Easter 4 B: Hired Hands
It’s Good Shepherd Sunday, Dear Partner in Preaching, which means the text before us is a portion of the “Good Shepherd Discourse” found in John 10. This long address follows, and is actually a narrative extension of, the healing of the man born blind in John 9. In light of the failure and spiritual blindness of religious authorities who condemn the healing of a man sightless from birth, Jesus offers himself as a counter example, picking up a theme that runs throughout the Old Testament of God’s good shepherds contrasted with leaders who shirk their responsibility and fail to care for God’s people. This year, we have the middle portion, John 10:11-18, before us.
While there are so many dimensions of this passage to focus on, one in particular grabs my attention at this particular time when good shepherds in our shared communal and societal life seem painfully scarce and Jesus’ promises are so desperately needed and simultaneously may be received with some skepticism by people worn out by pandemic, injustice, and anxiety.
Notice that, whereas in the previous section (v1-10) Jesus contrasted the shepherd with thieves and bandits, in this section the contrast is between the good shepherd and the hired hand. Hired hands, it turns out, aren’t out to destroy the sheep but aren’t committed enough to risk their lives for the flock. They are pretenders, in it for the cash rather than out of genuine care. They have a legitimate and important job to do, but do it for themselves with little regard to those entrusted to their care.
I think there a lot of hired hands today; that is, both people and institutions with legitimate and important roles who seem to have little to no regard for those they are called to serve. I’ll name just three. The first is a marketing-saturated world intent on creating in us a sense of lack that drives mindless consumption. Marketing has a role to play in a functioning economy but, as Jonah Sachs demonstrates in his insightful book Winning the Story Wars, in the previous century marketing has been less about sharing information and more about creating a sense of inadequacy that drives us to address real needs through consumer-consumption and retail therapy.
A second is the recent rise and now omnipresence, if not dominance, of social media. Again, a means of staying connected with others can be incredibly important and salutary. How many of us, in fact, relied on various forms of social media to help our folks stay connected with each other, their church, and their faith over the last year? But, at the end of the day, the dominant value in social media corporations is not altruistic, but monetary, and their profits are tied completely to the time we spend on their sites, which has bred sophisticated content algorithms designed to identify your proclivities and amplify them, leading you down a deeper and steeper curve of content tailored to keep you staring at the screen. In addition, the necessity of “likes” or “followers” as the primary valuation of content (and content provider; that is, you) leads to an incessant need for external affirmation and a resultant self-absorption and insecurity. Finally, the incredible number of sites competing for our attention has created a “culture of the outrageous” where getting attention by any means possible is increasingly the accepted norm.
Third, we live at a time of a polarized and hyper-partisan politics of division. Again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, democratic, republican government is one of God’s chief gifts to us and politics – derived from the Greek polis, “people” – unbelievably important agent by which God cares for all of God’s people. But in recent years, the emphasis is increasingly on inviting us to define ourselves in terms of what/who we’re against rather than what/who we’re for, fostering a negative political identity of opposition that too easily and quickly breeds hate and leads to violence.
What all three of these “hired hands” have in common is the emphasis on self above all others and the false narratives of scarcity, insecurity, and fear they perpetuate. The messaging is consistent: you do not have enough, you are not enough, you should be afraid, image is everything, you are what you own, etc. Beneath all of these various messages is a single and consistent demand: justify yourself! Your worth, you person, your very existence.
I know this can sound alarmist, but when I look at the spiking rates of anxiety, depression, and hopelessness – particularly among the emerging generation – I feel like we are beset by hired hands eager to have sheep/followers but ready to abandon them in a heartbeat. In contrast, Jesus offers himself as the good shepherd. And the proof of his fidelity is simply this: he is willing to lay down his life on behalf of the sheep. In fact, as Jesus says it, sacrificial love is his purpose, the source of his power, and his enduring example for his followers.
We celebrate Easter as the triumph of sacrificial love embodied by God the Son and validated by God the Father in the resurrection. But it’s so easy to overlook that Easter isn’t a past-tense, once-and-done reality but rather that God the Spirit continues to be at work, drawing us into lives oriented to, permeated by, and sustained through the same sacrificial love. Perhaps our call this week, Dear Partner, is to invite our people into the community of the Good Shepherd, to receive Jesus’ promise of presence and protection and to allow ourselves to be empowered and propelled by that promise to offer a different identity to those around us. We are sent out, that is, to offer a different message and distinct and life-giving identity: you are enough – so totally enough! You have more than enough for yourself and plenty to share to boot. You are beloved of God. You need not fear, for the Good Shepherd who laid down his life and took it back up again is with you and for you… forever.
This is a lot, I know, Dear Partner, and I trust you will discover a sermon that reminds and makes real for us the power, presence, and promise of the Good Shepherd that we may hear his call, answer his voice, welcome the other sheep he is seeking, and live more fully into the hopes and dreams God has for all God’s children. Blessings on your proclamation this week and always.
Yours in Christ,
David
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