Rector's Reflection: Flock Without End. Amen., May 10, 2025

This Week’s Readings: Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

Beloved Members of St. Martin’s,

Welcome again to Shepherd Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Easter! The image of God and Jesus as not just “shepherd,” but as the “Good Shepherd” is so powerful, so suggestive and inspiring, that we celebrate “Shepherd Sunday” every year in this part of the Church calendar. In each year’s reading, we are reminded that we are all part of God’s flock, and nothing can separate us from God but our own choices—and even then, God never gives up on us.

Here in the fourth Sunday of Easter we are continuing a thread from the 2 Sunday of Easter about belief, faith, doubt, and certainty. Two weeks ago, Thomas would not believe that Jesus was risen until he saw and touched Jesus and his wounds himself. This week starts with Jesus in a dispute with those who claim to want—but really don’t want-- Jesus to flatly proclaim himself the Messiah. Jesus responds to these challenges that he has both told them and showed them through his works, and yet that is not enough. They don’t want anything but certainty. They want undeniable proof. And yet we know that is an impossible standard to meet, since there have already been dozens of signs and wonders done by Jesus. Even everything is not enough for some people.

As John alludes several times, action by God in choosing those who will belong to the flock is done by God’s initiative. The early Calvinists who settled our country believe this choosing was extremely limited, and called this “election.” They believed that God’s offer is limited to nearly perfect people, kind of a Calvinist Mary Poppins, who of course was “practically perfect in every way.” Many of us are uncomfortable with this theory of limited “election,” since it presupposes that there is predestination, which undercuts the concept of free will. This concept also logically means that some will be excluded from the kingdom. Thus the conclusion is that the vast majority of people are predestined to go to Hell, and some very few people are predestined to go to Heaven. This then leads to a problem with the questions of grace and mercy.

The answer actually exists earlier in this same chapter. Jesus, especially when he speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd in John’s gospel, makes clear that he and “the Father” are one. This gospel portion insists that Jesus’s sheep cannot be snatched out of his hand, just as no one can snatch what the Father has given him out of the Father’s hand. Jesus’s works in the name of his Father testify also about Jesus himself. But Jesus also states flatly in the verses just before these, at John 10:14-16:

I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

The acknowledgement of “other sheep” unknown to “this fold” is a good reminder to us that God is God, and we are not, in the words of that great sage and poet seer, Steve Earle. Think God has drawn a tiny circle of those who are in, and shunned the multitudes? This is to deny the principal qualities of God, which are mercy, loving kindness, and grace beyond our own miserly preferences.

We humans want certainty, yes, even after learning over and over again that the world provides precious little of that, ever. And this is a gift, not a curse, beloveds. Certainty sucks all the color and beauty and wonder from the world. Certainty, not doubt, is the sworn enemy of not just faith, but of the imagination—and it is through the imagination, through the sparkling chance of possibility, that this glorious creation we are called to revel in comes to life.

When we humbly realize how much grace we ourselves we receive, may our response ever be to throw the gate to that sheepfold wide open at Jesus’s invitation, and marvel at the limitless love God extends to us all. Accepting thatcertainty with a generous welcome to all, no exceptions, is what makes Jesus the true “Good Shepherd.”

Have you ever welcomed your doubts and uncertainties as gifts? What would it be like if you did, if it meant you would see yourself as part of the most joyful, beloved flock of all?

In Christ,

Mother Leslie+