Sermon at the Sung Eucharist on the Fourth Sunday of Easter 2015

Picture the scene:  a snowy afternoon in the middle of an American winter in a typical Chicago suburb.  A mother and her two young sons decide to go outside and build a snowman – a surprise for their Dad when he returns from work.  They make good progress.  The snowman has a good fat base, a nice round chest and a head like a large cannonball.  A carrot is found for his nose.  But just as mother and sons take a step back to sort out the snowman’s arms, a truck comes careering around the corner.  Too late the truck driver sees the mother and her sons.  He slams on the brakes, but the steering wheel locks, the truck skids violently across the road and ploughs into the family and their snowman.  As the snow continues to fall, and people rush from their homes to find out what has happened, the carnage of the accident is there for all to see.  Mother and two sons lie bleeding and unconscious as the snow reddens around them.

The police and ambulance arrive almost simultaneously.  Mother and sons are carefully lifted on to stretchers and rushed over to the Emergency Room of the local hospital.  The truck driver is injured too, but not nearly so badly.  It is quite clear to the police that he is way over the limit.  This is a tragic case of drunk driving at its most reckless and foolhardy.

Meanwhile, the emergency medical team examines the mother and her sons.  She has arrived deeply unconscious and soon dies, despite the best efforts of the doctors.  Her sons are also very badly hurt.  One is pronounced brain dead, although he is still able to breathe with help from a ventilator.  It soon emerges that the other son – he’s called Matt, by the way – Matt has suffered irreparable damage to his heart.  The boy’s father arrives on the scene, distraught at what has happened.  With the help and advice of the doctors he decides that the heart and lungs of his brain dead son should be given to Matt, in order that at least one of his sons might have the chance to live.  So the father accompanies both his sons to the operating theatre, and as he does so he tells his brain dead son, ‘It’s all right, son.  You’re helping your brother to live.’

It’s only after the operation on Matt that the surgeon turns to Matt’s father to tell him that the only reason that Matt was not killed outright at the scene of the accident was because his mother had deliberately jumped between the truck and him at the crucial moment. 

Matt, it turns out, is doubly indebted for his life:  indebted to his mother who placed herself between him and the careering truck.  And to his brother also, who in death, gave Matt the gift of a new life with his heart and lungs as he himself died.

That, in a nutshell, was the harrowing storyline in one of the episodes of ER, the American equivalent of our TV series Casualty:  a mother and one of her sons laying down their lives for their son and brother, Matt.

In the Gospel according to John chapter 10, we are reminded of Jesus the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.  When wolves threaten the flock, the hired hand flees in terror.  The hired hand doesn’t really care for the sheep at all – he’s simply doing a paid job.  So when danger threatens, he’s off as quick as can be, to save his own skin; the sheep can look after themselves. 

But the good shepherd is the one who knows and looks after his sheep.  He cares for his own.  So much so that he puts himself between his sheep and the evil and violence which threaten them.  The parallel drawn by the author of the gospel is very clear:  Jesus cares for us, his own, so much that he is willing to place himself between us and the consequences of our evil.  Jesus is prepared to do whatever it takes to bring God’s salvation, God’s saving love to us.  He acts just like that mother in ER, instinctively and inevitably committed to saving her children.  On the cross Jesus places himself between us and the consequences of our sinful ways.  The good shepherd dies for his own.

But that’s not the end of it. There’s a twist to this picture, this story in the gospel. 

It’s quite clear in the ER storyline just who the mother’s ‘own’ are: it is her two sons whom she seeks to protect at all costs – even to the point of her own death.  But who are Jesus’ ‘own’ in the gospel?  Who are ‘the sheep’ for whom he is prepared to die?

You and I, of course.  We are baptised, committed to the way of Christ; we declare every week that we believe that Jesus died for us.  And that is true; or at least, it’s half true.  For the clear sense of the Gospel according to John is that Jesus dies ‘for his own’, that is to say for all of ‘God’s own’ – for everyone, everyone whom God our creator has made.  When Jesus dies on the cross, he does not die simply to save you and me and all the other people who are or who might become Christians.  Jesus dies to save the world – everyone – even the people we cannot stand, or understand.  The good shepherd has died for us all.  For the astounding truth of the gospel is that salvation is offered by Jesus not just to God’s friends, but to his enemies, and to the indifferent and apathetic as well.

The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.  That’s a cause for us to be deeply thankful and to rejoice.  Christ has died for us.  But he has also died for everyone else, and that fact alone ought to make us think twice about how we relate to our families, friends and neighbours.

Jesus Christ has died for everyone, and that ought to make us think carefully about how we relate to those with whom we disagree; how we relate to our enemies, to those whom we fear or despise or simply ignore.

Jesus has died for us all; he has been prepared to do whatever it takes to bring God’s salvation to everyone. God’s salvation is offered to unbelievers and respectable churchgoers alike, to child abusers and those who traffic refugees, to those addicted to drugs or alcohol, to members of religious orders and to members of Islamic State – Jesus died for them all, that all who turn to him might be saved.  Or, as St Paul so memorably put it in his letter to the Romans, ‘It was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us’.

But this gospel teaching is not simply about how you or I as individual might relate to each other. It has far-reaching implications.

We are in the midst of an election campaign – a fascinating campaign, the outcome of which is not at all clear at the moment. And each of us who is registered to vote will need to decide how to make our choice at the election.  On what grounds will we make that choice? Self-interest?  After all, no one likes to pay more tax, or think that a good health service may not be available for them when they need it. So, any of us may vote out of self-interest…  Or perhaps we have the interests of our neighbours or local community at heart?  Or the interests of the nation?  Or perhaps we might remember that Jesus died for everyone, and that somehow those much wider, much more demanding interests should be weighed in the balance as we approach the polling station. It’s a question to ponder in the next week and half.

All of us fall short of God’s glory – and yet the wonder is that precisely because we fall short of God’s glory Jesus reaches out to us in love from the cross, and still invites us to walk with him today. In the difficult choices we have to make, he is always there with us.

And that, my friends, is why we give thanks at this Communion service today.