Gospel Reflection for the Fourth Sunday of Easter – 30th April 2023 Written by Fr Brian Maher OMI
Of all the animals that walked off the Ark two by two with Noah leading them, I bet the humble sheep never realised that they would be subjected for the rest of history to the most malicious form of social profiling. Just because they are white, woolly, and cuddly we label them stupid – almost the ‘dumb blond’ equivalent of the animal Kingdom.
And because sheep don’t have a harsh bark or a threatening growl, we categorise them as ‘harmless’… But not harmless in the gentle, positive sense. No! ‘harmless’ for a sheep means devoid of a personality.
Nor do they have claws, horns, or rows of sharp, dangerous, teeth and so we term them ‘inoffensive’. In most animals (and indeed humans) ‘inoffensive’ is a good thing, but in a sheep, it means cowardly and capable of nothing except running away and getting lost.
The poor sheep forever wanders history lost, led, carried, dumb, and without dignity. We strip them naked each year, eat them with mint sauce, and train family-friendly dogs to chase and harass them mercilessly.
I will admit that I don’t know a great deal about animals, but I can spot bullying when I see it! Cows are just as harmless, quiet, and inoffensive as sheep, yet the image of a farmer leading his herd home to be milked is a gentle, dignified one, while the image of sheep being led home is far from gentle or dignified. They need to be constantly counted and checked because they want nothing more than to stray and get lost – like they do it purposely just to annoy the shepherd!
In ordinary society to call a person a sheep is quite insulting. It implies that the person is silly, devoid of personality, without leadership skills, indecisive, tending to cowardice and generally pretty useless.
How nice it is, then, to see that at least Jesus recognises the dignity of these lovely creatures. For Jesus the sheep is intelligent, recognising the voice of a friend, and also recognising the cunning of an enemy. The sheep in today’s Gospel follow the shepherd, but not in a stupid, dazed kind of way. The sheep of this Gospel follow because they want to. They follow because they “know his voice” and know that they can trust it.
Nice and all as it is to campaign for the restoration of dignity to sheep, we must move on and admit that in today’s Gospel the focus is not so much on the sheep but on the Shepherd.
In most of Jesus’ parables, the central character represents God, and the message of the parable is about who God is and how he relates to his people. The father in the story of the ‘Prodigal Son’, for example, is not just forgiving, but longs to forgive, running towards his lost son with open arms. The ‘Good Samaritan’ does not worry about the Religion, or lifestyle, or even the sins of the man who is robbed and beaten. When he comes upon a person who is suffering or in pain, he wants nothing more than to heal him.
Today, however, the shepherd is not God, but Jesus himself.
Within Jesus something is changing. There is a growing awareness that he is not just proclaiming the Kingdom of God coming into the world, but that, in some strange way, he is the Kingdom of God. When we are told that the disciples did not understand the parable and he had to explain it to them, I cannot help but wonder if it is Jesus himself who is struggling to understand this new awareness that is growing within him.
Everything we read in the Bible (Old and New Testament) presents to us the reality of our God seen through human eyes. We must always remember this: God reveals himself to us through the frailty and vulnerability of human beings.
The greatest saint, the most holy mystic, the most compassionate person we can imagine, is also a weak and fragile human person, and yes, also a sinner. The God spoken about by that person may well be real and true, but it is also tainted by human frailty. When God is portrayed as punishing his enemies or bringing death and destruction upon them, we are often reading what we might call the ‘wishful thinking’ of the writer who feels betrayed, abandoned, or treated unjustly. We all do it in times of stress and anger, and then usually regret it and are ashamed that we felt it.
It is easy to believe that we are made in God’s image and likeness, and we can say that we know that God is not like us, but it is still so, so difficult to avoid making God in our image and likeness, particularly in times of suffering and injustice.
And that is why the voice of Jesus is so important. As a human, Jesus experienced joy and sorrow, anger and peace, doubt and certainty just as we do. But he also carried within him a unique relationship with God. Like all of us he had to pray and struggle and spend time searching for the voice of God in the clamour of the world, but in a unique way, God spoke to, and through, him in an increasingly clear and unambiguous way.
I think it may be something of this new awareness of God that we are witnessing in this Gospel.
When Jesus speaks about God, when he says, “… this is the way God is…” we can be sure that it is true.
As we journey the roads and trails of Galilee with Jesus, then, each story he tells, each person he heals, each meal he shares, shows us the true face of God.
Today, in our Gospel, Jesus reveals to us a God who:
– knows us individually, and who calls us “one by one”.
– understands us and who “goes ahead of us”, leading by example.
– “will keep us safe” and bring us peace.
– wants us, “…to have life and have it to the full…”
Pope Francis, in ‘The Joy of the Gospel’, stated that “…we must never look like someone who have just come back from a funeral.” (EG 10). When I worked for many years with teenagers, one of their central criticisms of Church and ‘religious people’ was that they were “always so serious and never had any fun.” I found it difficult to contradict them! What they said also challenged me time and time again to look at the God I was portraying.
I sometimes wonder why I didn’t make a poster out of the last sentence of today’s Gospel, “…I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.” and stick it to the ceiling above my bed, so that I could not avoid seeing it as I went to sleep each night and got up each morning.
I have journeyed with many people as they grew older and death got closer. I have seen people of great faith and exemplary lives become fearful as meeting God got closer. I suppose, maybe, it is inevitable – the fear of the unknown. However, it is still sad.
There is nothing in today’s Gospel to fear. In fact Jesus never said or did anything in any of the Gospels that we should fear.
We are an Easter people, a Resurrection people, a people of hope, a people with nothing to fear.
“Do not be afraid. You seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here….” (Mark 16:6).
Many thanks,
Brian.
If you have any comments, questions or thoughts on this scripture reflection, please feel welcome to email me at b.maher@oblates.ie
I am the gate of the sheepfoldJesus said: “I tell you most solemnly, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold through the gate, but gets in some other way is a thief and a brigand. The one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the flock; the gatekeeper lets him in, the sheep hear his voice, one by one he calls his own sheep and leads them out. When he has brought out his flock, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow because they know his voice. They never follow a stranger but run away from him: they do not recognise the voice of strangers.”
Jesus told them this parable but they failed to understand what he meant by telling it to them. So Jesus spoke to them again: “I tell you most solemnly, I am the gate of the sheepfold. All others who have come are thieves and brigands; but the sheep took no notice of them. I am the gate. Anyone who enters through me will be safe: he will go freely in and out and be sure of finding pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full.”
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