The Fourth Sunday of Easter, just past, is always one of the most idyllic Sundays of the year. Every year, we read one of the portions of Jesus’ “Good Shepherd” discourse, hearing those tender words, “I am the Good Shepherd.” We read the beloved 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd,” and sing favorite hymns like “Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless” or “My Shepherd will supply my need.” And in a world in which many of us feel as though we “walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” it’s comforting to be reminded that we need “fear no evil, for thou art with me.”

Even in a society in which most of us couldn’t shear a sheep to save our souls, many of us find this pastoral imagery deeply moving. And falling as it often does in mid-April, with flowers beginning to bloom and greenery returning to a mud-brown world, Good Shepherd Sunday celebrates the joyful fulfillment of Easter’s promise of new and abundant life.

But all of that is assuming one of the two possible readings of Jesus’ words. The pastoral imagery is what we get from Jesus saying, “I am the Good Shepherd.” But what would it mean if we switched the emphasis around? What would it mean to say, “I am the Good Shepherd,” instead?

“Shepherd,” in the ancient Near East, was not just a pleasant pastoral image evoking rolling green hills, nor was it merely the less-romanticized daily occupation of a large portion of the population.

“Shepherd” was also one of the most common images for kings and earthly rulers. For thousands of years, kings of Sumeria, Assyria, and Babylonia described identified themselves as the shepherds of their people:

•Gudea (Sumerian ensi; 2144–2124 BC) was a “shepherd who leads the people with a good religious hand.”[38]
•Lipit-Ishtar (Isin; 1934–1924 BC): “Lipit-Ishtar, the wise shepherd, whose name has been pronounced by the god Nunamnir.”[39]
•Hammurabi (Babylonia, 1792–1750 BC): “I am Hammurabi, the shepherd, selected by the god Enlil, he who heaps high abundance and plenty . . . [the one] who gathers together the scattered peoples.”[40] “I provided perpetual water for the land . . . [and] gathered the scattered peoples. . . . In abundance and plenty I shepherded them.”[41]
•Amenhotep III (Egypt; 1411–1374 BC): “the good shepherd, vigilant for all people.”[42]
•Seti I (Egypt; 1313–1292 BC): “the good shepherd, who preserves his soldiers alive.”[43]
•Merneptah (Egypt; 1225–1215 BC): “I am the ruler who shepherds you.”[44]
•Merodach-baladan I (Babylonia; 1171–1159 BC): “[I am] the shepherd who collects the dispersed (people).”[45]
•Adadnirari III (Assyria; 810–783 BC): “unrivalled king, wonderful shepherd . . . whose shepherdship the great gods have made pleasing to the people of Assyria.”[46]
•Esarhaddon (Assyria; 680–669 BC): “the true shepherd, favorite of the great gods.”[47]
•Assurbanipal (Assyria; 668–627 BC): “those peoples which Ashur, Ishtar and the (other) great gods had given to me to be their shepherd and had entrusted into my hands.”[48]
•Nabopolassar (Babylonia; 625–605 BC): “the king of justice, the shepherd called by Marduk.”[49]
•Nebuchadnezzar II (Babylonia; 604–562 BC): “Marduk . . . gave me the shepherdship of the country and the people,” and “the loyal shepherd, the one permanently selected by Marduk.”[50]

The prophets condemn, again and again, the incompetent and unjust “shepherds” who have led their people:

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD. Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the LORD.” (Jeremiah 23:1-2)

“Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel: prophesy, and say to them—to the shepherds: Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?” (Ezekiel 34:2)

“The diviners see lies;
the dreamers tell false dreams,
and give empty consolation.
Therefore the people wander like sheep;
they suffer for lack of a shepherd.
My anger is hot against the shepherds,
and I will punish the leaders;
for the LORD of hosts cares for his flock.” (Zechariah 10:2-3)

And it’s easy enough to connect the dots: It would be odd to prophesy against the literal shepherds among the people of Israel, as if agricultural mismanagement were their concern. God is speaking to the self-proclaimed and metaphorical shepherds who lead the human flock.

The situation has gotten so bad that in the end, God gives up hope that human shepherds will take care of God’s sheep. Enough time has passed, and enough evidence has been gathered: God’s people have been led by too many shepherds who act like the hired hand, who runs away at the first sign of trouble. So God finally announces: “Thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out…I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD.” (Ezekiel 34:11, 15)

And so it is that Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd.” I am the one who will lead you in a way your kings have not.

