By Elaine Ramshaw
Revised Common Lectionary reflection for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B
April 21, 2024
The connection between Jesus as the Good Shepherd and Jesus’ call for us to care for others is made explicit for preaching in the reading from I John. Jesus “laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another,” 1 John 3:16 states, continuing in v. 17, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” The phrase, “laying down one’s life” refers not only to a willingness to die for another—something we are unlikely to be called to do. That interpretation could get us off the hook! Rather, we also “lay down our lives for one another” by sharing with those in need the means of life: our possessions, our money, our time and energy.
The Gospel reading gives us two important ways to understand both Jesus’ self-giving and our own. First, this self-giving is deeply relational. What differentiates the Good Shepherd from the hired hand is that the Good Shepherd knows and loves the sheep. This love is mutual: “I know my own and my own know me” (John 10:14). This kind of self-giving is not at all like a Lady Bountiful or a “white savior” who stands above and apart from the recipients of their charity. It’s this power differential that gave “charity” a bad name. The self-giving we are called to is a sharing based on deep connection.
This understanding of deep connection with one’s own could lead us to feel that charity can begin and end with those we already know and love. But the second insight into the Good Shepherd’s self-giving comes immediately after the first, when Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” That the Good Shepherd lays down his life out of love for “his own” doesn’t mean that the caring is limited to the current flock, however that is defined. For us, the current flock might be people of our denomination or religion, those in our neighborhood, folks to whom we’re related or socially connected, or people who sing or dress or play or vote the way we do.
The Good Shepherd is continually reaching beyond the boundaries of the flock, just as Jesus in this year’s Gospel of Mark is continually venturing outside of his own people’s territory to areas full of Gentiles, feeding thousands of Gentiles after he’s fed thousands of Jews like himself. With those strangers Jesus made community and deep connection, listening to their pleas, redefining his own mission in conversation with a Syrophoenician woman, healing and sharing meals and broadening the circle of care.
In considering the imperative in I John to care for those in need, the preacher can ask, “What keeps us from seeing and responding to the sister or brother in need?” One answer might be that the economic segregation of our communities, schools and churches can prevent us from seeing and getting to know people in dire economic need. While we do see people in dire need on the screens of our TV and devices, they can seem unreal and unrelated to us. We might try to fend off the sadness and guilt that comes from seeing such suffering by refusing to let ourselves imagine those people as being as real and precious and unique as ourselves and those we love. How do we avoid “compassion fatigue” in the face of the suffering we see onscreen? What are some of the ways people in this congregation, individually and in concert with helping organizations, “lay down their lives” for people who live nearby and for people far away?
In worship
Encourage the Assisting Minister to write the Prayers by using images from the 23rd Psalm, connecting in each case God’s care for us with our care for God’s world. God creates and brings us to green pastures and clear waters; we work to restore fields and forests, to clean rivers and lakes, to make habitat for animals and to provide food and water for all people. God accompanies us in the valley of the shadow of death; we accompany each other in the valley, those we know and love who are ill in mind or body and those who live in the shadow of death constantly, subject to dictatorships or war or famine or domestic violence. God feeds us “in the presence of our enemies”; we feed others who live under threat from those around them, providing them a table where they can eat in safety.
With children
Today can be a time to ask children how they are good shepherds, caring, protecting, giving. As Jesus is a good shepherd to us, we get to be good shepherds to other people and animals. While there are countless children’s books depicting the story of the shepherd seeking the lost sheep and/or the 23rd psalm where the adult male shepherd (usually white) is a stand-in for Jesus, there are also a bunch of books where the shepherd is a child: a Black Caribbean boy in Barry Moser’s Psalm 23, a Navajo boy in Kristine Franklin’s The Shepherd Boy, a Black African boy in Niki Daly’s The Herd Boy, girl and boy siblings in the Greek islands in Julia Miner’s The Shepherd’s Song: The Twenty-third Psalm, even a Black African little girl in the Indestructible series baby book Mary Had a Little Lamb drawn by Jonas Sickler. Sharing these books can be a way of getting kids to imagine how they, too, can be good shepherds, acting in the way the child shepherds do, but towards pets or friends or others who need help and care.
With youth
The reading from I John presents various possible topics for conversation with teens. Verse 17 (How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?) can lead to discussion of the needs we see online and around us. People in biblical times did not see the need of people who lived far away. How do we understand our responsibility to someone on the other side of the world? How do we keep from succumbing to compassion fatigue when we are bombarded by images of starving people or desperate refugees? Can it help to work together in an organization like Lutheran World Relief?
Here are previous reflections for Easter 4B:
2021 – A Psalm for all creation
2018 – A few choice words
2015 – Rambling in the ruts of righteousness
2012 – What’s the catch?
Leave a Reply