4th Sunday of Easter
Texts: John 10:22-30;
Acts 9:36-43; Rev 7:9-17
YouTube: https://youtu.be/Xu4oqgYhkjM
Sermon Take-Home Notes
THE MIXED METAPHORS OF LOVING LEADERSHIP
You might say our liturgy and prayers this morning are filled with mixed metaphors. Lots about Mothers and Good Shepherds. That’s what happens when Good Shepherd Sunday falls on Mother’s Day. But it’s not such a bad combination, really. Probably the two most important biblical metaphors for God’s leadership and authority are shepherd and loving parent, mostly father but occasionally mother. The Hebrew Scriptures use the shepherd metaphor a lot to contrast the leadership of God’s reign with the reign of human kings. They don’t use the parent image so much, mother more so than father.
Father, of course, is the metaphor that Jesus most uses for God. God’s love is the unconditional, self-giving love of a parent for their child. In John 10, Jesus takes the shepherd metaphor for himself, which is why the Pharisees get so hot and bothered. We don’t read right after this morning’s Gospel passage that they try to stone Jesus. But Jesus is the Messiah and he claims for himself, ‘I am the Good Shepherd who truly cares for the sheep.’
Last week, we read from the end of John’s Gospel how Jesus hands that shepherding over to Peter. After Peter had denied Jesus three times, Jesus asks Peter three times to affirm his love, and then three times directs Peter to care for his sheep. Jesus passes the mantle of being a Good Shepherd on to Peter.
If you’ve checked out today’s Sermon Notes, however, you know that I want to move from these mix of metaphors for divine and human leadership to the news of the week. I’ve set it up, in fact. St. Peter is traditionally known as the first bishop of Rome, and the 267 popes throughout the centuries as his successors. The popes throughout history are called to follow Peter in being a Good Shepherd for Christ’s Church.
We have a new Bishop of Rome this week, Pope Leo XIV. As head of the 1.2 billion people in the Roman Catholic Church, he is truly a very important world leader, at another crucial time in our human history in which we desperately need good leaders. Pope Francis was such a leader. We pray that Pope Leo follows more in his footsteps — and perhaps even goes beyond it. Perhaps that’s what he is trying to say by not choosing to be Francis II or any of the other more recent popes. Pope Leo XIII reigned for 26 years over the turn from the 19th to 20th centuries. He strove to bring the Church more into the modern world, especially with a mission to help the world’s most poor and vulnerable. You can see in the profile of your Sermon Notes that Leo XIII was known as the “Social Pope” for crafting Catholic mission toward all people, not just those at the top. He championed worker’s rights and mission to the poor. So we might say he was trying to move the church more toward the new thing of democracy, the ideal of all people being created equal, and away from the age-old ways of authoritarianism. Toward, in other words, the Christian tradition of modeling God’s love for all of God’s children. Does Leo XIV hope to follow that and bring the church another century forward to be a Good Shepherd for all the world’s oppressed? Will that even include the latest scapegoat for authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin — namely, LGBTQ people? Will women finally have more of a role in church leadership? These latter things would truly mean a big step forward. Perhaps more than we can hope for. But signs point toward a papal leadership that stands against the old world of authoritarian leadership, which is seeing a revival in many parts of the world, including the United States.
In fact, some of Pope Leo XIV’s most strident resistance might come from within the American Catholic Church. I’ve outlined for you in the Sermon Notes the career of an American Catholic leader — mostly behind the scenes, by design, letting other people take the lead — but he truly is one of the main architects of the current “Christian Nationalism” movement. And he’s from Racine! His name is Paul Weyrich, a graduate of St. Catherine’s High School and University of Wisconsin-Parkside. He was the brains behind founding both the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority. Quite impressive! He melded Catholics in America with Evangelicals to form the conservative Christian backing behind much of our conservative politics in the past 50 years. It is his Heritage Foundation that is currently behind Project 2025 and the attempts at implementing it within the current administration. If you read Project 2025, it is clear that it aims at returning to the authoritarian rules of the past. Let’s hope and pray that Pope Leo XIV’s choice of names signals that he is going to strive to be a Good Shepherd who truly cares for all the sheep. That he follows in the biblical tradition, including Jesus himself, of contrasting the failed leadership of human kings and emperors, and today’s authoritarian dictators, with the leadership of God’s style of reign, which shows unconditional love for all God’s children — like a good mother!
I end this morning with one further mixed metaphor, the one at the end of our Second Reading from the Book of Revelation. Last week, we highlighted that the hero of Revelation is the Lamb Slain, who is mentioned no less than 28 times throughout the book. In this morning’s reading, we have one of the most wondrous scenes of all, one of my favorite passages in the Bible. I picture the white-robed multitude to be martyrs. They’ve gone through “the ordeal.” They’re from every nation, every tribe, all languages, all peoples. In other words, they represent all those who have suffered the violence and oppression of all the nationalistic empires throughout history. They’re gathered around the throne of heaven with God to wipe away their tears. And then comes the mixed metaphor. In the last verse of today’s reading, we hear, “for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” There you have it. The last mixed metaphor of the day. The Lamb Slain who is also the Good Shepherd.
As we have tried to understand “Christian Nationalism” this year, in contrast to the Reign of God initiated by Jesus Christ, one of the crucial markers we have highlighted is faith in violence vs faith in nonviolent love. We celebrate a Risen Messiah, a Good Shepherd of the sheep, who is also the Lamb Slain, willing to suffer our typical human violence rather than dish it out. In short, it is the Lamb Slain who is truly the greatest of Shepherds. In our day, we glimpsed this through leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and so many more. These leaders don’t always have to be martyrs. They simply need to be willing to suffer violence rather than inflicting it, in leading humanity forward into something that looks and acts more like God’s reign.
This is the call for each of us. In our roles as mothers and fathers, as siblings, as friends, as fellow citizens, we are called to follow in the way of the Lamb Slain who is shepherd. The one who in nonviolent love truly cares for the sheep. Let us pray that we all can live more fully into the role of Good Shepherds — and the good mothers, the best of our mothers, whom we celebrate today. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, May 11, 2025
YouTube: https://youtu.be/Xu4oqgYhkjM
Sermon Take-Home Notes
