A lectionary reflection for the people of Thankful Memorial, Chattanooga
for worship from home, May 3, 2020, Year A, Easter 4 – Good Shepherd Sunday

Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

As much as I love the experience of Easter Day – which we missed so dearly this year – I have come to love the fourth Sunday of Easter at Thankful even more.  Every year, the Church sets aside Easter 4 as a day to remember Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  And, quite organically, it has become an informal tradition at Thankful to have baptisms on Good Shepherd Sunday.  In the past years we have baptized Thankful children Megan, Kendall, Thomas, Molly, Ellie, Ollie, Leo and Arlo all on this Sunday.  Indeed, before the coronavirus pandemic began, there were plans in the works to baptize at least one more Thankful kiddo today. 

There is something special about welcoming some of our youngest members into the Body of Christ and officially into Thankful on this day.  While Easter Sunday is packed with people and the love we share with all in Christ Jesus, on Good Shepherd Sunday, the folks in the pews are the Thankful Ones we know so well and love as our own family.  When we gather together on this day to baptize our children, it always feels to me like a celebration of the unique character of our loving and generous community.  And so, on this Good Shepherd Sunday, still in isolation from each other, I am missing you, my beloved Thankful Ones, even more than ever. 

And I find bitter sweet comfort in the scripture texts for this morning.  These readings are life-giving, necessary reminders of our ongoing, deep connection to one another even in this time apart. 

Little is as familiar to us as the 23^rd Psalm.  Its cadence and rhythms are our spiritual comfort-food.  “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want… Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.”  Overwhelmed as we are by the confusion, sorrow and uncertainty of these times, we can find respite from it all in the psalmist’s reassurance that the Lord’s faithfulness endures. 

But as we worship this Sunday at a distance from each other, the familiarity of Psalm 23 does even more to sustain us.  When we pray the psalm, it’s easy to imagine other Thankful Ones saying it, too.  And, though we will each recite it alone or in our small family groups, in our homes, at differing times, because we all say the same lovingly-worn words, we know we say them somehow, still, together, rising up as one to God like incense.  We are connected to each other by the well-known words of Psalm 23.

And the pastoral images of the psalm appear again in the gospel of John as Jesus speaks to his disciples about his love for them.  The writer of John’s gospel says that “Jesus used this figure of speech with [his disciples], but they did not understand what he was saying to them.”  And it’s no wonder.  Jesus paints a complicated picture of sheep and their shepherd, a gatekeeper and a gate, sneaky strangers and thieving bandits.  If we try to sort it all out as though it were a matching game, we’re sure to get even more confused.  

But one thing stands out in this particular portion of the gospel since Jesus states it baldly: “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep,” he says. 

And, though there’s no denying that Jesus as the Good Shepherd is always comforting, I find Jesus as the gate to be especially reassuring right now, too.  Locked down and closed in, isolated from one another by the boundaries of social distance, kept apart by the walls of our own homes and the risks of our fragile bodies, how freeing it is to remember that Jesus is the gate.  Because gates, by definition, can always be opened as well as closed.  They are symbols of opportunity, the promise of both protection and possibility.  And Jesus the gate offers these things to us in abundance, even in our fear and isolation.  In Christ, there is power to transcend the necessary borders of physical distance and find communion with one another, nonetheless, in His love.  We are connected to each other in Jesus himself, the risen Lord, the Good Shepherd, the Gate for all of God’s sheep. 

And we can be reassured of our belonging in that flock by our ongoing participation in the life of God’s beloved community.  The writer of the Acts of the Apostles describes some of the ways in which Jesus’ followers engaged in that shared life in the earliest days after his death, resurrection and ascension.  They “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and [to] fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”  They cared for each other, sharing what resources they had with all, “as any had need.”  They “broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts.”  Indeed, though this must be an idealized picture of the first communities of Christians, it must have been true that, generally, they lived their lives, day by day, with such “glad and generous hearts,” come what may. 

And as for them, so for us.  Whatever else is going on in our world and in our lives, we can continue to practice our faith in these ways.  We can still read scripture and worship God regularly.  We can pray for each other.  The 21^st-century version of Christian fellowship includes Zoom coffee hours and emails and cards and calls.  We can gather together supplies for our Colombian refugee family and even share our toilet paper with a neighbor who is maybe running low!  We can sit down at the table with our family or turn on a tablet to contact a far-away friend while we eat our own dinner, breaking bread with one another even as we remember Jesus who once took bread, blessed it and broke it to share with his friends, too.  We can live in communion with each other – even at a distance – by living with glad and generous hearts, day by day.  We are connected to each other by our common life of faith. 

So, though we are not together in person on this Good Shepherd Sunday to baptize our children and to remember the promises of our own baptisms, I am still celebrating the unique character and abundant life of our little community.  Though the losses and fears of this time are very real, so too are the blessings of our mutual love for one another and the joys of our shared communion in Christ.  And, for that, I am truly thankful.  Alleluia!