Readings for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Year B)
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on Good Shepherd Sunday April 21, 2024.
On this Good Shepherd Sunday, we continue reading through the First Epistle of St. John, who is the traditional author of those beloved and bucolic words attributed to Jesus, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). This teaching about Christ laying down his life is echoed in our reading from the epistle today which says, “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).[1] We ought to lay down our lives for one another. This expression of love may sound a bit dramatic and extreme to us today, especially since we are rarely confronted with the kind of persecutions that the early Christians faced that would have indeed called for such extreme forms of sacrifice. The irony is that St. John is the only apostle among the original twelve who did not suffer martyrdom but who lived into his old age and died of natural causes in Ephesus, as a nonagenarian. However, the ancient stories and legends of St. John demonstrate the ways that he embodied the self-giving love of the Good Shepherd whom he wrote about, and his letters offer us some practical ways that we can embody that same love today.
Although John did not suffer martyrdom, it was not for lack of trying. In fact, John is considered the most courageous apostle of all, having demonstrated a “fearless faith” by standing at the foot of the Cross of Jesus with Mary while all the other apostles ran away to hide out of fear that they might be crucified as well.
Several decades after the original Easter Sunday, the Roman emperor Domitian issued edicts for a general and cruel persecution of all Christians.[2] So it’s no surprise that Domitian would have especially wanted to kill the last remaining apostle, who was bringing many into the Good Shepherd’s fold through his preaching. When Domitian threatened to immerse the apostle John in a cauldron of boiling oil, the apostle kept preaching fearlessly about love. Even when Domitian’s soldiers successfully placed John’s body in the cauldron of boiling oil in the public square for all to watch him slowly die, John kept preaching about love; and miraculously, he did not burn at all (just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the Book of Daniel).[3] There is a chapel in Rome today located on the site where this miracle supposedly took place. It’s a small octagonal chapel called San Giovanni in Oleo or “St. John in Oil.”
It was not long after this failed attempt to boil the apostle alive that St. John was served a poisonous drink in a chalice. Since St. John had a regular practice of giving thanks and blessing his food and drink before partaking, he blessed the drink with the sign of the cross, thus expelling the poison, which emerged out of the liquid in the form of a serpent that slithered away, repelled by the power of John’s cruciform blessing.[4] This is why John is often portrayed with a serpent emerging out of a chalice.
When both of these attempts failed, the emperor Domitian decided to exile John to the remote island of Patmos, where he received extraordinary visions from the Holy Spirit, which he recorded in the final book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation.
John was ready and willing to lay down his life for the sake of God’s love, in imitation of the Good Shepherd. Even when John did lay down his life to the point of full immersion in a pot of boiling oil, he survived so that he could continue to preach and write about God’s love. St. Jerome writes, “the blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church, and he could not muster the voice to speak many words. During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, ‘Little children, love one another.’ The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard him preach these same words, finally said, ‘Teacher, why do you always say this?’ He replied with a line worthy of John: ‘Because it is the Lord’s commandment and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.’”[5]
Little children, love one another. Spoken like a true shepherd and pastor and imitator of the divine Good Shepherd whom he wrote about. Throughout this first Epistle, John frequently refers to his recipients lovingly and tenderly as his “children.”[6]
In his riper years, John demonstrated his love for others in simpler and less dramatic ways than literally laying down his life. He demonstrated his love in the simple act of writing letters of encouragement to his friends, including those letters preserved in our Scriptures. This is an act of love that we can easily emulate today, an act of love that most of us would certainly prefer to immersion in a pot of boiling oil! Also, John understood what theologian Thomas Aquinas explained over a thousand years later: to love is the choice to wish the good of the other. When we love someone, we want them to be happy, healthy, and at peace. In John’s third epistle, he writes, “Beloved, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you and with your soul” (3 John 2). May we learn to pray prayers like this regularly for each other.
So, may we learn to lay down our lives for each other through perhaps less-dramatic-and-yet-still-transformative acts of love: by writing letters of encouragement and by regularly praying for the good health, happiness, and peace of those whom we care about as well as for those whom we might struggle to care about. In this way, we emulate St. John and the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for us so that we might love one another because if this is the only commandment that we manage to keep, it will be sufficient. Amen.
[1] John is also the traditional author of Jesus’s teaching that “There is no greater way to express love than by laying down one’s life for a friend.” (15:11-13).
[2] According to the ancient church historian Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.17.
[3] According to Tertullian.
[4] Aelfric, “St. John the Apostle” in Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings, translated by Robert Boenig (Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 2000), 106 – 107.
[5] Jerome, Commentary on Galatians 6:10
[6] Eight times, in fact. 1 John 2:1; 2:12; 2:14; 2:18; 2:28; 3:18; 4:4; 5:21.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 