Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed!!

Instead of withdrawing from an often destructive world, as our opening prayer cautions us about, our guest singers, Sweet Honey in the Rock, proclaim that they feel “something drawing me on.” Something mysterious, something felt, yet something very real, keeps “drawing me on,” into the heart of what matters in the world, in God’s world, something “keeps drawing me on.” It is my understanding that what keeps pulling us along is the gospel itself, and to be more specific, John’s gospel, and narrowing it further, it is the Word which in this gospel is Jesus himself, the Word which takes on human form and enters human history in the person of Jesus. As THE MESSAGE Bible says in the 2nd verse of John’s first chapter: “The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one.” (pause…) Hmmm, sounds politically familiar…but that’s the translation from Gene Peterson: “…in readiness for God from day one.” Sorry to mix in the political with the scriptural!!

John’s gospel was written, we are not certain by whom, near the end of the first century some sixty or seventy years after Christ’s death. And the promise of this fourth gospel is: “The Holy Spirit…will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” In contrast to the first three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, the writer of this gospel depends more freely on his or her modes of thought and language in reporting, and more importantly, when interpreting the teachings of Jesus. Let us take this writer to heart as we approach the scriptures with our own open minds and freedom of thought…God will help us as we wander in, through, and among the words of the Biblical writers including John.

Has anyone here today ever had problems with self-identity issues? Have you ever, even one time in your life, found yourself asking: “WHO AM I?” Well, you’ll be glad to know you are not alone. Throughout John’s gospel it seems like Jesus has some identity issues. He says: I am the bread of life, the light of the world, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way, the truth and the life, the vine, and, in today’s reading, the gate!! Talk about trying to be everything to everybody – here is the king of multi-tasking!!! One caution…don’t try the same thing!! This is Jesus who is claiming so many identities – if we can focus on one thing, we will be doing really well. And that one thing we are asked to focus on in this gospel lesson is THE RIGHT VOICE. And that voice comes from the shepherd who knows us, to whom we belong. In the Greek of the New Testament, shepherd means: “The one who feeds.” Maybe, the one who keeps drawing us on, into obedience, into the costs of discipleship, into loving an often destructive world, into embracing the one whom God created and loves, into voicing and acting on behalf of the goodness possible in this world. In John’s gospel, Jesus is claiming, obviously among other things, that in him eternal life has come. He is the resurrection and the life but he doesn’t claim this as a future happening, but a present reality! Yes? Amen!!

In the gospel reading we heard from Bernie a few minutes ago, Jesus claims to be the gate and in this image combines the temporal with the eternal. Anyone familiar with shepherding (and all within the hearing of his voice would have at least some understanding) knew the importance of a sheep gate – literally, the means of dividing the sheep from danger, even death – as well as the passage into safety. It is not a jump, then, for John’s hearers, who are familiar – like we are, right? – with his use of layered meanings, strands of thought in his stories and parables, to understand Jesus’ claim to be the gate as an eternal claim that begins in the down to earth, muddy, mucky, world of sheep and shepherd. Whether the thieves and bandits mentioned in the gospel are Pharisees, false prophets, drug dealers, Presidents, gang-bangers, preachers who don’t know what they are talking about, churches without the guts to act on gospel justice, advertisers urging our teenagers to be skinnier or get the largest fries, Jesus’ point is clear: Beware of those outside the gate that leads to abundant life. More pointedly: get inside the gate before you die to something that is not God. Focus on the voice you have come to trust…sheep do that. Why can’t the rest of us? Let the Word, taking on human form and entering human history, embrace you, and keep on drawing you on into a life you never dreamed possible.

