One of the earliest things we learn
is how to tell things apart. This begins long before we ever step into a
classroom, before Kindergarten or any kind standardized testing. We learn easy
things first: this is mom and this is dad; this is red, this is blue; this is
cold, this is hot. We need to know these things to stay safe, and just to get
by in the world. You need to understand how thing A is different from thing B
in order to understand anything particular about things A or B. Then, as we get
older the distinctions grow wider and wider. By the time we are adults there seem
to be infinite variations on a theme. Creativity is born out of seeing these distinct
possibilities. In one famous—perhaps apocryphal—story, Abraham Lincoln once
tried to close the US
patent office because he believed everything that could be invented had been
invented. The following 150 years have told a very different story.
Making
distinctions is crucial to invention, safety and critical thinking, so we
tend to think categories are universally good. However, there are limits to their helpfulness. On
moral issues, making distinctions can be downright tricky: what is right or
wrong, “good” or “bad?” In making distinctions of judgment we need to be
careful that we don’t confuse our view of a thing with ultimate truth. It’s one
thing to argue over the greatness of sports team but quite another to caricature
based on race, gender, or religious beliefs. For instance, we may call a warm
day “good” or a blizzard “bad,” but that is a very different judgment than to have
positive thoughts about a woman because of her race, or negative thoughts about
a man because of his beliefs.
Jesus
gives us a cautionary example in talking about the Good Shepherd. Who is the
Good Shepherd? The one who guards the sheep, but also the one who does not make distinctions within the flock. Jesus is the shepherd who protects and saves every sheep. And more to the point, Jesus values
his own life only to the extent that he is willing to give it up for the sake
of the flock. The sheep are all the same. One shepherd, one flock; and the
flock is broader than you might think. Jesus says that he has other sheep that
do not belong to this fold. These are not “white” sheep or “black” sheep; they
are just sheep. No divisions, nothing to make them distinct. Sheep alone.
In
fact, in the entirety of this John 10 account, sheep are never mentioned in the
singular. Never once does Jesus separate us into individuals who receive
according to our own goodness or badness. We are anonymous but communal.
It
is we who have made all sorts of suggestions about who is worthy to be a member
of the flock. It is we who have taken all manner of stances about a person’s
“goodness” or “badness.” These may very well be necessary judgments to keep us
safe, but Jesus isn’t talking about life as it is down here. He is talking about
life as it one day will be; he is talking about not just an ideal but a reality
beyond the veil of our lives.
Jesus
names a reality—he is the Good Shepherd, we are sheep—and he doesn’t care if we
are big sheep or little sheep, ugly sheep or pretty sheep, sheep that are black
or white, male or female, rich or poor.
The
kingdom of God rejects distinctions, because our
primary identity is the body of Christ; not our names, not our memories, not
our relationships or our identities.
So
if we believe this is true—that the kingdom of God rejects distinctions, things
that separate us from one another, traits that we consciously or unconsciously
consider “good” or “bad”—if the kingdom of God is a place where we are united
as one flock—one body—then we do a poor job whenever we take sides down here. Our
prejudice may take many forms. It may be biases along racial, gender, or class
lines, but it is not only these. Anytime we believe ourselves to be of innately
greater worth to God than another person we puff ourselves up as if trying to
show the Good Shepherd that we’re the bigger sheep.
Notice, please,
that Jesus doesn’t care.
This past week the
Washington Capitols eliminated the Boston Bruins in game 7 of their opening
round series in the Stanley Cup playoffs on a goal by Joel Ward, a forward who
happens to be a black man playing a predominantly white man’s game. Within
minutes, Twitter had erupted with racially charged epithets aimed at Ward.
It’s easy to
condemn the people behind the tweets, and rightfully so. They displayed their
ignorance, and worse still some of them remain defensive of their posts, trying
to justify that “everyone was saying the same thing.” But behind the vulgarity,
there is something in this circumstance that tells us about how we see the
world. All of us distinguish between “us” and “them.” Why is it that the first
gut reaction we have to Ward is that he is a black man? Because he is a
minority in that sport? Perhaps. Nobody, as far as I know, mocked Ward for
being from Ontario,
or for his stocky build, or for wearing the number “42”. Instead, they saw two
things—he plays for the opposing team and he’s black—and from those two details
they were armed with enough previously learned prejudice to say some awful
things. We all have our own categories for “us” and “them”. It is our
associations with a thing—in this case, race and sports team affiliation—that
cause us to fall off the boat.
This is important for
us because we tend to ascribe to Jesus the same kinds of biases we feel
ourselves. Isn’t it funny how the Jesus we believe in dislikes the
same people we dislike? The reality, however, is that Jesus defies making even
the simplest distinctions. Jew or Greek? Slave or free? Male or female?
Neither, says Jesus. Why? Because those things we have created to separate one
person from another are not applicable to the kingdom of God.
Jesus doesn’t care if you are black or white, athletic or uncoordinated. That
much should be obvious.
But what should
also be obvious is that we do the kingdom
of God a serious
disservice when we continue to form judgments based on these arbitrary
characteristics. If you think less of a person because they are short or tall,
skinny or fat, old or young, black, white, Hispanic, or Asian, or because they
are a man or a woman, then how can you have any hope of experiencing hints of
God’s kingdom on earth?
Jesus came to
break down those walls that separate us one from another, and Jesus died for
you and for me and for all of us that can’t help but continue to make
distinctions between those things that are good and those things that are bad.
Jesus, thankfully, doesn’t care. We are his flock—one flock, one shepherd.