Ancient Answer for our Modern Malaise

Easter 4A-26

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Jesus is our dwelling place and our guide. Jesus is master and servant. Jesus is host of the Eucharist and our food. Jesus is mother hen and the lamb of God who takes away our sin. Scripture is fond of mixing metaphors. Today we get two more. Jesus said, “I AM the gate.” (John 10:7) and I am the good shepherd (10:11).

These are not throwaway lines in John’s gospel. John’s gospel makes the bold claim linking Jesus with the great I AM—with Yahweh—whom Moses encountered at the burning bush. Seven times in John’s gospel Jesus uses the phrase Egō Eimi, “I AM” in reference to himself. Jesus said, I AM the bread of life (6:35). I AM the light of the world (9:5). I AM the resurrection and the life (11:25).  I AM the way the truth and the life (14:6).  I AM the true vine you are the branches (15:5). Could Jesus be the answer we need now?

The contradiction between the dueling metaphors of “the gate,” and “the good shepherd” is helpfully resolved when we learn that an ancient sheepfold like Jesus describes was a pen without a gate. Once the sheep are safely inside the shepherd becomes the gate. The shepherd lays down at the opening. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” Jesus said (v. 11b).

Still, it seems a stretch to say how these ancient agrarian sheepfolds and gates could be relevant to our modern urban lives? We do not reside in a pen. We are not sheep, are we?

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, in his book, A Secular Age tells the story of the last 500 years in the West. We have greater freedom and less concern with supernatural evils than our ancestors did.  We are blessed with advances in technology, medicine, and science which have decreased suffering and doubled life expectancy.  But, Tayor says, this has not come without some tradeoffs. Taylor describes a constant, low-grade, background malaise: an emptiness, a felt flatness, a lack of connectedness to something larger prevalent in modern times. Taylor calls this the “Malaise of Modernity.” Day-to-day modern life seems so thoroughly emptied of any consideration of divine involvement that spirituality can feel like a trite response to the world’s great ills. The natural world, so filled with wonder and awe for our ancestors, rarely rises to consciousness full consciousness in modern life.  (Vince Brackett, An Immanent God for our Immanent Frame,” Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God,” p. 278)

Into this God-sized vacuum of the modern soul, corporations and political partisans’ array all around us pitching their latest and greatest bids for our attention with the help of big data. They provoke our outrage. They want our data, our time and especially our money. Their sales pitch is tailor made for you based on your likes, your swipes, your posts, your credit score, your purchases, your zip code, where you lingered in the aisles of a certain store, and/or where your eyes lingered longest over a post on social media.

These false shepherds manipulate and devour the sheep. “Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus said, “anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit” (John 10:1).  There are no sheep, no sheepfolds in Chicago today but the same evil powers and principalities are still intent to drive us into the same false pen. Somehow these false shepherds found their way into my pocket. What’s more, I don’t go anywhere, even from one side of the house to the other, without taking these manipulators with me. The dopamine released in my brain from using their platforms is addicting—and that’s on purpose. I wonder, when did I get so trapped in this high-tech sheep pen? I’m talking about my smartphone of course—and my laptop too. I’m surprised when I think how uncomfortable I’ve become whenever I realize I’ve left either one of them behind. Is there a way to trade dopamine for daylight, doomscrolls for detours? How do we reconnect with art, nature, friends, my own heart and mind? Where do I go to find awe, wonder, spirit and God again? How do we recover from this modern malaise?

For an answer, let’s look again at sheepfolds and sheep. I learned that ancient shepherds combined their sheep together in a single pen. When it was time to go, no problem. Each sheep simply answered the voice of their shepherd, sorted themselves out, and followed. This is one of the remarkable things about an otherwise humble farm animal.  Sheep learn to trust. This implicit trust is what John’s gospel has in mind when talking about faith and belief. To believe in Jesus is to love and trust him. Sheep are a good example of what it means to have faith in the good shepherd.

The call of our shepherd is an antidote to our modern malaise because the call of the shepherd comes not from ‘far away’ or ‘up there,’ but from ‘in here.’ It is the voice of Immanuel, of God-with-us. It is deep calling unto deep because each of us is created in the likeness and image of God. “The image of God is the essence of our being. It is the core of the human soul” (John Philip Newel, Christ of the Celts, p. 4).

“Christ [the good shepherd] comes to reawaken us to our true nature.  He is our epiphany. He comes to show us the face of God. He comes to show us also our face, the true face of the human soul…Grace is given to reconnect us to our true nature.  At the heart of our being is the image of God, and thus the wisdom of God, the creativity of God, the passions of God, the longings of God. Grace is opposed not to what is deepest in us, but to what is false in us. It is given to restore us to the core of our being and to free us from the unnaturalness of what we are doing to one another and to the earth” (p. 9).

‘I came,’ Jesus said, ‘that you may have life and have it abundantly’ (John 10:10b). Jesus, the good shepherd, calls you by name, not from afar, or from beyond the stars, but from deep within you now, in solidarity with your suffering and grief.  Jesus calls out from the pens of all the false shepherd who would steal from, use, betray, or provoke us to violence.

The German Lutheran liberation theologian, Dorothee Soelle wrote, “Spiritual freedom occurs when we become aware of our limits through leaving them behind… Only in seeing again do I know that I was blind; that I was squatting in a prison becomes apparent only when the prison door opens.”  (Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry)

The Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist, Kahlil Gibran wrote, “When you love you should not say, ‘God is in my heart,’ but rather, ‘I am in the heart of God.'” (Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet). Christ is our sheepfold. To be free and to be well again we must look through our shepherd’s eyes.  We must enter and go out again from the sheepfolds of our lives by the Jesus gate to find that way that leads into joyful abundance.