Ken Overberg, S.J.

4th of Easter, April 13, 2008

With the exception of last week’s Emmaus story, the Sunday gospels of the Easter season come from John’s gospel, first a few resurrection appearances and then selections from earlier in the gospel.  Throughout the season we also proclaim the Acts of the Apostles and, this year (cycle A), the first letter of Peter.

It is important to remember that the Acts of the Apostles is not exact history.  It is a proclamation of faith that sounds like history.  Acts is the second volume of a two-volume work; the first volume is the Gospel of Luke.  Many scholars judge that this two-volume work was written around 85 C.E. (though recently other scholars have suggested some 20 years later).

Acts is a creative story about truth—the truth that the Spirit led the development of the early Christian community, the truth that the good news of Jesus is for all people, Jew and Gentile.  Of course, the first disciples had to speak and travel and touch people’s lives in order for the Gospel to spread.  Acts offers an idyllic account of this process.

Our second reading, called the first letter of Peter, probably comes from the second century and was simply published under Peter’s name.

Whoever the actual author, the letter presents an exhortation on the meaning of Christian life, especially in the face of suffering.  Today we hear a curious mix of nonviolence and redemptive suffering.

The gospel comes from chapter 10 of John, the Good Shepherd chapter.

Two images are used in this passage: first the shepherd and then the gate.  Images of sheep and shepherds, however dear, remain foreign to the experience of most of us. And, of course, we are NOT sheep, simply to be led.  We are human beings, striving to embody responsible maturity, mutuality, and freedom.

The complexity of our Scriptures—so much to hear, so much to wrestle with, so much to live!  Let’s listen to God’s word.

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“By his wounds you have been healed.”  Even now in the Easter season we hear of redemptive suffering and atonement. Do you think it was fate or providence or God’s or Pastor Bollman’s sense of humor that I was assigned to preside today and preach about these readings?  All I suggested to Richard is that we sing an Exultet at the Vigil that doesn’t proclaim Adam’s necessary sin for Jesus to be!

God’s overflowing love, of course, is much greater than that.  Creation and Incarnation occur so that God can share divine life and love.  Jesus is not Plan B.  And the God revealed by Jesus is a God of compassion, not a god of violence.  The God revealed by Jesus neither wants nor needs wounds, torture, and death.  Jesus’ God is a God of life who sends the rain on the just and the unjust.  Jesus images this God in his healing and inclusivity, in his own creative resistance to suffering and structural evil.

Or as John simply says of Jesus: he comes that we may have life and have it to the full.  And all this beginning NOW when we believe.  Contrary to our world’s fear and despair that so easily infect us, John’s Jesus invites us to the fullness of life and love—not because of suffering but in the midst of it all.