On faith, love, and mixed identities
Easter 4C  |  John 10:22-30

After spending the last three weeks talking about the resurrection, the lectionary throws us back into the middle of the story, which is always a bit of a headtrip. But I think, given the chance to get up to speed, we’re up to it, right?

One of the things that has been happening in the story before the point we’ve jumped into it is that Jesus is making some enemies. And again, the language utilized to describe them is important. As you already know, the phrase tradition likes to translate as “The Jews” is more closely translated as “The Judeans”. And this is better, but doesn’t evoke the precise vision. It is more like The Judean Authority.

Here’s a corollary that gets us into the right proverbial ballpark. When US warships mobilized in the midst of World War II, the other powers in the world might have said “here come The Americans.” Now, were they referring to the nationality of the soldiers on those ships? No. Were they speaking to the American people as if we all were on those ships? No. There is a subtle brilliance in our speech and in our thinking that can isolate the authority from both the universal and the particular. So we can say “The Americans” in that context and know it is referring quite specifically to the political authority who are acting on the global stage though its military.

Mistaken Identity

This brilliance has long been absent from our referring to the Judean Authority which acts throughout the gospels in a way that doesn’t comport with the desires of the Judean people. Here, we might liken it to times in our country of great political discord or when civil authorities took great liberties, in every sense of the word. Consider how we might refer to The Americans who broke treaties with the indigenous populations and drove them from their land. 

Our church was built upon the lands of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo), Kaskaskia, and Myaamia people. 

Notice how suddenly sensitive we get, when we hear “The Americans” in this context — how much we as American people, want so little association with the behavior of the authority in our name. When The Americans assassinated foreign leaders and led military coups throughout Latin America which brutalized and impoverished people and led to the creation of the drug trade, suddenly that phrase “The Americans” starts to hit way too close to home, doesn’t it? Because, even if we didn’t do these actions ourselves or even vote for the leaders who did, they were still done in our name. And we feel an associative guilt.

Isn’t this the crux of the problem with John’s use of The Judeans? And our constant misuse of what that phrase identifies for us? Because Christians throughout history have been super eager to blame someone or humanity itself for the death of Jesus.

Looking for reasons

Throughout the gospel of John the Judean Authority keeps looking for reasons to undermine Jesus. It is all politically motivated and fixated on power. In the preceding story, which starts at the beginning of chapter nine, Jesus heals a man born blind. And rather than take it for the beautiful miracle it is, the Judean Authority wants to investigate this. And what do they do but gaslight the man. Try to convince him that what happened didn’t really happen. You always had sight. Then they try to convince his parents to gaslight their son. And out of fear, they do.

Notice how hard The Judean Authority works to reject the truth, replace it with a lie, and all to protect their fragile egos and the certainty that comes from their cooperative power with the occupying authority, which is Rome.

Finally, this comes back to Jesus and he preaches about participation in God’s Kin-dom, rather than Rome’s empire and he talks about God wanting to help people see, quite literally for the man he gave sight to and symbolically to all. Help us see how God is orienting the world toward love and justice. And for those who can see and offer cruelty and injustice, well, they will be struck blind.

At the beginning of chapter ten, Jesus preaches to them about the good shepherd. He’s speaking to the people who are likely to be struck blind through God’s transformation of the world. Listen to his voice. You may yet see.

These are the ones coming to Jesus now, begging for plain speech.

Plain Talking

I’ve found the best teachers speak plainly about the limits of our understanding.

I watched a video this week, you may have seen it, of the opening of a lecture on quantum mechanics. It is the first class of the semester and the professor begins by naming just how confusing and unknowable quantum mechanics is. He tells this class of eager college students, probably all physics majors, that the late Richard Feynman, someone they surely think of as a hero, described quantum mechanics as unknowable. That even he didn’t understand it. So then the professor says to the class, right now, I’m the only one in this room who doesn’t understand quantum mechanics. My goal is that by the end of the week, all of us won’t understand quantum mechanics.

This is the kind of plain-spoken truth-telling Jesus is about.

And he is helping us see that The Judean Authority doesn’t plan to learn the truth from Jesus. The very next verse, after Jesus stops talking, where the lectionary cuts it off, the text goes on to say

“The Judean Authority took up stones again to stone him.”

Again. This is a pattern. It was premeditated. Because they tried to do this before.

This is not the honest debate of rhetorically genuine people. It is an eager complicity with empire. And maybe they can’t see it.

This is an odd passage for Easter.

And I think, as long as we cast ourselves as the victims and the other as an oppressor, that Jesus is here to protect us and be the good shepherd so we’ll be OK, or we make this yet another example of personal grace saved in the metaphysical realm by someone far away, then this gospel passage can serve as mere comfort in the midst of present adversity.

Its context reveals so much more than that, however. That we give authority over our very lives and health and well-being to people who don’t really care for us. Not the way Jesus does. And not the way Jesus would have us care for one another.

Jesus comes to give sight, not to those who can see, but to those who can’t. So we can hear his voice. And believe.

Jesus tells us there is safety and security in him. In his teaching and in his person. And I believe this is the message we most need through the Easter season. That there is a synthesis of the teaching and the believing — of the listening to the voice who helps us see the world as it is and as it could be and also in the trusting that Jesus is helping us set things right. These things are deeply connected and embody a way of grace that makes life livable for all of us.

And when we get this living part out of whack, when we think it is only about the teaching of Jesus or only about the person of Jesus and we lose our connection to the integrated truth of Jesus, we might find ourselves tying our national fortunes to a performative belief in Jesus that destroys and blinds and brutalizes for the sake of security. 

So we love! 

Because we follow one who loves. Who helps us see, who calls us by name, who gathers his chicks under his wings because we are willing.

And this is how we share the love of Christ. In ways that help people see Jesus in us. That those in our neighborhood may speak of The Christians and speak of practitioners of love, of students of love, whose lives are full of love. That we might bear witness to this neighborhood of Jesus’s love. That our neighbors, our student neighbors and teacher neighbors, our administrative neighbors and support staff neighbors, our masonic neighbors and our homeless neighbors, our AA neighbors and our volunteer neighbors and everyone who comes down 7th Street can say, yeah, The Christians here practice what they preach.

Our authority comes from Jesus. And from our neighbors. It isn’t about race or ethnicity, political influence or wealth, tradition or gender or ability. It grows in community by being people of faith with the grace God gives us, like a cup that never stops filling.

We are called to speak to this moment and to this neighborhood with word and deed. To love, learning to love by loving, by teaching love, by witnessing love, by sharing in love together, creatively, generously, courageously, with hope and trust in the love of Jesus. That is who we are. Who we are called to be. It is how we roll. And it is how we may yet be seen and heard and known.