Dear Parish Family,

Jesus' statement about giving eternal life to his sheep occurs at a celebration of the Feast of Dedication, i.e., Hanukkah, which commemorates the Maccabees' successful revolution against the Syrian tyrant Antiochus IV, around 194 BC. The evangelist says some of the people celebrating that feast were asking Jesus whether he was the Messiah. The context suggests that they were thinking of a Messiah along the militaristic lines of David the warrior and Judah the Hammer. Jesus' answer implies that he provides ultimate security (“eternal life”) in another way, as shepherd of the flock the Father leads to him. And the rest of the Fourth Gospel helps us understand that one gains access to eternal life by accepting Jesus as sent by the Father and by laying down one's life for one's friends.
Scripture does, on the surface, give us the impression that God is sometimes angry and full of condemnation and violence. Many of the Old Testament stories come to mind: The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the plagues, famine and draught wrought by the prophets at the command of God. But these are anthropomorphisms: a way of speaking about God that reveals how we feel about God when we are unfaithful, sinful, and violent.

In contrast, today’s Gospel speaks of the shepherd’s gentle voice that calls the sheep to pasture. But it is also true that God’s voice does judge and it does condemn, but it judges and condemns not by coercive force, but in the same way that the innocence of a baby judges false sophistication, in the way that generosity exposes selfishness, in the way that big-heartedness reveals pettiness, in the way that light makes darkness flee, and in the way that the truth shames lies. God’s voice judges us not by overpowering us but by shining love and light into all those places where we find ourselves huddled in fear, shame, bitterness, hostility, and sin.

But this is not something we learn easily. Already way back, before the birth of Christ, sincere religious people were yearning for God to come into the world in power. What they wanted in the longed-for Messiah was a morally superior violence that would give evil no options, but force it literally to acquiesce. What we got instead was a helpless baby at Bethlehem, in the straw who overpowered no one. We still encounter the Redeemer at the ‘breaking of the bread’ at every Eucharist, again there is no show of might and power. Even today, we are still struggling to accept this. Too often the Christ we try to incarnate and preach is still that ancient, longed-for, overpowering Messiah who aims to cleanse the world through flat-out coercion. We sometimes gets annoyed when Church prays for the victims of persecution and the conversion of the oppressor. We are invited to echo the gentle Shepherd’s voice, “Father forgive them … Neither do I condemn you … Put that sword away … Be gentle as doves.”
 
Fr. Thomas Kunnel