Two thousand years later, in a world still torn apart by war and violence, exploitation and mismanagement, it should be clear that there are still plenty of shepherds who “destroy and scatter the sheep.” We can follow them, if we’d like. We can set our hearts on anger and vengeance, we can follow the paths of destruction. Or we can wait, and search, and seek out the Good Shepherd who leads us beside stiller waters. We can look for God our Shepherd leading us in the paths of peace. We can wonder what it means to follow Jesus, and to let him seek us out, when the world is darkened by the shadow of death. And we can find comfort in the relief he brings. Because Jesus is not only the good shepherd who cares for each of our souls, and not only the good shepherd, unlike all our mighty kings. He’s both; and that is a good shepherd, indeed.

These days we’re used to life being disrupted by crises large and small, from a global health crisis to a dilapidated subway system and everything in between.  So it was a nice change, on Monday, to have life disrupted by an extraordinary but harmless event.

I don’t know about you, but all around me I saw people shaken out of their routines. Yuppie couples used to working from home in separate rooms spent a few hours sitting side by side in the park outside our apartment, gazing at the sky as the sun slowly dimmed. Crowds of office workers stood along the boardwalk outside the Schrafft’s building, chatting and sharing glasses. At home, we built a pinhole projector box and wandered around the neighborhood, keeping track of the shape of a tiny crescent sun.

I’ve even heard reports—I’ll keep them anonymous for now—that strangers talked to one another (talked to one another! in Boston!) and lined up along the streets, sharing protective glasses as they stared up at the sun.

And that was just the partial eclipse.

Over the last few years, we’ve gotten used to life being disrupted and new kinds of community being formed by cataclysmic crises and dire events. I think of the surreal stillness of the world outside in the spring of 2020, so different from the stillness I heard in the air yesterday. I think of the periodic outpourings of solidarity we feel with the people subjected to the latest rounds of violence, terror, and war throughout the world. I think of the aftermath of elections and sports championships, expressions of collective effervescence balanced by expressions of rage and despair.

But when the sun is briefly blotted out, there are no losers. No one is hurt. There is no crisis bringing us together—only awe, and joy, and wonder.

“The solar eclipse was life-changing,” one headline declared on Tuesday morning. But I wonder whether life will really change.

Will the woman who yelled out her car window to offer us her glasses as she turned left across a crowded intersection stay so generous toward her neighbors forever? Or will her next round of shouting at pedestrians be a bit less kind?

Will the couples and coworkers who spent an hour outside together make it a regular thing? Or will they go back to spending their lunch hour side-by-side but staring at their phones?

How long will our hushed awe at the magnificence of the universe remain, and how quickly will the static of daily life rise up to drown it out?

Easter is an eclipse moment for our faith: A moment of crisis and wonder, an earth-shaking event that should, in theory, change everything about the way we live.

But will it?

How long will the joy of Easter remain before we return to more quotidian concerns? How long will the hope of Easter lift our spirits before we’re dragged back down to earth? Is the story of the Resurrection truly life-changing—or do our old patterns soon enough re-emerge?

Maybe it’s both. And that’s okay. But we live now in the world after Easter, just as we live in the world after the eclipse. A wonderful thing has happened, and now it’s gone, and we’re left with the memory, wondering: What difference will it make?

So my prayer, today, is this: May our minds be filled with wonder at the glory of nature, on ordinary and extraordinary days. May our hearts be filled with generosity and love of our neighbors, whether we see them on a Monday filled with awe, or simply on a Monday. And may the joy of Easter Sunday and the wonder of Eclipse Monday become touchstones that can draw us back toward hope and joy, on every other plain old boring day.

“Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
(1 John 3:2)

Over the last few years, I’ve often heard church leaders refer to Episcopalians, or to Christians in general, as “an Easter people.” It’s a phrase that’s surfaced in my mind during the last week, as we’ve celebrated Easter Sunday and I’ve begun planning for the coming weeks. During this Eastertide—the fifty-day season between Easter Day and the Ascension—our readings on Sunday mornings are taken from the Book of Acts and the First Letter of John, along with the Gospel of John, and in many ways each series of readings is an answer to the question, “What does it mean to be an ‘Easter People?'” In other words, what does it mean to live as a community shaped by the Resurrection?

I was so intrigued by the question that I decided to do something this Eastertide that I don’t usually do, and preach a sermon series. 1 John is one of my favorite books of the Bible, and so I thought we’d stick with it through the season, asking each week: What can this letter to a small group of Christian disciples, two millennia ago, teach us about what it means to be “an Easter people” today?

