The Fourth Sunday of Easter

April 29, 2007

“Do You Suffer Spiritual Amnesia!”

John 10:22-30

Preached at Providence Lutheran Church in Holland, O.

By Pastor Dennis R. King

The Grace and Mercy of the Risen Lord, Jesus Christ, be with you all.

A few years back Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, applied for a trademark for its logo. When the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office published the list of trademark request at that time, Calvin Klein challenged the application. The challenge was later withdrawn when it was explained to the lawyers that the great church Reformer John Calvin, for whom Calvin College was named, had been on the scene a long time before the Calvin Klein clothing company.

Lutheran theologian Martin Marty remarked that this is what happens when a culture suffers from severe spiritual amnesia. Marty also pointed out that other Christian words may be in trouble, too. For instance, there is a Christian Dior fashion design firm that has a patent on its Christian name, and may decide that the billions of people called Christians are intruding into their domain. (So we may each need to rush out and retain a lawyer!)

When the Jewish leaders gathered around Jesus in today’s Gospel to ask Him whether He was really the Messiah, they showed themselves to be suffering from severe spiritual amnesia. Where have they been to have to ask, “How long will you keep us in suspense?” “If You are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Now, it is possible that they were expressing a sincere desire to have the issue resolved. But these leaders are from the same group that sought to kill Jesus in chapter five for making Himself equal to God, and who tried to stone Him in chapter eight, and who again wanted to stone Him in chapter ten because only a blasphemer would make himself out to be God. So their question is more likely a hostile one, “How long will you continue to annoy us? Admit it. You are not God!”

Why do they have to ask? According to the previous chapters in John, Jesus has changed water into wine at the Wedding in Cana. He has healed a man at Bethsaida who had been ill for thirty-eight years. He fed the five thousand, walked on water, forgave the woman caught in the act of adultery and cured a man who was blind from birth! How can these Jewish leaders see all this and not know that Jesus is really the Messiah, the Son of God?

Jesus’ answer to them was right to the point. “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.” Then He concludes His reply with the direct statement, “The Father and I are one.”

The reason the Jewish leaders do not know that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, is because they do not know God. They have spiritual amnesia. They have forgotten their own history, in which God acted decisively to deliver them from slavery in Egypt, to establish them as His chosen people at Mt. Sinai, to lead them into the Promised Land, and to grace them with prosperity and possibility, even after they had repeatedly turned away from Him. Because the Jewish leaders do not remember who God is, they cannot recognize the Son of God when he shows up in the flesh and blood of Jesus of Nazareth. If they knew their own history, they would have known that Jesus is the Messiah—for Jesus continued to do what His Heavenly Father had already done throughout all the centuries of Israelite history.

“You do not believe,” Jesus said, “because you do not belong to my sheep.” The reason they do not belong is not because they have refused to join the flock. The truth is right in front of them but they refuse to see it. God had played a decisive role in their history, but they refuse to acknowledge it. Jesus is the very embodiment of God’s eternal Word, but they confuse that Word with their pompous words of religious legalism and self-righteousness. They are in the presence of the Shepherd Himself, but they insist on remaining lost.

“The Father and I are one,” Jesus tells them. Here He is not saying that He and God are one person but rather, Jesus is saying that He and God are united in the work they do. It is impossible to distinguish Jesus’ work from God’s work, because Jesus shares fully in God’s work. The Jewish leaders treat it as an intellectual point to be debated, but it is, in fact, a matter of salvation. The sheep who hear Jesus’ voice are those who see in Him the fulfillment of all the mighty acts of God that have gone before and all that are yet to come. They pay attention to Jesus and follow Him because they see that, in and through Jesus, God has drawn near to summon them to a new quality of life that is eternal life.

It is interesting to compare Chinese culture to the culture of the United States. (Nikki Sizemore, the Chinese daughter of Rob and Marlene was baptized on Saturday evening.) The Chinese lift up the past by honoring and worshipping their ancestors, while in our society people have enthusiasm and respect for the pioneers of the future. It is as if we and the Chinese are standing back to back on the line of the present and the Chinese are looking backward as we are looking forward.

Think about how little our people know (or care to know) about their own past: 22% of the people in our society are too young to remember the United States bicentennial in 1976--- 33% think people have always been going to the moon---50% are too young to remember JFK--- 66% are not old enough to remember the Korean conflict--- 70% don’t remember a time when there was no television.

Psychologists tell us that one of the marks of a dysfunctional family is that when they are together they have no stories to share about their past. By the same token, a church that cannot or will not remember its past is a church that is in danger of terminal illness. That is why events like our upcoming 50^th Anniversary Celebration in 2008 are so important. And that is why it is crucial to keep on studying the Bible and church history and the Lutheran Confessions through all of life. For in this way, we will not succumb to the spiritual amnesia that afflicts so much of our society today.

But if the past is important for Christians, so is the future. And nowhere is the future for Christians portrayed more significantly than in the book of Revelation. In today’s lesson we have a vision of the future that awaits the faithful flock of Jesus. The martyrs John saw in his vision are not misty spirits floating on the clouds of heaven. As Johan Christian Beker put it, they are simple men and women like you and me, who at great cost to themselves strove to be faithful to their Good Shepherd. They are the slaves and school teachers, plumbers and salesmen, homemakers and hairdressers, all of whom were sheep in the flock of their crucified and risen Lord. And through the new and redeemed life He gave them, they found the power in the midst of their life on earth to say yes to God’s will and no to their personal whims. They came out of all nations, all races, all classes, and all cultures. Some were advantaged, and some were disadvantaged. But there is one thing they all had in common. The spirit of the crucified and risen Jesus was at work in their lives, making them new each day on earth.

Now they are gathered in heaven around the Lamb who is their Good Shepherd. Now they are able to do perfectly what on earth they only tried their utmost to do. “They serve God day and night.” Their tears of frustration, their dryness of spirit, their weariness of mind and body are gone. At last they see their Good Shepherd face to face.

You and I live now in a time between times. We live in a time between a past filled with the mighty acts of God and a future in which God will draw all things unto Himself and redeem His creation. We remember our past and we anticipate our future. We are not victims to the sort of spiritual amnesia which insists that all that matters is here and now. We do not fall for the foolish notion that there is nothing in the past worth remembering and nothing in the future for which to hope and yearn. Instead, we are sheep who know that we belong to the flock of the Good Shepherd! Through baptism and by His grace alone, we are citizens of the Kingdom of God. And as citizens of that Kingdom, unseen but nonetheless real, we find the courage and strength to live and witness and serve in all the earthly realm in which we daily find ourselves.

The faithful flock of the Good Shepherd can deal with the present, because it remembers the past and envisions the future. It knows the Good Shepherd, who was there before the beginning and will be there after the ending of the world as we know it. The flock trusts the Good Shepherd, because it knows and believes that He and the Father are one. Amen.