Sermon — April 25, 2021
The Rev. Greg Johnston
I have a great idea for a new course of study for some Christian college to offer one day. I call it “The Jesus MBA”: practical advice for the faithful businessperson taken entirely from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Now, Jesus is not exactly the most traditional business thinker. He’s on firm ground when the case studies are coming from the building trades, where he and Joseph spent most of their lives working. Build your house’s foundation on rock, he says, not sand, or it’s going to wash away when a storm comes; (Matt. 7:24-27) and the entrepreneurs among us can fill in the details about, I don’t know, the importance of raising start-up capital or something. It gets a little sketchier when we get into his cases about agriculture or animal husbandry. Jesus suggests that you should leave behind ninety-nine sheep to go after one that you’ve lost; (Luke 15:4) I think most people would discourage you from risking your whole inventory to find one stray delivery. But with today’s gospel, Jesus’ business advice starts to get downright bizarre.
“I am the Good Shepherd,” he says. “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11) Jesus isn’t talking about a modern farm. A flock of sheep would’ve spent much of their time grazing out in the wilderness. The shepherd was there not only herd and keep track of the sheep, but also—and maybe primarily—to protect them, from lions and wolves and other, less-honest shepherds. In today’s gospel, Jesus makes an interesting observation about employees and owners and their relative incentives. The “hired hand,” he says, “sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away…because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.” (John 10:12-13) But the good shepherd, who owns the sheep, is ready to give his life to protect his investment. So, never delegate to an employee what you could do yourself. Pay in company stock, not in cash, so everyone has some skin in the game. And never forget that your business is more important than anything else—even life itself.
I’ll admit that “The Jesus MBA” will not be the best business degree in the world.
Of course, I’m joking. Jesus isn’t trying to teach his disciples about business. They know all they need to know about building, or fishing, or shepherding already. In fact, in most cases he’s taking common sense and turning it upside down, because he’s trying to teach them who he is and what he’s going to do and how he wants them to love—and it’s almost never what they’d expect.
“I am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus says. “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11) “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down…I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to pick it up again.” (John 10:18) “In this we know love,” the first letter of John explains, “that he laid down his life for us—and we also ought to lay down our lives for one another.” (1 John 3:16)
When we hear this on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, we hear it with our “Easter ears” on. We know the story already, and so we understand at least a part of the meaning in a way that the confused disciples at this stage of the gospel do not. The Good Shepherd will lay down his life, and he will pick it up again; he will die, and he will rise again, and it will be the embodiment of what he means by love. Jesus dies to set us free from death.
But this isn’t the only way that you can “lay down your life” for another person. We see this in our reading from the First Letter of John almost right away. When John says that “we ought to lay down our lives for one another,” he’s not talking about death. “When a person has the world’s goods,” he says—this means, more literally, “When a person has all that they need to live on”—“and sees another in need, and doesn’t help—How will God’s love abide in them?” (1 John 3:17) To “lay down your life” doesn’t necessarily mean to give up your life. It means to set aside your own interests and to prioritize the interests of another, to lay down your consuming self-concern, for a moment, to help another; and then, like Jesus, to take your life up again.
There’s a phrase we translate “and yet refuses help.” (1 John 3:17) The original text of the letter reads, “whoever a person sees a brother in need and closes off his σπλάγχνα (splagkhna) from him.” Σπλάγχνα (splagkhna) being, in this case, the delightfully-onomatopoetic Greek word for “guts.” It’s a metaphor for “compassion.” The compassionate person who sees another person in pain feels it in their own guts. When we refuse to help—when we shut off our compassion—we set up a barrier between ourselves and them. We prevent them from entering into our hearts, and close them off instead.
But if offer that help, if we extend that compassion, if we lay down our own lives and concerns so that we can have room to attend to theirs, it’s as if they become a part of us. We begin to relate to them not as the hired hand relates to the sheep, who he does not own, whom he’s merely paid a daily wage to protect, but as the shepherd whose flock they are, who’s willing to lay down his very life for his sheep because, in a strange way, they are his life; they are a part of who he is.
Jesus is not interesting in teaching us how to be better hired hands, or even how to be a better boss. The same logic prevails. He’s teaching us that to love someone means to be in solidarity with them: to protect them and care for them as if they were our own, and not part of some other flock. Like the rest of the case studies that make up “The Jesus MBA,” this saying about the Good Shepherd isn’t about business; it’s not about how to become a more productive or profitable shepherd. It’s a lesson about love. And it’s the lesson that love ultimately means solidarity.
In ordinary times, this idea of love as solidarity would be compelling. How much better is a marriage, or a friendship, when we see ourselves as partners in solidarity with one another, than it is when act like Cold War superpowers, protecting our interests and our spheres of influence as we stare across the Iron Curtain? Of course, love means that we lay down parts of our lives for one another, as long as it’s mutual.
But in extraordinary times, solidarity becomes even more important.
I think of the children and young adults who’ve been asked to lay down the best parts of their lives on behalf of their more-vulnerable grandparents and neighbors, who gave up playdates and proms and first semesters at college to stop a virus that, statistically speaking, isn’t nearly as bad for them. That’s love. I think of the handwritten notes posted on the walls of my apartment building all spring, with a half-dozen variations on the theme: “I’m young and healthy and willing to buy groceries for you,” with a name, and a phone number. That’s solidarity. I think of the volunteers who’ve poured hours of their time into booking vaccine appointments, of the friends who’ve called one another to check in, of all the million different ways in which people have laid down their own lives to care for one another this year.
I think as well of the tremendous blossoming of racial solidarity this year. It’s ironic that a phrase like “Black Lives Matter” has become a divisive one. It’s an expression of solidarity. It goes without saying that in our society, white people’s lives matter, and “blue lives” matter. But for white people in particular to say that “Black lives matter” is in part to say, “Black lives matter to me.” It is to open the protective armor that shields us from another community’s pain and say that what we belong to one another, that we are part of one another, that what affects one of us affects us all; that none of us can be free until all of us are free.
We dip our toes, today, into the next “new normal.” And as the months go on, we’ll face a series of choices. Do we return to the transactional individualism of the hired hand, who keeps his own interests at the center, who flees and saves himself when things get hard? Or do we continue to lay down our lives for one another, to extend our compassion to one another, to align ourselves in solidarity with one another in love?
I don’t know—I genuinely don’t know—what the next few months will bring, what changes we will carry out of this year into the future. But I do know that “we know love by this: that he laid down his life for us— and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” (1 John 3:16)
So “let us love,” John writes, “not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” (1 John 3:18) Let us love, not as hired hands, but as good shepherds. And let us always remember, when our solidarity fails, and we feel the guilt of not quite having loved, that above all else, Christ is in solidarity with us, “and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts.” (1 John 3:19) Amen.