A Homily for the 4th Sunday of Easter

Trust can be a difficult thing to build in our relationships. Trust takes time to develop, it requires work and risk. Trust can wither and die before it ever has the chance to develop if just one party in a relationship refuses to work towards building it. Trust is not just a passive virtue, it must be an active discipline.




All of us have people in our lives who are not trustworthy and this just highlights for us the importance and value of trust. An untrustworthy boss can make work miserable. A marriage where trust is gone is a marriage doomed to fail. I think back to when I was a teenager and my parents learned that they couldn’t trust me to leave me home by myself when they went on vacation, but that’s a story for another day.




Our readings this morning point us to Christ as our Great Shepherd. As our Great Shepherd leads us to and through life, we – as His people – are called to learn to follow Him in complete trust. This means allowing our Great Shepherd to care for us and following Him where He leads us.




In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles we see a community of believers who are grieving the loss of a woman who had been an example to all around her of Christ’s self-giving love. In the midst of this community’s grief, we are reminded that our Shepherd takes care of His flock as The Holy Spirit raised Tabitha to life through Peter’s prayer.




Psalm 23 may very well be the most famous psalm in the Psalter because it paints for us such a beautiful picture of what it means for Christ to be our Great Shepherd. When King David says that the LORD restores his “soul” in verse 3, the Hebrew word there is better understood as the totality of a person. We might say then that the LORD restores all of who we are; our mind, body, and spirit.




And how does the LORD restore us? By walking beside us through the darkest places of our lives; by protecting us from evil (as David says, “your rod and your staff, they comfort me”); by providing for us, even in the face of despair (“you prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies”); and ultimately our Great Shepherd leads us into His presence where we dwell with him eternally.




Now we all know people who have died in the valley of the shadow of death, loved ones lost to cancer, to heart attacks, to car accidents. That is why our reading of Psalm 23 is paired with a reading from Revelation chapter 7. We are reminded that “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” as this great multitude who have lost their lives because of persecution are singing praises and songs of victory in the presence of our God. Lest we should question God’s power to bring about salvation for His people, the word “throne” is used seven times in this brief passage. This picture that was revealed to St. John leaves no room for doubt; our God is sovereign and has the power to redeem all of creation.




Finally, in our gospel reading this morning, Jesus is confronted by a group of people who refuse to follow Him as their Shepherd. Even though John has recorded six miracles which he calls “signs” – miracles that point to what the Father is at work doing through the son – even though six times Jesus has revealed Himself to the crowds – “I am the bread of life…light of the world…the good shepherd – these people still refuse to believe that Jesus is who He says He is. So what is Christ’s response? “You do not believe because you are not my sheep.” We who believe and trust Him enough to follow Him are sheep of the Great Shepherd and we are given the assurance that nothing can snatch us away from Him.




I always like to ask two questions when I read Scripture: How does this work and what does it look like in my life. So I ask, how does trusting in Christ as our Great Shepherd work?





First, trusting Christ as our Great Shepherd means that each one of us is cared for. This is the reason why Psalm 23 is so well known. We read Psalm 23 at funerals, in hospital rooms, alone in our room; any time we feel like we are alone in the world with nothing but our suffering, those words, “The LORD is my shepherd” bring us comfort. Likewise, when we feel like we’re overwhelmed and drowning we find refuge in Christ’s words, “No one can snatch them [My sheep] from Me.”




But we have to be careful here. All this talk about trusting in God to care for us can paint an unreal picture of what it means to follow Christ. Just because we are cared for does not mean that we will be immune to suffering. If we are going to trust Christ as our Great Shepherd, we must be willing to follow Him when He leads us through hardship.




Remember back to our reading from the book of Acts this morning: we know how the story ends so it is easy for us to gloss over the time between Tabitha dying and Peter praying for her to be restored to life. But in the time between the beginning and end of that passage, there were a lot of faithful people who had to deal with the loss of one of their sisters in Christ.




King David wrote that the LORD set for him a table in the presence of his enemies and David was protected when King Saul tried to kill him. But just this month we remembered the anniversary of the martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who was arrested and executed – at the hands of his enemies - by the Nazis for his part in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler during World War 2.




That great multitude of people from every tribe and nation we saw around the throne of God singing His praises in the book of Revelation? Those people were all martyred for their faith.




It’s easy for us to stand back and say that everything will work out for the good of those who love God and that we have to learn to trust in Christ. That becomes a lot harder when we realize that it is ME who is being called to follow through the dark valley.




As I have sought to be faithful to my call to follow Christ and to serve Him with my life’s work, He has led me out of the non-denominational church and into the Anglican Communion. Part of what it looked like for me to follow Christ into this calling meant that we had to move out of our house and put it up for sale last November. Now we think we have it sold, but for the last five months Alison and I have been sitting and waiting, and paying the mortgage payment and utility bill each month, and thinking about how slow the housing market is. In the last five months, we’ve only had two nibbles on the house. Do I trust that Christ is leading Alison and me? Yes. Have I been worried at times over these last five months that we might start seminary this fall and still not have the house sold yet? Absolutely! The reason why it is so important for us to learn to trust and to learn to follow Christ is that if we waited until we knew how everything is going to work out, we’d never set the first foot in front of the other!




One last question remains: What does it look like in our lives for us to learn to follow Christ in complete trust? Following Christ in complete trust means seeking a balance between allowing Christ to care for and comfort us while at the same time challenging us to follow Him. Without this balance we either become too comfortable or too challenged.

If we insulate ourselves from suffering and hardships by hearing only Christ’s words of comfort and not His challenging call to follow, we aren’t going to be prepared to rise to the occasion when Christ calls us to serve Him. Don’t get me wrong, I like to be just as comfortable as the next person but it’s like this: sweat pants and house slippers are great for lounging around the house but they’re terrible for going out to do yard work. Let us be prepared to answer the call to follow where Christ leads us!

On the other hand, if we focus too much on the challenge of following Christ to the point where we don’t listen to His words of comfort, we are setting ourselves up for failure. A life of following Christ that is all challenge and no comfort leaves us in a place where we lose our joy. Following Christ becomes just another obligation rather than a journey that leads us into a fullness of life that cannot be found anywhere else.




Let us listen then to the voice of Christ speaking words of comfort and challenge into our lives so that we, as His people, may learn to follow Him in complete trust wherever He may lead us.