Memory and Consolation

Homily for Sunday, May 11, 2025
The Fourth Sunday of Easter
John 10:22-30

At that time, the Festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem.  It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the Temple.

There used to be a cabinet here at the church that, every time I opened it, the scent flooded me with memories.  (Donna and the Altar Guild know of this cabinet!)  It was in the library, just to the right of the door.  In it are stacks of china from “back in the day,” and – in a cardboard box that used to be on top of the china – was our stash of beeswax candles for the Easter Vigil.  When I opened that cabinet, the scent of the wax would take me back.  The smell of beeswax took me back to Easter Vigils at the monastery where we shivered in the early morning darkness waiting to light the New Fire.  The smell took me back to the Episcopal church in my hometown in Wisconsin whose sanctuary was permeated with over a century of the smell of candle wax.  The smell took me back to my Lutheran parochial school in which for daily chapel the older kids served as acolytes, lighting and extinguishing the candles.  Whenever I opened that cabinet in the library, the smell of the beeswax would “take me back.”

In today’s Gospel lesson,John writes: “the Festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem.  It was winter.”  I wonder if for the Evangelist, each winter the sights and smells of the Festival of the Dedication would have “taken him back.”  The Festival of the Dedication, also known as Hanukkah, usually takes place in our month of December.  In December in first-century Palestine, people would have been burning fires to keep warm, and the air would have smelled of wood smoke.  Because December is the rainy season, it would have smelled also of rain and the Temple area probably of wet stone.  The air likely would have smelled, too, of olive oil (a key feature of Hanukkah) and of the special food for Hanukkah that was cooked in olive oil. And in Jesus’ time, those walking in Solomon’s Portico in the Temple (as was Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson) would have smelled smoke from the daily sacrifices and also incense.  I wonder if as the Evangelist wrote, “the Festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem; it was winter,” [I wonder if] he was taken back to the sights and smells of Jerusalem before its destruction.  (He wrote in about 90AD; the Temple was destroyed in 70AD.)  Perhaps he remembered the priests and people he knew at the Temple, and the rites and worship there.  Perhaps he was stirred by memories of Jerusalem’s walls and architecture and of the Temple itself, all long since destroyed.

Given that the evangelist knew Jerusalem and the Temple well, and given that Jerusalem and the Temple were now destroyed, it is likely that the evangelist wrote his Gospel at least in part from a place of grief.  Imagine how difficult it must have been for him to recount and to write about long-gone people and places that had been important to him!   Yet the evangelist was able to remember, and with clarity, that day in winter during the Festival of the Dedication when, as Jesus walked in Solomon’s Portico, the religious leaders came to him and said:  

“If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe...  You do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep.”

The temperature was probably in the mid- to high-50’s.  Given that they were on the portico, it was probably overcast and maybe raining.  As it tends to be in Jerusalem, the atmosphere was charged.  As John reports– “They were divided because of his words.”  Some said, “He has a demon and is out of hi mind,” but others asked, “Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”  In this tense exchange – indeed, the exchange was so tense that in the verses immediately following, “They took up stones again to stone him” – [in this tense exchange], Jesus speaks to us beautiful words:  

“My sheep hear my voice.  I know them and they follow me…  No one will snatch them out of my hand.  What the Father has given me is greater than all else.”  

Writing about an extremely tense moment, and writing perhaps at least in part from a place of grief, the Evangelist yet manages to remember Jesus’ beautiful and hopeful words:  “My sheep hear my voice.  I know them and they follow me.”   And we know these words about Jesus the Good Shepherd are important to John because John places them in the exact center of his Gospel.  Jesus’ words about the Good Shepherd are like a seed in the middle of the fruit, with everything surrounding the seed – all the other chapters of this Gospel – designed to help that seed in the middle, Jesus’ words about the Good Shepherd, to take root and grow.  Though John doesn’t lead with the Good Shepherd when he opens his Gospel, yet for John Jesus the Good Shepherd is literally the Gospel’s central image.

I suspect that for many of us, this morning’s readings bring back memories.  How many funerals, for example, have we attended at which the 23^rd Psalm has been sung or read?  How many of us, perhaps since childhood, have been taught that Jesus is the Good Shepherd? Or at how many funerals have we heard this morning’s reading from Revelation chapter 7:  “I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation…standing before the throne and before the Lamb…”?  For many of us, this morning’s readings bring back memories, quite possibly memories that include grief.  

As we may be filled with memories, and as those memories may include grief, Jesus offers consolation.  In chapter 10, John assures us that, just as we might remember people in our past, so does Jesus remember us – Jesus is the Good Shepherd who remembers each of us by name.  And not only does Jesus remember us by name,but, says John, he “knows” us:  “I know them, and they know me… And no one will snatch them out of my hand.”  Further, adds Jesus in today’s passage, “ give them eternal life, and they will never perish.”  The Tradition has understood these and others of Jesus’ words to mean that, as we pray at burials, we can have “the joyful expectation of eternal life with those [we] love” (BCP, p 505).  For when we die, our burial rite continues,we are commended “into your hands, O merciful Savior.  Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming” (BCP, p 499).  

Jesus is our Good Shepherd.  This central image of John’s Gospel reminds us that Jesus is always with us, Jesus calls us each by name, he knows each of us, he leads us, he cares for us, he will not leave us, he will not let others snatch us out of his hand. And he will be with us to the end, welcoming us finally as sheep of his own fold, lambs of his own flock, to be received (as our prayers put it)

...into the arms of his mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.  (BCP, p 499)