John 10:11-18
I spent part of my medical training at Roswell Park Institute in Buffalo, one of the oldest cancer centers in the country. I had a very close friend, a couple of years older than me, who had finished his training and stayed on as a member of the faculty. We would get into some great discussions over a beer now and then. I still touch base with him every year during the Christmas season.
My friend was and is an agnostic. Not an atheist, not a believer; he simply doesn’t care. For him, even in his old age, this is the only life you can be sure of, so live it as best you can. That’s not bad advice for anyone. But here’s the thing. Jesus said that he is the way, the truth and the life and no one can come to the father except through him. Saint Peter said, “there is no other name by which we are saved.” And for two thousand years people have given up their lives in the attempt to bring the good news to the world. My friend, by the way, married a nice Irish Catholic girl with two aunts who were nuns, and he spent many years accompanying her and their children to church. Even after she passed away, he continued to send in the contribution to the collection plate.
So what do we do with my friend? Can I hope that Jesus will raise him up on the last day? My friend doesn’t believe, and I doubt he ever will; and Jesus seems to have made belief in him the condition for salvation; certainly, that’s what Paul taught. I suspect we all have dear ones who are like my friend.
Today’s gospel has Jesus calling himself the Good Shepherd. The way much of John’s gospel is arranged, Jesus works a sign; people ask him what that is all about; then he tells them. The sign he worked before the good shepherd explanation was that of the man blind from birth. You probably remember -- the Pharisees kept trying to get him to deny that Jesus had cured him, but he stuck to his guns and got thrown out of the synagogue. That’s when Jesus finds him and asks if he believes in the Son of Man? The man says, “Who is that?” and Jesus replies “You’re looking at him”. As you can tell, If I had written John’s gospel it would have been much shorter.
But the point is that Jesus calls the blind man into his flock, but the last step is an act of faith, not faith in some abstract concept, not even becoming a member of the church, which didn’t really exist when this event was to have taken place. And Jesus goes on to talk about other sheep that do not belong to this fold; these also must I lead, and they will hear my voice”.
A lot of the time we are accustomed to thinking that you have to be a member of the church to be in Christ’s flock. Vatican II allowed the possibility that non-Catholic Christians who are baptized are in some sense part of the church. John Paul II emphasized that God’s covenant with the Jewish people wasn’t just snatched away. The theologian Karl Rahner invented the idea of “anonymous Christians” -- people who didn’t know Christ through no fault of their own, but tried to live as best they could given what they did know. And finally the theologian von Balthazar wrote a book entitled “Dare we hope that all will be saved?” to which his answer was yes -- so you don’t have to read the book now. And I think we all hope this, but yet if everyone can be saved, what is the Church for?
One great answer is that the Church is not there to save people, primarily. It is there to show that the salvation Jesus offers is already present, already at work in the world. We can only be saved because of Jesus’ sacrifice, true, and when you look at the church, warts and all, you see the evidence of that. And at the bottom of our souls is a hope for some unconstricted good that meets the hunger we all have in our beings. In our minds we desire truth, we are hungry for that as well. And we all long to leave our loneliness and know each other as we know ourselves. And Christ is the answer to all these longings. And for those who have not yet met Christ, their task is to be faithful to that hunger for good, for truth, for unity, which only Jesus can satisfy.
My friend has faults, but nothing you wouldn’t find in many of our fellow parishioners. But he values truth, he seeks the good, he loves his fellow human beings, especially his family. And I pray for him every day that on this side or the other side of the grave, he will meet the only one who is the good shepherd, who is seeking those not of his flock.
