John 10:1-10 NRSVUE

10 “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

7 So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

I confess that I used to not like this passage and others like it in the Gospel of John.

I don’t like the way it sounds like people are being excluded.

But I think it’s more true to say that I don’t like the way this passage was interpreted for me by other preachers.

They way this passage was taught to me had 2 main points.

1. Antisemitism.  I was taught that the thieves and bandits were supposedly the Pharisees and the Priests. The idea being that Christianity was replacing Judaism and anybody who was still Jewish and promoting Judaism were the bad guys.  

The idea that there is antisemitism in the Gospel of John does have exegetical validity, unfortunately.  Most scholars believe that the gospel of John was written in the 90’s of the Common Era – in what we today call Syria where a group of, mostly, Jewish Christians lived among other Jews.  But the non-Christian Jews had rejected these weird Jewish Christians  Rejection then looked kinda similar to being canceled today.  It meant people might boycott your business,  kick you out of the Synygoge, or end a friendship because of the difference in religion.   The Christ Community that the Apostle John founded in Syria felt rejected by their Jewish community and that rejection resulted in some pretty nasty insults.  But those insults were like a fight between siblings – I can call my brother names, but if someone outside the family comes for my brother – I’m going to show you that we are still family!

Unfortunately – generations of Christians, by which I mean approximately 1,500 years of European Christians, did not understand that this was a fight between Jewish siblings over who the Messiah is.

 So European Christians interpreted the gospel of John as a justification for laws within the Holy Roman Empire that prohibited Jews from owning real estate, to the point that Jewish people were forced to go into trade.  And because the Medieval Catholic church decided that charging interest to a fellow Christian was usury, the Holy Roman Empire created a loophole where only Jewish people could loan money for interest — then when Kings decided they didn’t want to pay back their loans, they would incite a violent riot against the Jews for “killing Jesus.”

Which is why the Nazi’s were so angry at the Jewish bankers during the Great Depression, which after centuries of money motivated anti-semitism, led to the Holocaust.

…and also where the “global Jewish cabal” language comes from that led to the ridiculousness of “Jewish Space Lasers.”

Therefore — when reading the gospel of John, we really, really, really, need to understand that when the authors of John use the term “the Jews,” what they really meant was the religious and political authorities who collaborated with Rome to crucify Jesus and those among their own Jewish community, in Syria, who were canceling them.   NOT all Jews in all times and places!

2. The second objectionable way that I was taught this passage was the idea that there was only one right way to be a Christian – which usually meant that My Church was the *Right Church* and all the other Churches were apostate.  And those people who claimed to believe in Jesus, but didn’t go to church…. Well!  They were just right out!

Like – unless you pray the sinners prayer and declare Jesus is your Lord and Savior you’re not really saved 

Which is often said with zero awareness that these were the titles of the Caesar – 

So unless you proclaimed God with the titles of Caesar you must be going to hell – because the gate is so narrowly defined that there is no room for questions, no room for doubts, no room for people of other faiths.

This second interpretation of a very narrow faith is a literalistic interpretation that ignores the largely poetic and metaphorical language of the gospel of John – and ignores the Jesus of the other 3 gospels who healed and spent time with non-Jewish people like the Centurion and the Syro-phonecian woman, whom Jesus said had more faith than anyone he’d ever met 

Honestly, I kind of tended to avoid exclusionary passages like this one until recently:

– as I have watched people who call themselves Christian call compassion “a woke mind virus”

– as our Vice President tried to school the Pope on Just War theory.

– as Hegseth quoted fake Bible verses from movie Pulp Fiction, without even realizing those verses are not in the Bible.

I used to dislike these verses, but now I get it.

The author of John was dealing with Leaders pretending to bring a message from God, who obviously knew nothing about who God is and what God stands for.

The kind of thieves and bandits that John was talking about are those whose version of the “Good News” – the word Gospel means good news – 

Thieves and bandits are the kind of people whose version of the gospel is not good news, for well, anybody but themselves.

Spiritual thieves and bandits are those who come to steal and kill and destroy.

Those who took up a collection from the poor refugee survivors of the destruction of the Temple in 69AD to try to rebuild the Temple in the year 90 were thieves taking advantage of the people.

And those who today are cutting Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid benefits – that we all paid into – so they can give more tax breaks to the rich and fund everlasting war, are thieves and bandits.

Now I think I understand. The authors of John were telling their community that we need to understand the difference between: 

• the Way of Jesus, who came that we might have abundant life 
• and the ways of those who like the Roman Caesars – claim to be our Lord and Savior – but are neither a good leader nor saving anybody but themselves.

I think the author of John, by having Jesus declare himself to be the gate and the shepherd whose voice is familiar to the sheep, is reminding us to compare the voices of others to what Jesus actually said and did.

Because the Jesus that I know gave us his mission statement in the gospel of Luke, chapter 4, verses 18 and 19

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because he has anointed me

        to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

    and recovery of sight to the blind,

        to set free those who are oppressed,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

The kind of Good News that Jesus proclaims 

is good news for the poor and the oppressed.  

It is good news for captives, and disabled people. 