I changed the title of the sermon. If you look at your bulletin you see the title: “Liberation’s Gatekeeper.” What was I thinking…I guess last Sunday afternoon when I emailed that title to Wendy, I wasn’t thinking…it is a mouthful of nothing. So, this sermon has this title: “WHILE WE SHOPPED…” and it makes much more sense, right? I stole the title from the journalist, Leonard Pitts, who writes for the Miami Herald, and is a good UCC person. He has a column in the Eagle each week. A recent one had the title of this sermon…what a coincidence!! I want to quote his first couple of lines: (pause) “Return with me to Abu Ghraib. You remember it. You may not want to, but you do.” I’ll read a little more: “The Iraqi prison was the epicenter of an international scandal in 2004 when it was revealed that U.S. soldiers were mistreating detainees, forcing them to stand in stress positions, sexually humiliating them, menacing them with dogs, denying them clothes, dragging them on leashes, threatening them with electrocution. All of it was captured in photos that shocked the world. One the most memorable showed then-21-year-old Army Pfc. Lynndie England, cigarette poking from an idiotic grin, index fingers cocked like guns aimed at a prisoner.

Over the years of more revelations of similar treatment of detainees behind the gates of various prisons, many of us wondered how such a thing could be perpetrated by our own U.S. soldiers. We raised these children, hopefully, to value life and the safety of the gate. Instead so much human value and dignity was transformed into evil itself and the gate stood as a mockery to life’s abundance. What led our children to go so far afield from the moorings of simple, human decency? Mob mentality? Dehumanizing conditions? Lack of oversight? Mr. Pitts writes: “But as the years have passed, a truer answer has coalesced. Where did these young soldiers get the idea that the rules were suspended, that free rein was given, that they could practice whatever torture they wanted to the prisoners in their custody? It came from the top…an 81 page “memo” from the Justice Department in 2003, with the knowledge and complicity of all the major power brokers in the White House, authorizing the use of almost any – including illegal – methods of torture to extract supposedly vital national security information. AND NO ONE AT THE TOP OF THIS FEEDING CHAIN COULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR ANYTHING AUTHORIZED IN THE 81 PAGE MEMO.

Just a little more before I stop. Don’t lose focus on Jesus, the shepherd, the one who feeds, the authentic voice. Again, quoting Mr. Pitts: “Seven years ago, when the nation was attacked and Americans wanted to pitch in (the whole world wanted to pitch in!), wanted to help, wanted to sacrifice, our leaders told us to…go shopping. Remember? Prop the economy up, they said. Don’t worry about the war. Let us handle it. Go shopping.”

And we did. We jumped over or around that sheep gate, didn’t listen to the voice we trusted. Terrified as we were by our own “leaders” we were eager for the illusion of security, so we did not look too closely or examine too intently the things that were being done in our names. We became , many of us, expert at ignoring the screams from behind the curtain, discounting the growing mountain of evidence that things were not as we had been told, brushing off nagging questions about what we have become and how that does not square with what we are supposed to be. In short, we ignored the shepherd’s voice, slammed the gate shut on our own, dropped the bag of gospel justice in the dirt, and there was hell to pay. But not for those at the top, giving orders, sometimes deciding exactly which type of torture (while we followed orders to shop) would be used on specific prisoners…no one in that situation room with hell to pay. However, at the bottom of the military food chain, look at this: Lynndie England is a single mom, placed on parole by a military court and looking for work, living in a mobile home with her folks.

Jesus is not a decorative gate. As gates go, Jesus is an odd choice, but he is not decoration. Better odd than decorative!! He describes the role of the gate clearly – it’s the entrance to safety, the threshold between security and threat, and a place of discernment where, in the midst of the mud and muck, we can hear the authentic voice of the shepherd who feeds us. We need the nutrition, the sustenance, the strength, the focus, the discipline of concentrating on the truth which is so often distorted by the bandits, the thieves, the powers and the principalities. The gate does not symbolize torture and imprisonment. This is not Abu Ghraib. This is Jesus, the odd one with self-identity issues, proclaiming freedom to his people, and a power to liberate the world, our neighborhoods, our hearts, if we end our illusions of security especially in the down to earth, muddy, mucky, struggles for human dignity as scary as it can be: But I remind you: fear is the roadblock, grace the open road. Yes?

I feel something drawing us on…….

Amen!