Last Sunday's thought: the Good Shepherd of one flock

We are pilgrims on a journey; and our Church is a pilgrim Church. The seven ‘I am’ statements of Jesus in John’s Gospel provide us as pilgrims with the essential, elementary needs for our journey. Food: I am the bread of life (John 6:35). Light: I am the light of the world (8:12). A path to follow: I am the Way, the truth and the life (14:6). A gate to get onto the path: I am the Gate for the sheep (10:7). An eternal journey: I am the Resurrection and the Life (11:25). A life that bears the fruit of that pilgrimage: I am the True Vine (15:1). Finally, and perhaps most important, someone trustworthy to follow: I am the Good Shepherd (10:11).

         In his farewell discourse, Jesus had prayed that the church should be one (John 17:21), just as his disciples should be one (John 17:11), ‘that the world may believe that you have sent me’ (John 17:21). The unity of the church, in spite of variations in traditions, is to be the supreme testimony to the truth of the claim that Jesus is God’s son and chosen emissary to his people on earth. In the words of this morning’s gospel, ‘So there will be one flock, one shepherd’.

         ‘God wills the Church, because he wills unity, and unity is an expression of the whole depth of his self-giving love (agape).’ These were John Paul II’s words in 1995 on the profound reasons underlying the move towards Christian unity. ‘…promoting Christian unity’, John Paul II affirmed, ‘is not just some sort of “appendix” which is added to the Church’s traditional activity. Rather, ecumenism is an organic part of her life and work, and consequently must pervade all that she is and does; it must be like the fruit borne by a healthy and flourishing tree which grows to its full stature.’

There is a powerful summary of ecumenical statements and agreements drawn together by Cardinal Walter Kasper under the title Harvesting The Fruits. Here are just a few important ideas drawn from these agreements. First (p. 65), that ‘the credibility of the Church’s witness in the world is undermined by the sins of its members, the shortcomings of its human institutions and not least by the scandal of division. The Church is in constant need of repentance and renewal so that it can be more clearly seen for what it is: the one, holy body of Christ.’

Second (pp. 72-3), ‘the concept of koinonia (communion)… is the term that most aptly expresses the mystery underlying the various NT images of the Church… Those who have received the same word of God and have been baptized in the same Spirit cannot, without disobedience, acquiesce in a state of separation.’ ‘Christian disunity obscures God’s invitation to communion for all humankind and makes the Gospel we proclaim harder to hear.’

A third point is that the mandate of bringing salvation to all is the task of the entire Christian church and not just one privileged part of it, ‘the true believers’. ‘The mandate given to the Church to bring salvation to all the nations constitutes its unique mission. In this way the Church not only signifies the new humanity willed by God and inaugurated by Christ. It is itself an instrument of the Holy Spirit in the extension of salvation to all human beings in all their needs and circumstances to the end of time’ (p. 59).

A fourth and final point concerns the need to clarify the purpose of talking together as Christians. Few of us expect to see our inherited confessional distinctions disappear any time soon, if ever. That is not the point. It is that such distinctions should no longer be the obstacle that they have been in the past: ‘there is unity in reconciled diversity’ (p. 89). ‘So there will be one flock, one shepherd.’ The command of Christian ecumenism could not be stated more clearly than in John 10:16.

Last Sunday's thought: this is the Gospel we proclaim

Then Jesus ‘opened their minds to understand the scriptures’ (Luke 24:45). Earlier on in chapter 24, Luke recounts how, on the road to Emmaus Jesus (though at the moment not recognized by two disciples) did the same thing: ‘Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures’ (Luke 24:27). After the two disciples recognized Jesus at the breaking of the bread, they recall: ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ (Luke 24:32).

Paul wrote to the early Christian church at Rome: ‘how can they believe without hearing about Him? And how can they hear without a preacher?’ (Rom. 10:14). Paul practised gospel-focused kerygmatic preaching, that is preaching centred on the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He told the Corinthian church that ‘I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified’ (1 Cor. 2:2). The preaching recorded in the Acts of the Apostles repeated again and again the divine kerygma, the story of Jesus Christ: but then the apostles had no written gospels to which to refer their audience.

This is not the only Biblical model of preaching. There are times when life may seem to us almost meaningless and ruled by despair and death. What people need, in such circumstances, is a Word of redemption and meaning from outside this situation that will answer their deepest questions about life and death. Preaching brings this Word. It is Biblical because it was used by some of the Old Testament prophets and also by Jesus himself in some of his meetings with individuals in which existential questions are answered: three good examples (but they are by no means the only ones) are his meetings with the tax collector Zacchaeus, with Nicodemus and with the woman at the well.

An alternative style of preaching is the proclamation of God’s word as an alternate vision to injustice, inequities of power, suffering, and oppression. Biblical models for ethical-political preaching stretch from the prophetic preaching of the Hebrew prophets to Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God. Today this is very much the mission field of Christian Aid.

Another model of preaching has been called the ‘whispered word of God’, in the preacher seeks out the divine Word within the world and draws it up from the level of a whisper to the level of an assertion or proposition. Jesus is in conversation with disciples and the crowd uses metaphor, story, and parable, to take the ordinary bits and pieces of people’s lives and transform them into the very stuff of God’s revelation.

So there are several types of preaching according to the work of the Holy Spirit, circumstance, our needs and the needs of the world. Proclamation of the gospel, including interpretation and teaching is not an optional extra. It is close to the essence of our faith. Paul put it this way in Romans 10:8-10: ‘The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach (kerygma); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved.’

Which preaching style is the most appropriate for the church and the needs of contemporary society? There are no simple answers. Perhaps an awareness of different styles and the deployment of a variety so that neither the preacher nor the congregation falls into cosy predictability is important. Most important of all is the need for openness to guidance and direction from the Holy Spirit who ‘blows where he wills’ (John 3:8). ‘You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going.’

The disciples on Resurrection Sunday: caught between the 'disaster' of Good Friday and the 'triumph' of the Resurrection

We don’t have to have much imagination in hearing the account of the story of the discovery of the empty tomb in Mark’s gospel to realize that, far from the disappearance of Christ’s body being a conspiracy organized by Christians (which is what some non-believers said at the time), the first disciples of Christ were dumbfounded by what they saw and heard: ‘they would not believe it.’ It is quite likely that Mark’s description of the initial response of the disciples is correct. Until the post-resurrection encounters with Jesus reassured them, the disciples probably did not know what to think.


The proof of the resurrection lies not in the empty tomb. It lies in the ten resurrection encounters of the disciples with the risen Christ which are recorded in the gospels (more are recorded in the NT as a whole).


It is on the account provided by those witnesses that our faith rests. We may not have a precise timeline of the encounters, although some have made suggestions. What we do have, however, is one indisputable fact: from the terror which is recorded in the original ending of Mark’s gospel (Mark 16:8), there was a rapid transformation in the disciples’ attitudes. From being fearful and uncertain, they become confident and cast away human and worldly considerations to preach the gospel throughout the known world and establish the embryonic church. The gospel train was set in motion. And the work of the disciples still provides us with the best account we have of how to spread the Word in an apparently unreceptive world.