Trinity Church in the City of Boston
The Rev. Morgan S. Allen
May 11, 2025
IV Easter, John 10:22-30
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Mother’s Day greetings, Trinity Church!
During our Lenten Forums, we made appeal to 1989 – “the number, another summer”1 Public Enemy. “Fight The Power.” Fear Of A Black Planet. Def Jam-Columbia Records, 1990. Though the album dropped in 1990, Public Enemy released “Fight The Power” as a single in the summer of 1989, part of the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s demanding classic, Do The Right Thing. The track opens: “1989 – the number, another summer …” During our first formation series this summer, I shared my experience coming of age during the Edwin Edwards-David Duke gubernatorial election of 1991. Exasperated with my home state’s politics, I read Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcom X, and I admired Public Enemy’s politicized rap – not such a far step from Tom Waits’ delivery, if you tilt your head just right – and I recalled the wrenching scene in Do The Right Thing when Radio Raheem enters Sal’s Pizzeria for the last time, with “Fight The Power” on his shoulder. We discussed Sal’s assault on Raheem’s most precious identity, and the moral quandary Lee’s character, Mookie, would soon face (be forewarned of the R-Rated language in both of these scenes … in addition to their heartache). – that moment when the American people felt their nation’s rightward lurch at the advent of a new presidential administration. For inspiration, we listened to popular (and some less popular) music released during those days: Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power;” Bob Dylan’s “Ring Them Bells;” Drivin-N-Cryin’s “Straight To Hell;” Concrete Blonde’s “God Is A Bullet” – theological documents, all. Today, we stay in 1989, and we turn to a more traditional journal article by the late, Johannine scholar, Robert Kysar.
Kysar, a longtime New Testament professor at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, proposes the authoring community of John’s Gospel strategically positions today’s Good Shepherd lesson at the center of the religious leaders’ “tidal wave of [Jesus] opposition,” a wave that will reach its crest when Jesus raises Lazarus in the succeeding chapter.2 Kysar, Robert. “John 10:22-30.” Interpretation. January 1989, p. 66. Following the very specific descriptions of the setting – Winter, during the festival of the Dedication, in Jerusalem, in the Temple, in the portico of Solomon3 John 10:22-23. – the scene’s action begins in an “atmosphere … tense with ironic circumstance,” for “this One who is to replace the temple walks [in] it on the very occasion of … its rededication.”4 Kysar, 66.
Those gathered around Jesus ask him, “How long will you keep us in suspense. If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”5 John 10:24.
Jesus responds, “I have told you, [but] you do not believe.” Further, I have shown you, for “the works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me, and [– still –] you do not believe.”6 John 10:25-26a.
The timing of the story in our calendar – set at center of the Easter season – adds to the building irony, for we in these Resurrection days have even more “evidence” of Jesus’ identity – having heard, having seen how the Gospel ends – yet we still do not behave as though we believe. For those within the story, Kysar suggests, “The request for clarity is … a smoke screen, a pretense for an unwillingness … to accept the answer. [In other words,] ‘Tell us plainly’ can only mean, ‘Take away the necessity of faith!’”7 Kysar, 67.
For us on this side of the text, we lodge the same complaint: “Believing is too hard! The labor of faith is too slow! Jesus, fix this mad world!”
Adding irony upon irony, we do not recognize that, with our protest and request, we announce our complicity in the very trouble we petition God to reconcile, for, in these days, the marketplace stirs our collective madness. Hiding in plain sight and casting each of us – before all else – as a consumer, the market promises meaning through the goods we purchase and the affiliations we select. Social-media memes and commercial jingles flash before us like the dystopic “rehabilitation” chamber in A Clockwork Orange8 The “Ludovico Technique” sequence., for the marketplace claims all of society for itself, and subordinates Christianity as just another brand, an over-the-counter miracle elixir for fixing whatever ails us.
