Trinity Church in the City of Boston
The Rev. Morgan S. Allen
April 26, 2026
Easter IV, John 10:1-10
Alleluia. Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia.
Sometimes the fence lines of scriptural chapters establish a false border between one narrative section and another. In our day, we tend to receive those chapters and verses with unquestioned authority, overlooking that they were a thirteenth-century innovation applied for common citation rather than meaning-making. The authoring communities did not create those boundaries! Yet, we often attribute Gospel chapters with the same beginning-middle-end arcs we expect of a television series’ episodes.
Likewise, the experience of hearing weekly lectionary appointments can add peaks and valleys to scriptural story arcs that the authoring communities did not choose. For example, on this, the fourth Sunday of Easter – Good Shepherd Sunday – each year we hear a portion of the tenth chapter in the Gospel of John. In Year B, we hear the most familiar section, verses 11 through 18, which include those reassuring declarations we also proclaim at burials: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep1John 10:11. … I know my own and my own know me.”2John 10:14b. In Year C, we pick up, “I give [my sheep] eternal life … and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”3John 10:28. Given when we hear those passages in our devotional life, we unwittingly assign to them climactic value the authors did not intend.
In this Year (A), we hear the beginning of Chapter 10, and I want to approach today’s lesson within the Gospel’s longer, more native narrative arc, rather than those chapter or Lectionary confines later imposed.
“I invite you, therefore,”4From our Book of Common Prayer’s Ash Wednesday liturgy and the “Invitation to a Holy Lent,” p. 265. to imagine today’s episode begins with Jesus and his brothers at home, arguing about whether Jesus should take more public action for the reign of God. With the world a mess, his brothers almost dare Jesus to accompany them to the Festival of Booths: “Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing, for no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret.”5John 7:3-4a. Whether by sibling stubbornness, fear,6John 7:1b. “He did not wish to go to Judea because the [Judeans] were looking for an opportunity to kill him.” or strategy, Jesus ignores their urging; he remains in Galilee while they go ahead of him to Jerusalem.7John 7:8-9.
Soon after, however, Jesus does go to the Festival, though the Gospel notes he makes his pilgrimage “in secret,”8John 7:10. despite his brothers’ appeals. Perhaps testifying to the wisdom of this approach, “There [is] considerable complaining about him among the crowds. [And] While some [are] saying, ‘He is a good man,’ others [are] saying, ‘No, he [is a deceiver].’”9John 7:12. I torqued this last sentence to create the symmetry of phrasing. It reads, “No, he deceives the crowds.”
Halfway into the Festival – so, once most people have arrived and only a few have left – Jesus begins to teach in the temple.10John 7:14. Some are open to what Jesus has to say: “How does this man have such learning, when he has never been taught?” they ask admiringly.11John 7:15. Yet, Jesus responds to their astonishment with blanket criticism: “Did not Moses give you the Law? [But] none of you keeps the Law.” He then turns wildly conspiratorial: “Why are you looking for an opportunity to kill me?”12John 7:19.
To this, the crowd answers with concern and confusion: Dude, “You have a demon! Who is trying to kill you?”13John 7:20. [“Dude” being a later addition to the text …] When Jesus responds by redoubling his antagonism toward the crowd, a misunderstanding builds around the hoi polloi’s literalism, and Jesus’ allegory: “You will search for me, but you will not find me, and where I am, you cannot come.’ The [Judeans then say] to one another, ‘Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the dispersion among the Greeks … ?’”14John 7:33-35.
Jesus soon attracts enough attention that the Pharisees and chief priests send the temple police to arrest him.15John 7:32. On the last day of the festival, the celebrations reach their joyful crescendo with prayers for God’s provision of rain, and with the guard approaching him, Jesus turns the moment on its head both practically and theologically. He says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let anyone who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”16John 7:37b-38.
With this pronouncement, if the guardsmen approach him, then they do so on the terms of believing that Jesus has set; he has laid a trap. Moreover, Jesus redirects the traditional prayers for rain from an appeal to the clouds, to an appeal of the heart. Though “[Some] wanted to arrest him, [no] one laid a hand on him.”17John 7:44.
The temple police return to the chief priests and Pharisees to report on their mission, and they receive incredulity: “‘Why did you not arrest him?’ The police [then answer], ‘Never has anyone spoken like this!’ [The Pharisees reply], ‘Surely you have not been deceived, [too]?”18John 7:45b-47.
When the pilgrims begin returning to their hometowns,19John 7:53. Jesus retreats only to the Mount of Olives, a twenty-minute walk away.20John 8:1. Early the next morning he returns to the temple,21John 8:2. and he again teaches tauntingly both those who believe him and those who oppose him, his claims about himself becoming increasingly grandiose: from, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life,” to “Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.” At this point, most everyone has had enough, and “they [pick] up stones to throw at him.”22John 8:59a. Jesus “[hides] himself and [goes] out of the temple.”23John 8:59b.
