Mass readings for the 4th Sunday of Easter:
Acts 4.1-12 Psalm 118.1, 8-9, 21-23, 26, 28-29 1 John 3.1-2 John 10.11-18
Today Jesus talks about sheep, and shepherds and hired hands; and says he is “the Good Shepherd.” What makes him a “good” shepherd is his willingness to lay down his life for the sheep; the “bad” shepherds, the “hired hands” they abandon the flock to the wolves. Now we know he is referring to himself, but for us this is also a guide and a warning: how do we know when someone is a good or a bad shepherd? From Jesus, as with all things human, we get a standard against which to measure. It might be an impossible standard – no one, however saintly, is going to measure up fully, but it’s what we’re to aspire to do. So, with respect to those who say they are leading us to sunny green pastures, to the promised land, we get a sense as to the qualities we should be looking for so as to know if we should follow them.
When Jesus talks about such things we’re apt to think he’s talking only about the Church. The flock are those in the pews. When he mentions “shepherds” we think of our church pastors. “Pastor” is the Latin word for shepherd, after all. Of course, we’re being anachronistic. The title of “pastor” did not exist at the time Jesus is speaking, nor in the early Church. The first pastoral leaders were the apostles; after them the episkopoi, or “overseers” those we today call “bishops” – who hold “episcopal” office.
The idea of shepherd as a leader in scripture is not restricted to religious community; at the time Jesus is speaking, no one conceived of the compartmentalizing of religion and politics within a nation – that is, there was no “separation of church and state.” This is a modern, and largely, American idea. I’ve mentioned before that the different factions Jesus faces, the Sadducees and the Pharisees for example, were definitely religious schools with different theologies and interpretations of the Scriptures, but they also were political parties seeking power in the sense of forming the government.
We see in the Scriptures the idea of the leader as a shepherd over and over. Moses and his brother Aaron are called shepherds; King David started life as a shepherd. The prophets Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah all talk about Israel’s need for good shepherds, and they are obviously talking about kings and their advisors, the whole of the royal court – the shepherds are the leaders, religious, cultural and political.
So, in today’s context, Jesus is not talking about Catholic priests or Evangelical ministers per se. He’s talking about all who would presume to lead human communities.
So, when we look at current society, and at those who have power, who lead, be it in politics, industry, entertainment, and yes, religion, these are the shepherds, or perhaps, they are worryingly just “hired hands” – those who are in it, ultimately for themselves and will be proved so when they disappear to their luxury homes on distant tropical shores when the troubles start.
And I’m certain all but those of the lattermost category of religion would say they have nothing to do with the area of human spirituality, with faith. Yet we know that simply isn’t true.
As much as we have secularized our politics, and stripped religion out of our culture (our pop songs, movies, video games, etc.) it can’t really be done. In all of these areas there is spirituality. It may be a very negative one; it may be the mocking of traditional religious faith. It may be more subtle: a romantic comedy on television that presents traditional morals as oppressive, then offers a vision fulfilling life through personal indulgence – it doesn’t matter that it’s fiction, a clever illusion, to those who know no better, it looks real and possibly true. In this, in political speeches, in popular songs, etc. there is formation of spirituality within people that may be quite warped; those who do this bear a great responsibility for where we are today in our spiritual emptiness, moral confusion and intellectual chaos.
The great Catholic political philosopher, Jacques Maritain argued that any sort of temporal work – not only a new law, the raising of taxes, the declaration of war or the making of a treaty of peace, but also the activity of any group, or the exercise of any particular right – if it causes an aberration in the spiritual life of the community and leads the faithful away from the path to eternal salvation, the Church, the faithful, has the right to judge what’s going on; and not simply accept what the authorities tell us is good for us. Indeed, echoing the words of Father Gioacchino Ventura who preached in the 19th century the essential relationship between liberty and faith, we are obligated to resist, but not by violence. He said, “Catholic teaching does not proscribe action; in forbidding forcible resistance it does not forbid protest by paths of legality and justice…” As Catholic we have the task of transforming the moral and political life of the state, upholding the principles of freedom of conscience, but also civil freedom, the freedom of women, and the fundamental freedom of the soul to pursue a relationship with God.
Today’s secular visionaries who hold power, and indeed their many followers, will claim they aren’t “doing religion” with their programs of social, economic and political change, but in essence they are. Don’t mistake rituals for religion – some of the worst villains received the Blessed Sacrament with all outward signs of piety; and some who are true believers in their peculiar visions have no use for prayer. These things can be separated, and so very misleading as to what religion and faith are about – the meaning of life, the discerning of our purpose; the ground of our hope; and on these we build our lives. And in Christ, we know that is about selfless love and sacrifice, about virtue, living lives of temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, chastity and humility; of being empowered in the holy spirit to live according to true knowledge, wisdom and good counsel, with piety, understanding, fortitude, and respect for God.
As I’ve pointed out in recent weeks, we have children coming for first communion, for confirmation in May. We celebrate this because it is a sign that families want for themselves, for their children, and for this community, the life in Christ and not what has led us in the direction of social collapse, moral confusion, and deep political division.
We see the damage that’s been done, and should remember who has done it; who has washed their hands of it, and I’ll grant this, have rightly claimed that they only gave us want we wanted: freedom from God, from the hard realities of Truth, from the obligations of authentic Love. Now we know that was no freedom at all, as we have become prey to the wolves.
Maritain wrote, “In the course of twenty centuries, by preaching the gospel to the nations and by standing up to the flesh-and-blood powers … the Church has taught [us] men freedom. Today the blind forces that for two hundred years attacked her in the name of freedom and of the human person deified are at last dropping their mask. They appear as they are…”
They are the wolves, and the hired hands who’ve run away. But we have nothing to fear if we listen for the good shepherd, know that he has laid down his life for us, taken it up again, and so raised us up to an eternal life beyond the reach of those who would lead us into harm.
Amen.