FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (2025)

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (2025)

Readings:

Acts of the Apostles 13:14, 43-52

Psalms 100:1-3, 5

Revelation 7:9, 14-17

John 10:27-30

Our first reading takes us about halfway into the Acts of the Apostles.  After a brief introduction of Paul and Barnabas, Paul gives a teaching on the history of salvation, appealing to the Israelites to remember God’s graciousness to them “during their sojourn in  the land of Egypt,’ and highlighting the names of Abraham, David, and the many prophets raised up on their behalf.  The Jewish people are also linked to the demands that Jesus be put to death, “even though they could find no evidence for a death sentence.  But the one they arranged to have killed “was raised up [by God and] did not see corruption.”  Paul, a man with no imposing demeanor, was, nevertheless, an excellent speaker, so much so that the Jews invited them both to come back on the next Sabbath and to continue teaching them.  But the second Sabbath did not go as well as the first.  “When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and with violent abuse contradicted what Paul had said.”  

What happens next is not insignificant, and it represents one of he most significant movements in the early church – the reaching out by the early Church to the Gentile population.  In not the most sensitive way, Paul and Barnabas speak out boldly: “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, but since you reject it and condemn yourselves as unworthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.”  The “Gentiles were delighted when they heard this,” but the Jews were less than impressed.  They “incited the women of prominence… and the leading men of the city [to] stir up a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their territory.”  In spite of the difficulties they encountered it would appear that Paul and Barnabas were pleased with their teaching, for the Scriptures tell us that “they were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.”  The passage from Acts gives us a window into the early Church, a situation which no doubt was repeated over, and over, again.

The Acts recounts some of the most momentous events in Christian history (Pentecost, the Lord’s Ascension), as well as describing the extreme difficulties of spreading the gospel (the stoning of the deacon Stephen, where the murderers “lay their cloaks at the feet of a man named Saul”).  In the first eight chapters of Acts, Saul was intent on “destroying the Church,” and all those who believed in Jesus as the Christ.  In Acts chapter 9, however, Saul undergoes his miraculous conversion and is baptized a Christian, and from that point forward there is no separating the growth of the Church from the man now called Paul, the Paul of our first reading.  It is Barnabas who introduces Paul to the apostles, calming their legitimate fears about everything they have heard about Saul.  Saul becomes Paul, and because of God’s direct intervention, Paul is thought of as an apostle (the “least of the apostles,” Paul writes), and with Peter he becomes one of the most significant (and prolific – his many letters) personalities of the early Church.  I am not sure if the Church could have become what it was without Paul’s dramatic conversion.

Conversion involves a significant change, and for Paul that meant a movement from being a person who loathes Christians, to a person who recognizes in Jesus God’s only Son.  In the language of this Good Shepherd Sunday, Paul changes his flock status.  It was the voice of God which Saul heard so clearly at the time of his conversion.  It was his communing with God’s voice which guided his entire life.  It was God’s voice that he conveyed in his letters to the church’s that he founded, and it is God’s voice, the voice of a loving shepherd, that should guide our entire being.  God’s voice is gentle, and kind, and compassionate, and He leads us to the promised eternal life in spite of any of the obstacles life might have to offer.  God’s voice broke through the voices that Saul was originally listening to in order to make Paul a foundation stone of the Church.

All of us who identify as Christian are part of that “great multitude” in our reading from Revelation, and we stand before God’s throne with the innumerable throngs from “every nation, race, people, and tongue,” confident that our Good Shepherd will lead us through whatever “distress” comes our way.  It is that Good Shepherd who “will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes,” and the Shepherd will lead us “to springs of life-giving water” which will bestow on us the promised “eternal life.”  We are God’s people, the sheep of his flock.”  Let’s make sure that others can recognize us as such!