Good Shepherd Sunday - Acts 9: 36-43 / Psalm 23 / Revelation 7: 9–17 / John 10: 22–30
This
is the homily given at Flohr’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) in
McKnightstown, Pennsylvania on Sunday, May 11, 2025 by Fr. Gene Tucker, Interim
Pastor.
“CONECTEDNESS”
(Homily texts: Acts 9: 36–43 & John 10: 22–30)
Ever since I was a very young boy, I
have been fascinated by – and in love with – steam locomotives and railroads in
general.
I am old enough to remember these great
big machines pulling passenger and freight trains across the Nebraska prairies.
(It is gratifying to know that, nowadays, there are many younger people who
can’t remember steam engines in service on the railroads of the country, but
who are fascinated by them – as I am – and who are learning to care for,
operate and maintain them.)
A steam engine – or a diesel locomotive
these days – has no real purpose without something to pull. They might be wonderful
to look at in a museum, or, they might be something to be admired from a
technical standpoint. But the purpose of a locomotive is to move things. Freight
cars and passenger cars can’t move themselves (unless – in the case of
passenger cars – they are self-propelled somehow). So there is a symbiotic
relationship between the source of the power to move things and the things that
are being moved. One is dependent upon the other for its purpose and
usefulness.
It strikes me that this is a good way
to view the relationship between God (yes, that God whom Jesus Christ called
His Father), Jesus Christ, and those who have come into relationship with the
Father, the Son (and the Holy Spirit). Simply put, we might say that God the
Father is the designer of the power to change things. Sort of like the designer
of a great locomotive. (Hope this does justice to God the Father’s power and
care for the world and the people in it!)
It is this God who sent Jesus Christ to
be among us, to show us the way to God. In our Gospel reading, appointed for
this Good Shepherd Sunday, we read our Lord’s statement, “I and the Father are
one.” Meaning, of course, that the Father and the Son are connected. If we can
make further use of our railroad analogy, we might say that the Son mirrors the
design and the will of the Father, in much the same way that a locomotive
mirrors the will and the design of its designer. No wonder then, that in John’s
Gospel account, we read that the Son says that all that the Father has given
Him is that which He has made known to us. (See John 15:15b.)
One-ness with the Father and the Son makes
it possible for God’s will and God’s ways to be known in the world. So it is
that we hear the account of Peter’s raising of Tabitha (Dorcas) in our first
reading this morning. Having come into a
relationship with the Son, Peter’s connectedness to Jesus enables God’s power
and God’s will to be known in the world. Recall that one of the markers of
God’s activity is God’s ability to create and to re-create. In this case, God’s
power is known in bringing Dorcas back to life again. Peter’s one-ness with the
Lord makes God’s power manifest.
You and I, as modern-day disciples,
follow in a great train (there’s that railroad imagery again!) of the Apostles,
the great Saints and Martyrs, who have borne witness to God’s ability to create
and to re-create. God’s power to make all things new destroys the ways of the
Evil One, whose intent is to separate us from God, the God who is the source of
all life and all that is honorable and true.
Only by maintaining our connection to
God the Father through God the Son, may we be agents of God’s creative and re-creative
power in the world.
AMEN.
