“The Father and I are one” (Jo. 10:30).
Easter is a season, not just a day: fifty days, in fact, that take us from the Day of Resurrection through the Feast of Pentecost. The origin of the season lies in the celebration of baptism that is part of the Easter festival: the newly baptized, who had prepared to receive the sacrament during Lent, returned in the weeks that followed in order to “unpack” the meaning of their profession of faith, and the meaning of the sacred rites they had experienced.
The early Church called this time of reflection “mystagogy”: that is, an attempt to peer into the mystery of God. “Mystagogy” resembles the word “pedagogy,” or the art of teaching, except here what is taught concerns God. We speak of this teaching as a mystery because God is unique. God cannot be categorized as part of a larger set because there is none other like him. God is sui generis, his own thing. When we speak of God and the things of God we speak in approximations, knowing that God is still a mystery, no matter what we say.
God’s relationship with us is also unique because of God’s unique nature, and for the newly baptized Christians, this relationship with God was the heart of mystagogy. Think for a moment of how our Prayer Book uses the word “mystery.” It talks at Epiphany about “the mystery of the Word made flesh”: Jesus incarnate in the world; also at Easter about the “paschal mystery” of Jesus’ dying and rising again. “Therefore we proclaim the mystery of faith: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again,” we say in the familiar eucharistic prayer, once again unpacking the nature of our faith. We even talk about the Church itself as “that wonderful and sacred mystery”: a reminder that the mystery of our relationship with God is tied up with the community of faith, the body of which Christ is the head.
So, Easter gives us time to reflect on our faith; and our Gospel reading today, on Good Shepherd Sunday, is in keeping with the mystagogical character of the season. Jesus is in Jerusalem for the feast of Dedication, the celebration of Hanukkah, that is; and there, while walking in the temple, he picks up the thread of his discourse on the shepherd and the sheep that he had begun a couple of months before at the feast of Tabernacles. He’s being questioned by the religious authorities, who are looking for a weak spot.
The reason they do not believe, Jesus says, is because they do not belong to his sheep. “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish” (Jo. 10: 27-28). Jesus has a firm grasp on the flock, and no one can snatch them away. “What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one” (Jo. 10:29-30).
Our reading brings us to the expression of a profound faith: the mystery of who God is, and the mystery of the relationship we have with God. First: God himself. Jesus is one with the Father, as our Gospel says; the perfect expression of who God is. Jesus Christ “is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), as St. Paul says in Colossians. The love that shows forth in Jesus Christ, in his death and resurrection, is how we come to know the character of God; how we move from guesswork about God to faith in the one who reveals himself. “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jo. 14:9), as Jesus himself says to Philip a bit later in John’s Gospel.
Second, the mystery of our relationship with God. The Good Shepherd will not allow the flock to be stolen, to be snatched out of his hand. Because we share in his death and resurrection, through our baptism and through receiving his body and blood in the eucharist, we share in his life. “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish” (Jo. 10: 28). It’s a mystery: the mystery of faith, that the church invites us to reflect on more deeply each Eastertide.
Our celebration of confirmation today gives us the opportunity to reaffirm this faith: to enter into the mystery ourselves. Baptized members of the church will receive the laying on of hands with prayer, for the gift of the Holy Spirit to enter more deeply into relationship with Christ. At the same time, each of us will have the chance to join in the reaffirmation. We have faith in the one who stands in our midst, risen from the dead. It’s a mystagogical moment: an entry for us into the mystery of Christ’s dying and rising, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. May the Spirit lead us deeper into the mystery of God’s love in Jesus Christ, and into everlasting life in him.