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Good Shepherd Sunday
- Gethsemane Lutheran Church
- May 11
- 6 min read
I just happened to be at my desk on Thursday when my friend sent me a message to alert me to the white smoke in the Vatican, signaling that a new pope had been chosen. I actually watched the Vatican livestream, messaging back and forth with my friends, with the same kind of geeky excitement as people who watch events like who will be drafted to play with which professional sports team.
I’m not actually going to compare religions and denominations to sports of any kind, because we are not separate teams competing against each other. If anything, we’re essentially playing for the same team, with Jesus as our coach. Which is probably like the good shepherd image, and those of us living in this culture are a whole lot more familiar with coaches than we are familiar with shepherds.
As Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” He makes it sound like followers of Jesus should be united, possibly in agreement about what we’re hearing Jesus say and then following accordingly. Which makes me wonder what Jesus will think when he returns to judge the living and the dead. Will we make Jesus proud of the ways we isolated and separated ourselves?
Or would Jesus be more pleased with the ways we have uplifted and celebrated with one another across denominational traditions?
I have never been Roman Catholic, though some of you have been or still are. Lutherans can’t escape the fact that Martin Luther was himself Roman Catholic, and the story we tell about Luther is that he wanted to reform the church, not destroy it. His theological views got him excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, and then he had a lot of nasty things to say about the pope, which in my opinion was not Luther’s best work.
But I wonder what Luther would say if he could see the world now: the way religion continues to influence governance all around the world, the impact of instant communication and commerce that connects people who will never meet each other.
Watching the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square just a few days ago, so many of them waving national flags, was a vision to me of Isaiah’s dream that God’s dwelling place should be a house of prayer for all peoples. It was hard not to be moved by the sight, “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”[1] The same vision described by John in the book of Revelation, people standing before the throne and before the Lamb.
Uh oh! Does this mean the book of Revelation is happening? Is the apocalypse already underway? Of course Revelation is happening. Revelation is always happening. God’s will is always being revealed—that’s what Revelation refers to—and we’re witnessing it unfolding, day by day.
This isn’t the same thing as the end of the world, whatever that is—even Jesus couldn’t tell us when that will be. This is about bringing our vision in line with God’s vision, to care about what God cares about, to get to work healing what God desires to heal, or to use the metaphor Jesus uses, to listen carefully for God’s voice.
The part of Revelation we’ve just read today,[2] describing a huge crowd of people in a throne room where a lamb is seated on the throne, attended by angels, isn’t some other-worldly, unfamiliar image. Kimberly Wagner, a professor of preaching at Princeton Seminary, wrote in a commentary about Revelation this week, that this heavenly vision of John of Patmos is put together with images springing from the depths of Scripture: the great multitude from many nations sounds like the postexilic imagery of Isaiah 65, the palm branches could be a sign of victory but also a throwback to the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles which is what was happening when Jesus entered Jerusalem (what Christians now call Palm Sunday), the white robes could be nods to Jewish purification rites or Christian baptismal rites, the song sung by the multitude “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!” (whatever the tune is, I’m not sure) but it sounds like Psalm 118 or the “Hosanna” of the Palm Sunday chant or even a reference to John’s Gospel when John the Baptist sees Jesus and says, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”[3]
All that to say, Revelation doesn’t come out of nowhere: it’s interpreting ancient tradition, using the common images and keeping the same priorities that God has always had, to shelter and protect vulnerable people, give them food and water, and even wipe away their tears.
It sounds like too much, doesn’t it? Would God really do that?
Kimberly Wagner writes:
“It’s a stunning set of promises when you pause to think about it. In a time marked by excessive hunger and thirst, by war and worry, by violence and vitriol, by climate change and corporate corruption, by acts of hate and hurt done by one child of God to another, these images and promises might feel like a fantasy. In such formidable days, we, even as people of faith, may find our imagination limited. It is sometimes hard to have any kind of imagination for something beyond our present circumstances.
In fact, we may fall prey to believing that God’s future is just our present, but a little better. We may buy into the idea that God’s future is just a little less violence or a few more people getting along or a few more hours in the day for rest or work or play. In times like these that are challenging and filled with uncertainty, we have remarkably low expectations for what God can and will do. We lose our capacity for holy imagination.”[4]
The book of Revelation looks forward, but it is not breaking with the past—there is hope, and if we’re attentive to Scripture and knowledgeable about God’s work in the past, we will even recognize that hope when it arrives. And furthermore, God will recognize us. A great multitude that no one else can count is still very much count-able by God. No one gets ignored, and no one gets left behind.
Anyone else here ever feel like you yourself are living through a great ordeal? Is it hard to trust that God is still enthroned with any kind of power, anywhere in the world? Do the forces of war and destruction make nonviolence look puny and foolish?
We should be really careful about how we understand power and how we understand God’s power. We should be really skeptical if we see the blending of national flags with any power of God. Because again and again, God doesn’t choose the fittest or the most powerful but God chooses the weakest. The image of God’s almighty, immortal power is a lamb—an animal we humans use for food or for wool to make clothing and textiles, an animal of prey which is not threatening at all, a perfect symbol of nonviolence.
In his first public address as Pope Leo XIV, the pope echoed the words of the risen Christ: Peace be with you! Pope Leo XIV spoke in Italian, the local language, and he spoke in Spanish to give a shout-out to the people he served in Peru. He didn’t say a word in English, the primary language of the land where he was born, in Chicago. I suspect Pope Leo XIV knows the layers of meaning he’s working with, the centuries of institutional sins and grace into which he has now stepped, and he probably also is aware that his voice is not the voice of the good shepherd. The pope is listening for the voice of Jesus, same as the rest of us.
Is it too much to hope for, that Pope Leo XIV might be the one to restore communion between the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics, reversing Luther’s excommunication by Pope Leo X? How naïve, right? Of course that’s too much to hope for.
For those of us who listen for Jesus’s voice and who believe the story of resurrection from the dead, well, hoping for too much is just what we do. Perhaps hoping for too much comes naturally to us. Perhaps hoping for too much is what it means to trust in God.
Amen.
Pastor Cheryl
[1] Revelation 7:9
[2] Revelation 7: 9-17
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