Of Swing Music and Shepherds.
- Pastor Serena Rice
- 5 hours ago
- 6 min read
A sermon on John 10:22-30
[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Mario Dobelmann on Unsplash.com]
The SALT Commentary on the gospel reading this week included a rather unexpected but insightful illustration from iconic musician Louis Armstrong.
Apparently, Armstrong once responded to a request to define the rhythm known as swing by saying, “if you have to ask, you’ll never know.”
The commentary explained, “(Armstrong’s) point wasn’t to exclude anyone from understanding swing; rather, his point was that verbally defining it isn’t the path to understanding it. On the contrary, the way to understand swing is to hear it, to dance to it, to get a feel for it. In the end, swing really isn’t something that can be defined or explained. It has to be felt, engaged, experienced.”[1]
And then came the connection to the gospel: “Jesus’s point in this passage is similar. When it comes to his messiahship, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, there’s already plenty of ‘evidence’ on the table…. (but) without such ears and eyes, no amount of evidence or argument will do.”[2]
This is the best explanation I have ever heard for why Jesus does not just “tell us plainly,” when the Jewish leaders asked him to say whether he was the Messiah.
It seems like a reasonable request, right?!
Please just be clear; we want to know for sure.
But Jesus’s response points to the hypocrisy behind their request; the truth that they aren’t willing to understand him on his own terms.
If they were, they would pick-up what he was putting down, they would follow the rhythm of his actions and feel its truth as it called them into the dance.
The problem is not Jesus’ lack of clarity.
The problem is that he is playing swing music when the only rhythm they know how to recognize is a military march.
Because a military leader is what Messiah means to those asking Jesus if that’s who he is.
John makes that clear from the little details he provides about the setting for the conversation.
We might be most likely notice that Jesus was walking in Solomon’s portico, a call-back to the height of the Kingship when Israel was a free and unoccupied nation, the glory days that many of Jesus’ contemporaries longed to have restored.
But even more significantly, John links this encounter with the festival of the Dedication.
Most of us are probably more familiar with the alternative name for this festival, which is Hannukah or the festival of Lights, but, in this case, I think the less familiar name is probably more helpful to us in grasping its significance.
The reference to the Dedication evokes the reason for the dedication, or rather the re-dedication of the Temple.
Approximately 200 years before the scene we read today, Jerusalem had been under the control of the Seleucid Empire.
In a misguided effort to reinforce the Empire’s dominance, the Emperor outlawed the practice of the Jewish religion and desecrated the Jewish Temple.
This action inspired an unusually successful revolt, in which Judas Maccabeus and his sons wrested control of Jerusalem and the surrounding area from the Seleucids and immediately cleansed and rededicated the temple.
Since almost all of the oil in the city was polluted by Pagan uses, it was unclear how the Maccabees were going to keep the sacred candles lit for long enough to press fresh oil, but – miraculously – oil that should have only lasted one day kept the candles lit for 8 days – thus the 8 days of Hannukah.
Perhaps more significant for the Jewish leaders talking to Jesus, however, was the fact that the Maccabees presented a model of religious and political freedom through military rebellion (albeit with the help of Rome, who eventually replaced the Seleucids as the occupying Empire).
So that, now, two centuries later, at the time of the festival of Dedication, the people were now looking for a new and better revolutionary: God’s Messiah who would free the people of God from the Roman oppressors and finally, truly, restore the Kingdom.
In other words, Jesus’s questioners were listening for a military march to confirm the identity of their Messiah because they could only imagine the Messiah as a religious nationalist come to lead a revolution.
But Jesus wants them to listen to the music he is actually playing, to move their feet to the rhythm of his public works that do give clear witness about his identity for anyone willing to join in the dance:
Works of mercy like healing the sick (in John chapters 4, 5, and 9) and feeding the hungry (chapter 6).
Signs of power like turning water to wine (chapter 2) and walking on water (chapter 6).
Breaking-boundaries by talking theology with a Samaritan Women (John 4), forgiving an adulteress (John 8), and calling a scared but seeking Pharisee to be born again by teaching that “God so loved the world that he sent the Son to reconcile the world” (John 3).
Come to think of it, the rhythm of Jesu’s works included his own cleansing of the Temple (chapter 2), calling out the shypocrisy and abuses of, perhaps, the very religious leaders asking him now to be clear.
Jesus was already being clear…
just like he was being clear in the first part of John chapter 10, just before today’s reading, when he contrasted his own care for his sheep, with the behavior of those who try to enter the fold through some way other than the gate… those who come to steal and to lead the sheep astray.
Perhaps to the beat of a military march, rather than to the dancing rhythm of the Good Shepherd.
OK, maybe I’m stretching the metaphor, but I really do think the whole music analogy works for that second half of our reading too, because Jesus evokes his voice in reintroducing the Shepherd metaphor.
If his works are what define his own identity as the true Messiah, it’s the ability to recognize his voice that defines his sheep.
The people who belong to Jesus, who follow him, need to recognize his voice, and we won’t be able to do that if we are listening for the drumbeat of power and control.
Those who follow Jesus know that shows of strength and dominance are not what characterize his song.
Such actions clash with the love-based, welcoming rhythm of his whole ministry’s witness.
And those who follow his voice know that he is leading them to something so much better than a temporary victory built on questionable alliances.
The Good Shepherd leads us toward eternal life, a life characterized by belonging to Jesus in the same unity that marks Jesus’ relationship with the Father.
A belonging that looks radically different than the loyalty tests and power plays of nationalist agendas, that promise salvation through power and violence.
That contrast is perhaps most clear if we keep reading beyond the verses in today’s lectionary.
John’s scene continues with a violent response to Jesus’s claim of unity with the Father: the leaders pick up rocks to stone Jesus, accusing him of blasphemy.
But, again, Jesus points to the witness of what he has done: “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?” (John 10:32)
It’s a defense against the accusations, but it’s also a stark contrast:
His interrogators allow for only one vision of God’s activity, a path of glory and victory, and when they are challenged they turn to violence.
It’s the classic nationalist model that demands conformity and loyalty.
But Jesus is dancing, and leading, to a different kind of rhythm.
Luther Seminary professor Karoline Lewis describes the significance of Jesus’s appeal to his works in this way:
“In the end, the attention is turned to God, the Father. Jesus’ presence, his ministry, is not about Jesus but about making God known. Jesus is asking the Jewish leaders to see in what Jesus has done that God loves the world.… That ‘the Father is in me and I in the Father’ is another expression of the purpose of Jesus’ presence on earth, to make God’s love known.”[3]
I believe that love by which we know God is also how we recognize the Shepherd’s voice.
It’s how we follow the rhythm of his work, and how we resist the calls of those who would claim his name but demand allegiance to a very different kind of Messiah.
And Jesus promises that when we listen for his voice of Love, no one will ever snatch us out of his hand.
Thanks be to God.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Karoline M. Lewis, John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries, p 148. © 2014, Fortress Press.