See, that’s the market’s trick. The market pressures us to regard churchgoing as another consumer experience – we as patrons, and our lay and ordained parish leadership as service personnel. As customers, we bring market-based values to congregational membership, and, as long as the service is friendly and the meal timely, we’ll leave a tip in the Offertory plate as it passes, post a favorable review on Yelp, and we’ll keep coming back … but, woe be unto the Church when we do not see the results that we expected, at the time that we commanded, with the effort that we apportioned! Again we exclaim: “This is too hard! Jesus, just go ahead and fix it, fix this mad world!”
With the best of hearts, we congregational leaders unintentionally tighten these market shackles by seeking to operate churches as spiritual production companies – Soul Depot, where we replace our albs with orange smocks. Though we declare ourselves counter-cultural, we labor blood and bone to deliver the most attractive worship products and to provide the most meaningful service opportunities, all of which promise to maximize every participant’s return on their investments of time and money. In these pursuits, we leaders become like carnival barkers, pitching purpose through attending this, and volunteering with that. In other words, we accept the marketplace’s terms of engagement, rather than challenging them.
Kysar, writing in that season of Gordon Gecko, self-interested superficialism and deep soul-sickness, suggests that with these words Jesus “assaults the fortifications of American activism … [The Gospel offers a] discomforting message [that] may be an important corrective to a radical and reductionistic volunteerism.”9 Kysar, 69, 68. Oof: a gut punch. So often in the Church we seek to solve our problems by “doing” our way out of decline. Parcel to the tendency is how righteous such activism and volunteerism feels! However, that righteousness makes any challenge of those priorities incredibly difficult, for how could anyone not be in favor of activism and service?! I admire Kysar’s courage to name it, and its truth carries these last 35+ years. See, in this lesson, Jesus emphasizes our being, before our doing, rejecting faith as parcel to the consumer market.
Accordingly, God’s action – not our investments – confirms our membership in this flock. “Our [responsibility] is to know who we are as a result of what God has already done for us … The belonging[, then] is God’s [claim] of us,”10 Kysar, 69. not our earned spot on the roster of Jesus’ freshman, JV, or varsity team.
Of course, we need volunteers to celebrate our Sunday liturgies and to enliven our ministries, and we should make those experiences meaningful as possible. I consider our ministry together as hugely important and essential to who I am and who we are. However, those opportunities cannot become personal improvement kits we advertise to deliver ultimate purpose, like the service-hour counts of high-schoolers working on graduation requirements [and, in this context, I guess the “graduation” for which we work is death].
Hear, instead, the good news of Jesus’ promise: “I give [my sheep] eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else [for] The Father and I are one.”11 John 10:28-30.
See, God does not treat us as consumers of a religious-goods reward program, evaluating our eternal worth and adjusting our belovedness by the amount and quality of our superstore purchases: “With every charitable act, receive back 2.5% of discretionary sin for another time!” No, God loves us like family, like siblings, like children, like neighbors. And, like the Good Shepherd, the God of Jesus’ Resurrection will not let loose of us. Our Easter God will neither take care of this mad world for us [that remains our responsibility], nor will God abandon us because of what we “have done [or] left undone.”12 From “Morning Prayer, Rite I” in the Book of Common Prayer, pp. 41-42. “… we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep … we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.”
For us in the Church, this reassurance delivers an important directive: rather than maintaining more effectively the wrong systems – positioning our churches in a spiritual-products market with yoga studios, partisan organizers, and talk-therapy practices … competitions where we are under-funded and destined to fail – we can leave the marketplace altogether. Instead of focusing on our “production” – our doing – we affirm our place in God’s fold, and we love one another. We nurture dispositions of compassion and generosity. We cultivate graciousness and mercy. And when we love well, that love – God’s love of us, and our love of one another – it’s that love that will inspire our service and collective action: we cannot reorder this process and fulfill God’s hopes for the world!
Surely progress seems slow and requires a mighty faith, for the world’s madness – in 1989, in 2025, whatever the season – the world’s madness seems quicker than we are, even invincible at times … Yet, my Resurrection friends, keep on rockin’ in the free world13 Young, Neil. “Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World.” Freedom. Reprise Records, 1989. and remember what we have heard and seen of the risen Christ, the one who declares:
“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand …”14 John 10:14-16a, 28.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!