This is the fourth Sunday of Easter. The great Easter miracle of Jesus coming alive, ALIVE, took place three weeks ago. The disciples didn’t get it at first. They were confused. They were in hiding. Although Jesus had appeared to them, they were simply bewildered. They couldn’t explain this new reality. They were all on edge. It wasn’t until the experience of Pentecost seven weeks later that they stopped being edgy and went all in.
Great phrase – on the edge. Edgy. Edgy is out there on the surface, the outskirts. When we say we’re feeling edgy, we mean we’re feeling ungrounded, floaty and not in a good way. You know what I mean. When the edgy feelings go away we feel “centered.” Centered is grounded-ness, a feeling of standing on solid ground, like a house built on rock.
Those fifty days of Easter season were a wilderness for the disciples. In a way, they had too much information for their minds to hold, with no way to “process” it. They hadn’t yet taken the new experience in and let it transform them. They were unsettled, on edge. I wonder how many of us are edgy, on the edge.
The world, and I mean the whole world, is in a bit of bewildered-ness right now. The Pope is dead. The new Pope, an American, roots for Chicago. Hot wars are raging in hot spots, no-one really wants peace. The world economy is shaken, no resolution in sight. New policies to eliminate waste, fraud, and people and foreigners are underway. Everyone, everyone is on edge. Events unfold on the surface; so many are anxious. But some hearts are quiet. These fearless ones are “all in,” all in that God’s plan is unfolding; that God is firmly in charge.
Our gospel lesson shows us a people whose hearts are not quiet. Jesus is walking in the temple courtyard. People knew about Jesus – by this time they’d heard of him and what he had done: the miracles, the inexplicable wisdom from this uncredentialed nobody from the sticks, from the backwater of Galilee. Seeing Jesus walking in the Portico of Solomon, they surrounded him and demanded of him – “Tell us, tell us straight out. We’re in suspense, we’re on the edge here! Are you the Messiah, the Christ? Or are you not?” Just explain what’s going on!
Now the people gathered around Jesus that afternoon were religious people. They followed the strict rules laid down by the learned theologians. Many had learned it was blasphemous to even pronounce the name of God. Claiming to be not just a prophet speaking for God, but the actual Messiah himself? Heresy. But true or not true, they had their practice and beliefs. They knew what they were supposed to do. Their rock and anchor was their religious practice. “Surely if I go to church regularly and observe the rituals, I can’t go wrong.” They wanted an explanation, not an experience, not a transformation.
Jesus didn’t do explanation or theology. Jesus showed who he was in his actions, what he did. His teachings were about living the meaning behind the commandments, living the change of mind and heart God asks for. His actions and teaching raised important questions. But they were questions, not answers, nor even messianic claims in plain everyday language. And the people of Jerusalem were a questioning people who demanded answers.
Jesus gave them the real answer: “I have told you, and you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”
The crowds in the portico had not yet allowed Jesus to transform their lives. They were not yet in Jesus’ sheepfold. They had not yet experienced the reality of the power of God. Their religion was “in their head, not their heart.” They were trying to draw a mental box around the power of God. Their logic prevented them from tasting the wine of the new testament. And not yet having an actual experience of the kingdom, they were not able to recognize the shepherd who would guide them to it.
Jesus is plainly telling them, “You must open your heart to believe in the possibility the kingdom of God is real. The reality that Jesus is the One to come. Taste it. Then you will be able to know him as who he is. Then you will be able to hear him and see him.” Jesus is instructing that generation that you do not arrive at faith through knowledge, or the application of reason and logic or mental conviction, but through the experience of faith. Listen to Jesus’ voice, imitate, “follow” his generous actions, see the world through His eyes as God’s creation. The experience will change your heart. Follow the shepherd.
Consider the disciple named Dorcas, or Tabitha in our reading from Acts. She believed in Jesus with her whole heart. She followed his teachings. She devoted her life to good works and acts of charity. She knitted and sewed clothing for others. She became ill and died. Her friends tended the body, washed it and laid it in an upstairs room before the burial. Other disciples heard Peter was in the area and sent for him. Peter put them all outside, and knelt in prayer. Then he turned to the body and simply said, “Tabitha, get up.” She opened her eyes and sat up.
