From the Lectionary for 30 April 2023 (Easter 4A)

1 Peter 2:24-25 (NRSV Updated Edition)

He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

John 10:1-10 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

~

"The text says, “The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice.” In Jerusalem the gate through which the sheep were driven when they were to be sacrificed was the Sheep Gate and it had a gatekeeper. When the priests were ready for more sheep the gatekeeper would open the gate and the sheep would be driven in.

"In the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And here it seems the figure of speech suggests the gatekeeper opens the gate for the Lamb of God to go into the sacrificial chambers. Suddenly the metaphor has changed and for a moment the shepherd becomes the lamb. Could this be how we know his voice?  He is the one willing to die as an act of communication and forgiveness that shows us what we do to each other in our distorted quest for peace.

"This is the gentle voice; forgiving, merciful, long suffering and self-sacrificial that is like the perfect mother we all wish for in the recesses of our hearts. We will follow this voice. It has no harsh overtones. This voice will save us from our own destructive quest for an inner peace at the expense of our neighbor and in its place shows us a love so deep and complete that no one is forsaken."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on May 11th, 2014 (http://girardianlectionary.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Easter4-2014-Mothers-Day-This-Abundant-Life.doc)

~

"There are several rather extraordinary features of John’s Good Shepherd text, which I suspect can only be brought to life by the eucharistic Christ. Jesus says that he is the door — and of course it is the purpose of the door that it defines what is in and what is out. But he is a very special sort of door, because it is by entering through him, which means following him through a certain sort of death, that the sheep will be able to go in and out and find pasture. Now what is extraordinary about this is the freedom involved. The Good Shepherd enables people to go in and out and find pasture — it is a strange sort of door which does not seek to define people, but gives access to a temporary shelter which exists for the benefit of the sheep without wishing to confine the sheep therein.

"There is no definitive inside and outside for the Good Shepherd, there are places of shelter and of feeding, different places to which the door gives access, and which presuppose movement, non-fixity, and confidence in being neither in nor out. It is assumed that the best feeding place might not be one that seems to be “in,” yet the good shepherd is able to make that place available to his sheep.

...

"The sheep hear the voice of the good shepherd, and he calls them by name and leads them out. The sheep are ones who have entered by the door. That is, they have learned that it is only by undergoing a certain sort of death, which we celebrate in baptism, that they are able to become part of the fold. ... Those who have died can hear the voice of the one who died, because they are able to recognise the true voice of God, who knows not death, and who calls into being, and loves. Other voices are not to be followed, because they show themselves not to be of God since they are scandalised by death.

...

"The sheep who have learned not to be scandalised by death can go in and out, and in their very doing so, have become themselves shepherds, leaders in tranquil imitation of other sheep, co-creators of a great rejoicing. We can hear the voice of such shepherds if we are on our way to becoming such shepherds ourselves. For the one who went before us did so not so as to be superior to and apart from us, but so as to be himself in each of us, each one called by name."

- James Alison, from "The Good Shepherd", lecture delivered in Santiago de Chile, October 1999 (http://girardianlectionary.net/learn/alison-good-shepherd/)

~

"[H]e calls us by name. In his calling us we discover who we are and we can walk freely and without fear. This I think is part of the continuation of the message we've been getting over these Easter weeks - of the oddness of the voice of the One who speaks to us, the oddness of the one who spoke to Mary Magdalene, who spoke to Thomas, who spoke to the disciples at Emmaus. And now rather than speaking to us from a position of great haughtiness or great apparent leadership, he's speaking to us as one who has been through death, is not frightened by it, is not scandalized by it, and knows that as we are able to relax into hearing his voice, so we will be able to live abundantly."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fourth Sunday of Easter 2020 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHkEqYwK91Y)

[Source of links to Thomas L. Truby sermon and James Alison lecture: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter4a]

From the Lectionary for Easter Sunday 2023 (Easter A)

Acts 10:34-43 (NRSV Updated Edition*)

Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Colossians 3:1-4 (NRSV Updated Edition*)

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

~

"New Creation offers a hope which can guide us into an even greater payoff for the challenging days ahead. Yes, resurrection brings comfort in the face of enormous loss and grief. But it also brings us the healing Spirit whose work can move us forward in the new Way of being human. ... We are bold to follow our Risen Lord who in his earthly life “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” Through the Spirit of Easter which looses a virus of love, God is with us through this valley of shadows."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from "Opening Comments" on the Girardian Lectionary page for Easter A (http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter-a/)

~

"So ... we come to the moral details of the life of Resurrection. Already we have see them; the faith, hope, and love of the Christian ecstasies are the moral demands of our faith, but now we see clearly that before they are demands they are gifts. What need we to add? Only this: Christ rose not as a Jew nor a Gentile, not as a man nor a woman, not as a free citizen nor as a slave, not as an intellectual nor as a nincompoop; Christ rose as a human being, and the transformation he wrought takes all the human race into a new world of simple, shared humanity.

"This simple, shared humanity is what we all crave because it brings everything we ever thought or knew we wanted or needed: peace, justice, joy, respect, healing, and helping; beauty, delight, fullness of being and a good death. We see in the rising Jesus that that there really is a power of creative life to do all this for us. Why then should we let the limits of our minds, the paucity of our expectations, the cowardice of our ambition, the fear of our peers, cause us to deprive ourselves of the life that flows like clear, cool water from the transformed body of Jesus? Why should we not call upon him in faith and draw near to him in love, and enter there the house of hope.

"As a planet we are approaching a point of “singularity;” there are three conceivable kinds of singularity, a bad one, an ambiguous one and a good one, and each one is already underway. The bad one is the triumph of the decay already underway in the environment, melting icecaps, choking cities, poisoned water. The ambiguous one is the Kurzweilian transformation by human ingenuity bringing forth machines that are more human and more devious that our humanity ever could be... and displacing us.

"The good moment is the moment of the Resurrection of Jesus, when the power that created the universe recreated it from within, from its most precious point, the point of perfect humanity, and is abroad in the world as faith hope and love. If you wish to save the environment, to enhance the human future this is the power you need. It is the “good singularity” where the miracle of new creation occurs.

"So, you are concerned about the human future, you care about the planet? Worship Jesus in faith hope and love! Only then will you become an effective conduit of transforming creativity; without this power of life to battle the death star you will go down railing and regretting; with it you will see the triumph of our God who did not create this world for death but for life, to fail but to succeed, to mourn but to rejoice."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from a sermon titled "The Good Singularity", March 23, 2008 (source no longer available)

* Source of Bible quotes: https://www.biblegateway.com/