Fourth Sunday in Easter
Year A, RCL
April 13, 2008
All Saints’, Bentonville
Gospel:
Jesus said, "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."
When Bible translators do their work, those who do it well, translate in a way that makes the Word relevant to the intended readers. In the early 60’s Western Christian missionaries among the Maasai, a semi-nomadic people who wander with their herds of cattle across the plains of Kenya and Northern Tanzania, composed a version of the creed that spoke to the local tribes-people: We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from that grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.
What would the lessons we just heard sound like if they were translated to a version of the scripture more relevant to the lives of those who live in Northwest Arkansas. The Psalm, the Epistle, and the Gospel today, all contain references to sheep. Yet, as I drive through the hills and valleys of Northwest Arkansas, I rarely come across a sheep. Pigs and chickens, you bet, but a child growing up here might only see a sheep in a petting zoo or on television.
Here is how today’s gospel according to John would sound if we substituted the world of swine for sheep.
Jesus said, Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the “pigpen” by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the “keeper of the hogs”. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the “hogs” hear his voice. He calls his own “hogs” by name and leads them out. It’s an image I can’t quite seem to shake – that of the Good Shepherd, Jesus … calling the hogs.
Hogs have been kept in this part of the world for a long time – sometimes housed in unique ways. I’ve come across one particular arrangement twice in the Ozarks, so I suspect that it wasn’t completely uncommon. Along Tanyard Creek trail, where I often run, is a limestone bluff, jutting out almost to the edge of the creek below. During the winter, icicles, fed by the dripping springs along the ridge, grow several feet in length, stretching from the rim of the overhanging ledge almost to the ground below – creating a wondrous crystalline cage. In fact, as I read on the historic marker alongside the open cavern, rather recently in its million year history, this outcropping was used to shelter pigs. The bluff served as both rear wall and sloping roof. A crude wooden fence was erected on three sides. With the creek below and the limestone shelter above, it had been a secure place to keep animals. It’s cavernous setting was dry and cool in the summer, and removed from the winter’s harshest elements.
It’s the kind of animal shelter my mind creates when I think of Jesus the good Shepherd , the Shepherd whose sheep know his voice and who calls them by name. Animals well cared for, kept safe from the thieves who come to steal and kill and destroy. It’s an idyllic setting - a place where even a pig might have life and have it abundantly.
But then, on Thursday afternoon of this past week, after that morning’s torrential rains, I decided to run the trails along the creek. As I made my way past Lake Windsor’s racing spillway and the crashing waterfall below, as I saw how the engorged stream had uprooted ancient trees, I remembered the secure limestone pigpen and wondered how it had fared.
The once still waters that the farmer would have led his hogs beside, were now a raging river. I could see that on the night before, a turbulent flood had swept round the bend and scoured the inner edges of the limestone cavern, leaving a high water mark of silt beyond where I could reach. Sheep, hogs, the prehistoric humans that would have sought shelter in the outcropping all would have been ripped from the comfort of their fold and sent like flotsam down the turbulent, foaming stream. And I was reminded of how fragile life can be, and how the tranquil images we create can be so easily swept away.
Our images of life can break down… Whether they are images of 21st century Northwest Arkansas or images more relevant to first century Palestine.
The gospel reading today appears to be a collision of two parables. Is Jesus the one who enters through the gate, the shepherd, or is he, as he explains later, the gate itself? Clearly the writer is using mixed metaphors. No wonder the Pharisees looked confused.
So what do we do with a story like this? First off, we don’t take it literally. We recognize it as metaphor, in the same way that we recognize the metaphorical qualities of the parables in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As readers we are thrown off balance by this story. We don’t quite understand, just like the Pharisees. The story isn’t an allegory and it isn’t all neatly tied into a simple bundle.
John Crossan speaks of “the primacy of participation” in metaphors. Saying that with “true metaphors” it is not so much the information conveyed by the metaphor that is important, but rather our plunging ourselves into the metaphor, experiencing it as ourselves, if only for a moment. Then we might reflect on the metaphor and extract some factual bit of information – but only after we have made it our own. After we have allowed it’s poetic power to initiate a new kind of experience.”
There is another image that runs through today’s gospel reading – the voice of the shepherd. “…the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name, “the sheep follow him because they know his voice”. How are we, surrounded by so many voices. Voices purporting to know the truth, attempting to persuade us, to lead us…How are we to recognize the voice of the shepherd?
I don’t know the answer to that question. But I am aware of a voice that should have been heard. And the image I have in my head, of that voice crying in the darkness, is another image I can’t shake. A month ago, an Hispanic woman, Adriana Torres-Flores was arrested in Springdale for the seemingly unpardonable crime of selling pirated videotapes at a flea market. For four long days and nights, this woman was left in the Washington County jail, without food, without water, completely forgotten. For four days she cried for help and no one listened to her voice. It’s this image I can’t quite shake of Adriana, weeping in the darkness of a silent cell, wondering if the Good Shepherd had forever abandoned her.
Had her jailers been listening for the voice of the shepherd, the voice they would have heard would have been the pleading cry of Adriana – a forgotten voiceless immigrant.
You see, it’s all really about images. Everything else is empty words. Imagining ourselves in another place, another situation. Putting ourselves in the shoes of others. True compassion doesn’t happen unless we can really know the other.
Contrasting images of the other, the alien, keep us off balance and prevent us from becoming complacent, self absorbed. The seeming security of the sheepfold is illusory. What we can rely on is the constancy of the Shepherd’s voice, sometimes weeping, always with us.