Here were two people who were not on the edge. They were all in. Tabitha had committed her life in faith to acts of charity. Peter had committed his life in faith to God following Jesus as Messiah. Peter prayed in faith to God in Jesus’ name as he was taught, in radical faith believing that Tabitha would arise from the dead. The miracle happened.
This does not mean the test of faith is raising people from the dead. By definition this kind of miracle is not a daily occurrence. But other miracles are. Miracles of renewal, of transformation, of healing of bodies, healing of minds and healing of relationships happen daily. Miracles all around us. And they happen among people of great faith. First having faith, they are then able to experience the Holy Spirit of God and to hear and see and speak with their shepherd. This does not happen to people on the edge.
Before the time of Jesus, King David, started as an actual shepherd of his father’s sheep. He knew that sheep were nervous, edgy little creatures. His job was to protect, comfort and lead them. David was “all in” from an early age. There was no Temple even in existence yet. No Church. Just the personal and family experience of God. David had faith in that experience. And he was able to compose a song announcing to the world that, “The Lord is my shepherd, and I shall want for nothing.” Even as a shepherd confronting bears and lions looking to grab his sheep, David “feared no evil.” He knew that a shepherd stays with his sheep, protects his sheep and comforts his sheep. He knew with certainty that God was with him. Even in the presence of chaos and uncertainty, or the certain peril of real enemies, God had prepared a banquet table and spread it out before him. His cup was running over with the goodness and nourishment of the Lord. And David knew with a certainty that whatever happened to him, whatever he was to confront in his life here on earth he would continue to experience the fruit of God’s goodness and mercy as long as he lived. David, through faithful experience, knew that even though he was just a shepherd of sheep in a hardscrabble field, he was living in the House of the Lord now and for eternity.
David was not on the edge. David was “all in.” David was living his faith.
Today we also read of John on the island of Patmos. John had lived a life of faith and now as an old man was blessed with a great revelation that may have unfolded over days and nights. John saw heaven itself, with uncountable numbers of people – not just a select few. They were from every tribe and nation. All dressed in white simplicity with palm branches in their hands, all shouting with joy and thanksgiving to God and to the Lamb which is Jesus. “Amen!”, they shout, “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to God forever and ever.”
In his vision, one of the elders asks John a question, “Who are these dressed in white and where are they from?” John, although a disciple of Jesus for many years, doesn’t showcase his religious knowledge or explain religion to the heavenly elder. Instead, he says simply, “Sir, you are the one who knows.”
And the heavenly elder teaches, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal, they have washed their robes and made them white through faith in the power, the life blood of the Lamb.” “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more, the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat.” They have lived the experience of faith, of the Lamb. In the ordeals of their earthly experience, they were sustained, and in heaven they experience not the heat of hell but the springs of the water of life their shepherd guides them to. And all the tears they experienced during the great ordeal of this life, the common sufferings of their earthly life will be wiped away by the hand of GOD.
John was not on the edge. John was all in. John was there. His faith permitted him to experience the taste of heaven.
Jesus is the good shepherd. He doesn’t ask us to understand; he asks us to trust, to follow his lead. And once believing, we more than understand. We experience and we accept in gratitude that God has so arranged life and eternity. We are comforted by the certainty that whatever chaos and uncertainty, whatever anxiety we may feel, whatever ego and evil unleash, whatever exploitation and degradation we may experience on earth, God has experienced it first hand – through us and with us and in person.
God understands and comforts us, and prepares a table before us. God has the riches ready for those who bring him their own small gift of lived faith. The faith of those who experience life, who follow their shepherd. And God’s deeper and greater faith will bring us the double “Shalom, Shalom,” the gift of heavenly peace and awe while here on earth; and even more when we realize we have already been shepherded into our heavenly home.
Amen.