…who get straight A’s and still never please their tiger mom,
…who feel weird because their parents are married,
…protecting their friends from bullying,
…standing up to injustice,
…sharing their lunches,
…tearing down symbols of oppression because they hurt their friends,
…who wait with each other to make sure everyone gets home,
…so eager to make sure every kid is loved regardless of their economic status, grades, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability that they will face the full force of hate because we’re all in this together.
Good Parents protect all the children. And good children protect each other.
We protect each other’s children from abuse, from hate and bigotry, violence and war. We protect each other’s children because we love them and want them to know the love we’ve received.
God is love. Heritage be damned. If anything needs to get sucked down into hell its tribalism and division. Our indifference to our neighbors’ hunger and need. Taking food out of the mouths of people who are fed today — that isn’t love.
We are called to love. Every one of us. An agent of love, called by a God of love to share the love we’ve received to the whole world. And because God is love, God’s love never stops. So there’s plenty available to us. There is so much need. And Jesus keeps showing us how. He keeps parenting us, no matter how old we get. He keeps teaching us.
As parents and children. Dwelling with God forever.