As is often the case with quotable quotes, the origins of the phrase “Easter people” are unclear. But its most beautiful and defining use comes from a homily given by the late Pope John Paul II during a visit to Australia in 1986:

We do not pretend that life is all beauty. We are aware of darkness and sin, of poverty and pain. But we know Jesus has conquered sin and passed through his own pain to the glory of the Resurrection. And we live in the light of his Paschal Mystery – the mystery of his Death and Resurrection. “We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song!” We are not looking for a shallow joy but rather a joy that comes from faith, that grows through unselfish love, that respects the “fundamental duty of love of neighbour, without which it would be unbecoming to speak of Joy.” We realize that joy is demanding; it demands unselfishness; it demands a readiness to say with Mary: “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

I am reminded of my favorite words in our burial service, which come at the Commendation, at the very end. When we have said all that we can say, and offered all our prayers, I walk to stand next to the casket. And the final prayer commending our beloved to God begins:

You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return. For so did you ordain when you created me, saying,
“You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

“Yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” This is what it is to be an Easter people. To rejoice defiantly, in the face of a world of suffering and death. To rejoice, in the faith that this is not the end. To acknowledge a mystery that we can never understand, to commit ourselves to live up to a love that we can never deserve, to stand at the edge of the grave and proclaim God’s praise.

It is not easy to love our neighbors as ourselves. It is not easy to practice rejoicing in a world of pain. It is not easy to be made of dust, as we are. And yet we cannot choose to be immortal instead. We cannot choose to remain invulnerable. We cannot choose not to suffer, in this life; we can only choose whether to stay silent and speechless, or whether to be an Easter people, whether, together, to make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

Over the course of the church year, while the readings, hymns, prayers, and themes of our worship rotate to reflect the changing seasons of the Church year, the structure and the feel of the services remain the same. The hymns these past few weeks have been Lent hymns, the readings have been Lent readings, but we’ve stood and sat and sang in the same order as always.

During Holy Week—the days beginning on Palm Sunday and running through Easter—the nature of our worship changes.

One way to put it would be this: During the rest of the year, we worship mostly in our heads. During Holy Week, our worship becomes more embodied.

Every Sunday, we hear and think and sing and speak. We listen to sermons that reflect on and expand on the readings. Some of us kneel in prayer; most of us stand and sit, but mostly stay in place. We hold books and pieces of paper, we receive bread and wine, but the rest is all words.

But on Palm Sunday, we’ll all parade around the church, walking together, waves branches of palm. The Gospel will be proclaimed in a dramatic Passion play, not a reading by a single voice. On Maundy Thursday, we’ll eat together, and move throughout the church, and strip the altar of its decorations. Some of us will wash each other’s feet. On Good Friday, we see and touch a wooden cross. On Holy Saturday at noon, we hold a quiet burial service for Christ. At the Great Vigil of Easter, we play with fire, light candles in the darkness, spray water into the pews from evergreen branches and ring bells to say our Alle—ias.

Holy Week is a sensory experience, a new way of encountering the same Good News, not simply hearing it with our ears but feeling it in our whole bodies. It’s a time of ancient customs, experienced anew: whether it’s your first time or you look forward to it every year, I hope you can join us for one of these services or more, as you consider what the death and resurrection of Jesus mean for you this year.

Palm Sunday — March 24 — 10am

We celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem with a parade of palms, and remember the crushing disappointment of his betrayal, arrest, and death with a reading of the Passion According to Mark.

Maundy Thursday — March 28 — 6pm

As Jesus gathered with his disciples for a Last Supper together, we share a simple meal. As he taught them his “new commandment” to love one another as he loved them, and then humbly knelt to wash the dirt from their feet, we wash one another’s feet. As darkness fell and he went out to the Garden to pray, we strip the decorations and ornaments from our sanctuary and bring the Blessed Sacrament to rest in a Garden of Repose.

Good Friday — March 29 — 7pm

We remember again the events of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, trial, and death with a solemn service of readings and prayers, and venerate the cross on which he died and through which he destroyed the power of death.

Holy Saturday — March 30 — 12pm

One of the simplest, most austere, but most moving services of the year, the Liturgy of the Word for Holy Saturday reflects on the day in which Jesus rested in the tomb, and offers prayers drawn from our funeral services.

The Great Vigil of Easter — March 30 — 7pm

Our celebration of Easter begins with the kindling of a new fire and the retelling of the whole story of salvation, stretching from the moment of creation through Easter morning, followed by a festive celebration of the first Eucharist of Easter.