It is good news for those in debt up to their ears – because “the year of the Lord’s favor”  is a direct reference to the Year of Jubilee when all monetary debts were to be forgiven!

I now  believe that what the author of the Gospel of John was saying is that:

We can recognize fake Christians by how well their talking points and actions line up 

– or don’t line up –

With the teachings and actions of Jesus.

People who are not filtering their choices and actions through the gateway of the authentic Jesus aren’t sheep of the shepherd.  They’re wolves pretending to be sheep.

Now does this mean that all the people, including myself, who have ever mis-interpreted scripture are bandits and thieves?

No… We’re human.  We are products of our cultures and our times.

And it’s not easy or without cost to reject a teaching that has been wrong for 1,500 years.

I think intent matters.  And when people of good intent know better, we usually try to do better.

But, friends,  in case you haven’t noticed there are people out there who do not have good intent.

There have always been people who have used religion and spirituality for selfish gain and if that means stealing, and killing and destroying, they’re OK with that.

In United Methodism we use 4 filters to help us discern between the teachings of the shepherd and the teachings of bandits.

• Scripture

• Wisdom Tradition

• Reason/Science

• Spiritual Experience

 

1. Scripture — If I want to know what God’s views are on a topic, the first place to look is in scripture.  Did you know that you can google a Bible story, by just putting a couple key words and “in the Bible” into the search bar and find the actual verse?  In this day and age, it’s super easy to look up various topics in the Bible or to… just for example… check if dialogue from Pulp Fiction is actually in the Bible or not.
2. Tradition – And by tradition, we don’t mean, “the way we’ve always done it around here,” we mean the collected theological and spiritual writings of Christianity.  The idea being that if I have a theological question, probably someone somewhere has also had a similar question and might have something useful to say about it. 

When Pope Leo was explaining Just War Theory and referencing Augustine of Hippo – this is what he was doing – he was referencing the wisdom tradition of the Church.  

Which, by the way, the Pope was being generous in referencing Just War Theory, because as someone who used to be an Evangelical Christian – who generally default to the earliest held positions of the first century church – Vance should have been taught total non-violence.  In the early church soldiers were expected to leave the military after they were baptized, because Jesus didn’t fight back, so neither should we.  Just War Theory was Augustine suggesting that perhaps it’s OK for Christian Political Leaders to defend their cities from attack, but not to make war on others. — Let me know if you would like to know more about Christian perspectives on war and peace…  There’s so  much more wisdom tradition on this subject!

3. Reason – is our next filter for discernment.  I often refer to this one as Science, because the origins of our Wesleyan filters are proto-scientific, Enlightenment era, so they kinda meant science when they said reason. The general idea being that much of the Bible was written in a pre-scientific era – so now that we have germ-theory, we understand why many Kosher laws, like washing your hands before you eat, make sense, and why some of them no longer make sense – like the Deuteronomy 23:12-14 rule that places for bathrooming must be outside the camp, far from the worship space.  Now that we have modern plumbing it’s reasonable to have bathrooms inside the church!  Using Reason as a filter for discernment also means looking at when scripture was written, where it was written, and recognizing the difference between poetry and a factual account.

4. Experience is our final filter for discernment.  What we mean by experience is: in my spiritual experience does this feel like something that Jesus would say or do?  Do I recognize the God who hears my prayers in the talking points and actions of this person claiming to represent God?

To put this all together let’s use these filters to test the idea that Compassion is a woke mind virus.

1.  Scripture –  There are so many passages in scripture that tell us to care for those in need and that God hears the cries of the suffering.  So I see in scripture that Compassion is something God wants for us and from us.
2. Christian Tradition – Within Christian Tradition there are theological arguments that justify a lack of compassion for certain people.  There are several Papal proclamations ranging from Pope Innocent III writing that those who rejected Christ’s message are less than human and therefore it’s OK to be violent towards them, to Popes Nicholas V and Alexander VI, who authorized the seizing of non-Christian lands and the subjugation of “enemies of the faith” which lead to colonization, slavery, and eventually racial superiority.   https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/blog/manifest-destiny/ 

Teachings which are now widely rejected by most Christians, including the current Pope.

 

And, within the Christian Tradition is the concept of sanctuary from harm,  the founding of free Hospital orders, Mother Teresa and other saints, and too many writings to count on the concepts of Grace, Mercy, and loving our neighbors.

1. Reason –  Science has refuted the idea that people of other races are a lesser kind of human.  Science has also confirmed the idea that being Gay and Trans has a genetic component.  So many of the reasons for justifying a lack of compassion towards people who are different are not supported by reason.  And there is no evidence that compassion is caused by a virus or any other micro-organism!
2. Experience – In my spiritual experience, the Jesus that I know looks at me with compassion and expects me to view others with compassion as well.  As a matter of fact – God rarely lets me get away with being judgemental towards others!  As the Lord’s prayer says,  God seems to expect me to forgive others as I have been forgiven.

So, no, given the filters of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience – I do not think that compassion is a woke mind virus from a Christian perspective.

Nor do I think that Vance understands Christian theology better than the Pope.

And I pray that Hegseth actually reads the Bible someday.  

I would recommend the gospel of Luke as a great place to start for anyone.