What can we say May 8? Easter 4 / Mother's Day

   Every year I post the same counsel, from my book, The Beauty of the Word, on how to talk about (and not talk about) it being Mother's Day: I’ve heard clergy fight, ignore or even diss Mother’s Day, and I’ve heard clergy extol the wonder of Moms. I suggest that we take into account people with dysfunctional relationships with mom, and syrupy sweet relationships too, but naming both and directing the emotions in that to Christ – and even to his mother, Mary. I like, on Mother’s Day, to launch into a little reflective reverie on her, bearing him in her womb, hearing his first cry, teaching him to walk, reciting Psalms, feeding and nursing him to health, watching him walk away to an unknown life of itinerant preaching, hearing rumors of amazements but also mounting conflict and danger, and then watching him suffer and die. No big moral takeaway. Noting the beauty of Jesus’ story.

    Acts 9:36-43. I’ll never get comfortable with the RCL’s usage of Acts as Old Testament. But what book could be more fitting for a post-Easter season than Acts? Jesus was raised – so believers clustered and did amazing things. Also, we are blessed this year with the stunning new commentary by Willie Jennings. And then, this week’s text is a post-Easter resurrection story!

   Did Dorcas and others in Joppa reflect now and then that they lived in the city where Jonah fled from the Lord? Jennings suggests that this story from Luke “makes a point more powerful for our time than probably for him in his time.” Glory and grief, a life well-lived, “woven in good works,” is lost. Peter simply showing up? “Peter’s presence declares an unmistakable truth: women matter. This woman matters, and the work she does for widows matters to God.” “It is no accident that the first disciple to have this little taste of the resurrection is a woman, because it was a woman who gave birth to the resurrection.” Thanks, Willie.

   I’d refer you to a prior year’s blog, where I link Rosa Parks to this incident, report on a tear-jerker, thriller of a sermon I heard on this text in Kenya, and explore ties to Jesus raising the Centurion’s daughter.

   Psalm 23. Not sure I can improve on my previous post on this famous, almost too-familiar Psalm in which I tie it to Sam Wells’s A Nazareth Manifesto, and my favorite idea about thinking not just of the sheep but the herding dogs who help the shepherd tend them.

   John 10:22-30. Establishing the setting won’t take long, but it matters! The date: the Feast of Dedication, when Jews celebrated the Maccabeans recovering the temple after the “abominable desecration” (Daniel 9:27), the erection of an idol to Olympian Zeus on the altar. Jesus joins such a movement of eradicating false idols, and, as Ben Witherington points out, “Jesus delivers a discourse indicating that true leadership does indeed mean laying down one’s life for the sheep, as some of the Maccabees had in fact done.”

   The location: Solomon’s portico. Of course, Solomon’s temple had been reduced to rubble nearly 600 years earlier! But this eastern portico resonated with his name. As it was winter, this one portico, situation on the east side of the temple courts, open to the center but closed to the outside, would have been the one spot where shelter could be enjoyed from the cold brisk winds from the east – and it would have been quieter so they could hear him teaching!

   We should be attentive to the way Jesus speaks of eternal life. It’s not a reward, or a property by which you keep going after death. It’s all about the relationship with God. God wants us close, always, even after our mortal life has drawn to a close. If then we will “hear the shepherd’s voice,” we’d best listen carefully to him now, sticking close enough to hear. He’s a fiercely protective shepherd we can trust: “No one will snatch them out of my hand.” Precious Lord, please do take my hand. The preacher could ask Who are the body snatchers nowadays? Political ideologues. Advertisers. Mean people. Mean religious people. Those who make the faith boring or judgmental. The list goes on and on.

   And how shrewdly Jesus deal with the pressing question: Are you the Messiah? It’s simply not a Yes or No question, Jesus knows and invites them to ponder with his evasive but brilliant reply. It’s not an identity but a movement, lives transformed. It’s not really about the Messiah at all, but about his sheep being safe and finding shelter and healing.