Easter Sunday — March 31 — 10am

We journey with the women who followed Jesus to the door of his empty tomb, and see their astonishment to find him risen, crying aloud our words of praise: “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

Some time around four hundred years after the birth of Jesus, as the Roman Empire began to dissolve and the legions that had defended it retreated back towards Rome, a sixteen-year-old man named Patricius, son of Calpornius, was kidnapped by raiders from a neighboring tribe, enslaved, and brought to work in their land. He spent the next six years tending sheep, and—like many people going through hard times, but with plenty of time on his hands—he began to pray. “More and more the love of God increased,” he later wrote, “and my sense of awe before God. Faith grew, and my spirit was moved, so that in one day I would pray up to one hundred times, and at night perhaps the same… I never felt the worse for it, and I never felt lazy – as I realise now, the spirit was burning in me at that time.”

After six years, he ran away, following a voice that came to him in a dream. Years later, he was enslaved again, and escaped again. But his faith continued to grow, and soon he would choose to return, to the land in which he’d been enslaved, to share the faith he’d found, and to walk among them once again.

And so we drink to him this Sunday with green beer.

Saint Patrick the Enlightener of Ireland, Bishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, is bound to be popular in a place where the flag of the Republic of Ireland flies at the Bunker Hill Mall. As a symbol of Irishness, he is beloved in a neighborhood whose identity is one part Irish immigrant and one part anti-colonial resistance, where his feast day is secularly celebrated as Evacuation Day, as well.

But Saint Patrick wasn’t Irish. And his story is even more inspiring for it.

He wasn’t English, either, to be clear. There were no English yet. Or rather, during the years when Patrick was alive, the first Angles and Saxons were just beginning to raid and migrate into Britain from the east, just as the Irish raided it from the north and from the west. He wasn’t quite a Roman, either, despite the Latin name; today we’d probably call his culture “Welsh,” although this is really just a Germanic name for “those guys over there who aren’t like us.”*

Trying to pin down ethnic origins in fifth-century Europe is a fool’s errand, of course. And in fact, to claim that Patrick was really Welsh or really British, and not Irish, is to completely miss the point.

We often wonder about the “stakes” of the Christian faith. What would it mean truly to forgive as we have been forgiven; to love, as we have been loved by God.

Look no further than Saint Patrick’s tale: captured, enslaved, escaped; living in a world of turmoil and violence, living under threat, he had every right to write the Irish off. And yet he found his heart full of love for the people who had once been his enemies, and so loved them that they became his dearest friends, and more: they soon enough gave up their raiding ways, and began to produce medieval Europe’s most shining examples of scholarship, mission, and Christian love.

Saint Patrick is not a symbol of ethnic identity or national particularity. He’s a symbol of what it means to love our neighbors across the lines that divide us. He embodied the parable of the Good Samaritan, who cared for and tended the enemy of his people, whose commitment to love transcended borders and extended beyond the circle of his own nation.

What would the world look like if we were all filled with Patrick’s faith? What would the world look like if we all practiced Patrick’s love? How different would things be if each one of us could learn to forgive one another for our much smaller sins, as he forgave those who sinned against him?

To close with some of Patrick’s own words, from his Confession:

And there I saw in the night the vision of a man, whose name was Victoricus, coming as it were from Ireland, with countless letters. And he gave me one of them, and I read the opening words of the letter, which were, ‘The voice of the Irish’; and as I read the beginning of the letter I thought that at the same moment I heard their voice—they were those beside the Wood of Foclut, which is near the Western Sea—and thus did they cry out as with one mouth: ‘We ask you, boy, come and walk among us once more.’

And I was quite broken in heart, and could read no further, and so I woke up. Thanks be to God, after many years the Lord gave to them according to their cry.

Thanks be to God, indeed!

* An etymological aside, because your Rector is a nerd—I’ve always loved this fact: The words “Wales” or “Welsh” come from an old Germanic/Anglo-Saxon word Walh, which basically means “someone who doesn’t speak a Germanic language.” As Germanic tribes migrated from their home areas in northern Germany/Scandinavia throughout Europe in the late phase of the Roman Empire, they spread the term, so that the Celtic- and Latin-speaking inhabitants of western Wales and Cornwall** were called such by the Angles and Saxons, the Latin speakers of Walloonia were called the same by the Flemings to their north, and the Slavic speakers of the east even inherited the term when they called the Latin-speaking Romanians Wallachians, which became the name of one of the medieval Romanian principalities!

** They lived in a kingdom called Kernow, hence Cornwall, Kernow-wales.