"But not Christ, I think"

[Our readings were Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; and John 10:11-18.]

Our Gospel reading gives us the familiar metaphorical image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. (It's a metaphor because there is absolutely no Biblical language that indicates that Jesus was ever really a shepherd of sheep.) There is art going back as the Fifth Century of Jesus as a shepherd, and we have all seen at one time or another a painting of Jesus as a shepherd carrying a lamb—all very cute, cuddly, clean, and unrealistic. Being a shepherd was dirty work and claiming to be a “good shepherd” was not an entrée into polite society. It would be about the social equivalent of being a migrant worker today.

If we carry the allegory into today’s world, where many of us have never seen sheep (except, perhaps, in a zoo), and even more of us have never seen a shepherd, who is the shepherd and who is the flock? While it might be tempting to thinking of the clergy as the shepherds, it is still Jesus who is the shepherd. And who is the flock? Who are the “other sheep that do not belong to this fold?” In our world, there are many “others”—from other races, other lands, other faith traditions to whom God has revealed Himself differently. Anyone who has been pushed to the margins is an “other” sheep. They also are Jesus’ sheep and they hear Jesus’ voice and he must bring them also, just as much as us.

In the allegory of the Good Shepherd we see that we are connected to the other “sheep” in the world as well as the shepherd. That connection is described in the passage from John’s letter as one of love.

“We ought to lay down our lives for one another.” Christian love is not just a warm, mushy feeling, it expresses itself in action. For Christians, self-sacrifice should not be extraordinary. John’s challenge isn’t a grand challenge for heroic action, but is rather a statement of how we should live every day of our lives. “Laying down our Lives” doesn’t necessarily mean death, but it can, as the martyrs of the faith attest, even to our day. We lay down our lives when we put others first, when we live for the good of others. How do we claim to receive God’s love and yet withhold our love from others?

I read a story this week that said that a survey said that, in the United States, the support of torturing suspected terrorists for information was higher among more frequent churchgoers than among those who rarely attend church! I would love to ask the respondents to that survey how they align their answers with our duty to love our neighbors as ourselves and the fact the all are our neighbors. In the Episcopal Church, we promise in our Baptismal Covenant to “respect the dignity of every human being.” Are our fingers crossed when we say that?

Some people ask whether torture works. That is the wrong question. Even if torture produced reliable information about terrorist activity, we should reject it. We are people of principle. Our faith and values should now motivate us to lead the world in rejecting torture of any human being, for any reason.

In the movie Kingdom of Heaven, the lead character, Balien of Ibelin asks whether knights being hanged for murdering Muslims are being punished for doing what the Pope would command them to do. The reply he receives is, “But not Christ, I think.”

Would Jesus torture? “Not Christ, I think.”

[For more thoughts on torture, you can go to the National Religious Campaign against Torture.

See also this story from Christianity Today, "5 Reasons Torture is Always Wrong."]