As Jesus walks away, he encounters “a man blind from birth.”24John 9:1. After his disciples ask Jesus who sinned, the blind man or his parents, Jesus mixes dust and spit, rubs the compound on the man’s eyes, and gives him sight.25John 9:2-7. Jesus declares, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world”26John 9:5. In this moment, the literal and the allegorical find purchase – fulfillment – in one another.
This dramatic healing prompts a confused roil of optimism and suspicion. Some onlookers begin to doubt that the man was ever blind, while others suggest the real blind man has been replaced by an imposter who only looks like him.27John 9:8-10. The man’s neighbors eventually bring the man born blind to the Pharisees, who ask him “how he [received] his sight.’ The man replies [to them], “[Jesus] put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.”28John 9:11.
Upon hearing this, some of the Pharisees say, “‘This [Jesus] is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.’ Others [say], ‘How can [someone] who is a sinner perform such signs?’ And they [are] divided. So they [again address] the man born blind, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” [He declares], “[Jesus] is a prophet.”29John 9:16-17.
The parents of the man born blind then testify to his identity and to his healing,30John 9:18-23. prompting the Pharisees to call him back for further interrogation. He once more stands up for his experience and for Jesus’ power: “‘Here is an astonishing thing!” he says to the authorities. “You do not know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’”31John 9:30-33.
The Pharisees have none of this logic. “They answer him, ‘You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?’ And they drive him out.”32John 9:34.
Jesus learns of all this carrying on, and he seeks out the man he gave sight. Note this reversal: Jesus seeking … Jesus pursuing … Jesus making appeal, rather than the other way around. When Jesus finds the man born blind [and I’m sorry we do not inherit this guy’s name], the man professes, “I believe,” and he worships Jesus.33John 9:38. Jesus then declares, “I came into this world … so those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.”34John 9:39.
Some Pharisee malingerers hear this and say to Jesus, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”35John 9:40. Jesus says to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains. Very truly I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out … They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers … I came that [the sheep] may have life and have it abundantly.”36John 9:41-10:4,10b.
When encountering today’s appointment with this [much] longer windup, we relocate the Chapter 10 soliloquy – despite its familiarity to us – from the story arc’s peak to its denouement. With this changed narrative shape, the Good Shepherd images serve the blind man’s healing, allowing for fresh questions about meaning and intent, as well as about the preceding action.
Now, I don’t want to be ugly, but this story presents Jesus as a smugly unappealing person – sometimes on the edge of madness. Jesus does not accurately account for the entirely reasonable, predictable misunderstandings his teachings prompt, especially his statements about himself. No matter the truth of his assertions, how could those claims land on unsuspecting souls with anything other than vainglory? Add to his megalomania his abstruse prose, and Jesus fails to accept responsibility for confusions he creates, seemingly on purpose.
Moreover, Jesus proves so intent on challenging the temple leadership he views as indolent and self-interested that he also broadsides the curious and the committed. Again, Jesus does not seem to accept culpability for the aim and bite of his criticisms. As a result, his suggesting that he “[judges] no one” feels oblivious, at best, and willfully false at worst.37John 8:15.
Yet if we squint, we can make out Jesus learning from the reactions he has received and softening his approach to those around him. Whether sourced by sympathy or self-preservation, his encounter with the man born blind prompts this shift. When explaining the consequence of the miracle he has performed, Jesus seems to recognize that his first appeals to sight as a metaphor do not land. Rather than then telling everyone how hard-headed they are and repeating that same image, he pivots to a fresh explanation from one sense – seeing – to another sense – hearing. While the edges of his core criticism remain sharp, he begins to reach for the crowds and temple leaders more generously. Retuning his judgments for renewal rather than dismissal, those fond, Good Shepherd reassurances mollify what had felt like a wagging finger.
A penultimate note: if we dare stretch this story arc further,38Risking the great Bill James’ fallacy of arbitrary endpoints … to cover Chapter 11 and Jesus’ raising of Lazarus, we can change the narrative topography once more: the healing of the blind man and the Good Shepherd soliloquy will then serve that resurrection as a climax. We read the thread of “senses” into the Lazarus story: from seeing, and hearing, to feeling – and not feeling as in the physical resuscitation, impressive as that remains, but the emotions surrounding Lazarus’ death: Jesus, “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.”39John 11:33b. See, not only have the crowds been invited to renewal, but Jesus – seeing, hearing, feeling – undergoes a conversion of his own.
And finally: as we wonder how these stories might work on us as we leave this place today, I am drawn to the crowds’ literalism, and I am wondering about the questions, “What catches your eye” and “Who has your ear?” I am struck by how the physicality of these colloquialisms – someone snatching my eyeball, someone carrying my ear like a key fob – I am struck by how powerfully that physicality makes clear the influence of our attention on how we see “God’s hand at work in the world around us;”40From our Book of Common Prayer’s “Eucharistic Prayer C,” p. 372. of how among the voices and volumes of this moment, we hear the Good Shepherd’s call; and of how we might still dare to feel, to be deeply moved, and to companion others in a common life of Beloved Community.
That – indeed! – we would share
grateful hearts and gracious lives,