FINDINGS II

Easter IV - C - April 25, 2010
Acts 9: 36-43; Revelation 7: 9-17; John 10: 22-30





Harry T. CookBy Harry T. Cook
4/19/10


RUBRIC

With the gospel lection coming up next Sunday, the camera will move away from the melodrama of the crucifixion and resurrection narratives and shoot a flash-back scene that is depicted as taking place in Jerusalem on what might have been the second of at least three trips John's Jesus was said to have made there. The scene is the winter festival of Dedication, known in our time as Hanukkah.
 
In any event, John says "the Jews" were there gathered around Jesus pressing to know if he thought he was messiah. In Matthew and Luke one would more likely see one of the Judean factions mentioned, viz. the scribes or Pharisees. But by the time the fourth gospel was being compiled, the Jesus movement had become estranged from emerging synagogue Judaism the members of which were increasingly thought of as enemies.
 
That was the context in which the question was asked: "How long do we have to hold our breath? If you are the anointed one, tell us now -- in words of one syllable!" (10:24). The answer was, in effect, "I have been telling you by what I have been doing. Can't you, won't you see?"
 
John could just as well have inserted here "By their fruits they shall be known." That, of course, is what New Testament religion ends up being about: works, not words.





WORKSHOP

A central point of this passage is that there are some who are not equipped or ill-equipped to see what is to be seen and to draw the obvious and correct conclusion. For what might have been seen, check out. John 2: 1-11; 4: 46-54; 5: 1-15 and 6: 1-15. In John's terminology, those who cannot "see" those signs for what they are and mean are not of the flock. The refusal to draw the correct conclusion from the works referenced by title in v. 25 is not stubbornness but natural ignorance. For "not my sheep." Read "synagogue Jews" who, during the time the fourth gospel was being compiled (late 90s?), were giving Jesus Jews a hard time. One was "a sheep" or one was not.
 
What the sheep knew as opposed to not-the-sheep didn't, according to John, is that Jesus was the Christos, the anointed one, the messiah. Therefore those who know because they have "seen" follow him, and their reward is eternal life (zōā aiōnion), viz. participation in a high-stakes life in the present, with every choice, every action intentionally related to the belief that this life ultimately matters in and for itself. "Eternal life" in these New Testament terms does not mean an individual life running into infinity, but, rather, an individual life lived for its three score and 10 on the belief that "now" matters and matters deeply because it's all there is.
 
It's okay to believe that because (see 10:28b) the shepherd will never let believers go: "No one will ever snatch them from my hand." The first part of v. 28 says, "To them I give eternal life, and they shall not perish." The word "perish" here should be read not as a promise that the sheep shall not die, but that they will not depart from the way in which they are being guided by the shepherd. That leads John now to re-enunciate the principle of 1:12 and 14: "I and the Father are one."
 
The homilist's temptation is to seize upon 10:30 ("The Father and I are one") as a textual occasion for a pronouncement sermon to the effect that a historical, human Jesus was in some way more than just historical and human. It is important to remember what was apparently going on in the Johannine communities, viz. the bitter conflict between synagogue and Jesus Judaisms. John was a Jesus Jew and bound to make a case for Jesus' legitimacy. He does so through the narration of the "signs," referring to them, as we have seen, in 10:25b. And lest there remain any confusion, he comes right to the point in 10:30.
 
For John, what Jesus conveyed in the evangelist's life-and-works narratives made known (or incarnated) the divine purpose. That is the claim John makes in 10:22-30 and elsewhere in his peculiar witness. The claim is supported, in so far as John was concerned, by "the works I do in my Father's name" (again, 10:25).
 
A footnote: This is only considered speculation: Perhaps by setting the scene of 10:22-30 in such an identifiable, pre-eminent place as Judaism's central shrine and, moreover, on the observance of the feast of its (re)-dedication, John was subtly saying that synagogue Judaism was not the legitimate heir to the post-Temple tradition, but that Jesus as the embodiment of the divine will was, with his "sheep," the legitimate and continuing tradition.
 
John wrote no less than 20 years after the destruction of the Temple and no doubt realized it was a thing of the past -- but not just any old thing of any old past. Maybe for John, the Temple even in its decrepitude was a sign: As far back as ch. 2 and on Jesus' first depicted trip to Jerusalem "the Jews said to Jesus, 'What sign can you show us for doing this (cleansing the Temple?'" (2:18) The response John gives to Jesus is at best an oblique answer, but one that helps John make his point: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (2:19)
 
The edifice or the body? It doesn't matter. In John's eyes, Jesus and his flock inherited the legitimacy of what the Temple had represented. And in Jesus, John would say, it was raised up.
 




HOMILETIC COMMENTARY

This gospel lection is an opportunity for the homilist to make several points securely based upon it:
 
           A. The Jesus movement that grew out of Temple and post-Temple first century Judaism has been independent of any one cultic center. All attempts to fasten the movement to a Constantinople or to a Rome or to a Canterbury have been unsuccessful, which is what the Protestant reformation was at its heart;
 
           B. People, not theological or architectural structures, constitute the church (ekklesia -- the ones called out or called together);
 
           C. What Houses of Bishops or synods or popes proclaim is not the be-all and end-all of what the church should be or do. Such structures are liable to decreasing relevance as the people move on to where and how they move there. And when such a structure is destroyed, it is always raised up (maybe not in the biblical three days) but in the lives of individuals and communities that find their centering principle in the ethical wisdom of the one called Jesus whose "resurrection" is proved every time someone turns the other cheek, walks the second mile, finds a way to love the enemy or forgives for the umpteeth time.


� Copyright 2010, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.


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