Sermon for April 26, 2026
Easter 4 A
John 10:1-10; Acts 2:42-47
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
I hiked with my fellow pilgrims on a hillside in Ireland last spring, walking along a trail with a large stone fence to my right. It stood almost as high as my chest, about an arm’s length wide, and it seems to snake on forever in front of me. Every now and then it would meet another stone fence at a right angle, each one doing its part to turn the land itself into a patchwork quilt—the handiwork of shepherds long ago who made these sheepfolds so their animals would have safe places to graze.
We were visitors there; it was the sheep who called the place home. Sheep everywhere, freely grazing within the safety of their stone fences. I watched six sheep marching single file. They looked like wooly ants at first, they were so far away; but we were walking toward each other on the same trail, and soon enough we were close enough to stop and look at each other. I pulled out my phone to take a picture and said something to them, which gave the sheep all the reason they needed to turn aside, find another trail, and run quickly away from my strange voice and the odd contraption in my hand. I meant no harm, of course, but the sheep didn’t know that. When they came face to face with a stranger speaking with a strange voice, for all they knew I could have been a thief or a bandit. Anyway, they knew that I was definitely not their shepherd.
Sheep and shepherd, thief and bandit, sheepfold and gate—Jesus sewed together these figures of speech to make a point about how to find “abundant life”. He borrowed this imagery from the rich metaphors of the Old Testament, especially Ezekiel 34, where the prophet criticizes the religious leaders of his day, comparing them to shepherds who have not fed their sheep but instead fed themselves at their sheep’s expense. They were acting more like thieves and bandits than shepherds. So, through the words of Ezekiel, the Lord himself promises to be the shepherd who will search and sort, rescue and gather, feed and give rest.
Why does Jesus draw on this kind of imagery at this point in John’s gospel? Well, he has just given sight to a man born blind, and done it on the Sabbath (the day of rest). As great as this was for the formerly blind man, the Pharisees (who were the religious leaders of his community) were not happy about it. They can’t see past what they believed was the reason for his blindness—insisting that he was a sinner, and so was Jesus for not following their rules about observing the Sabbath. To be fair, Jesus’ disciples had also believed the man was born blind because of his sin, and Jesus had to teach them a different way of seeing, too. After all, it can be really hard to change your mind, even when the evidence is right in front of you.
This particular group of Pharisees won’t accept the evidence, though, so rather than embracing the goodness of the gift Jesus gave to the formerly blind man, they kicked him out of the synagogue. In this case they were behaving like the religious leaders whom Ezekiel had critiqued centuries earlier—they were like shepherds who do not care for their sheep. Ironically, their lack of care gives the man an opportunity to turn toward Jesus, and put his faith in Jesus to be his shepherd. He hears the voice of Jesus, who leads him to become part of a whole new community of disciples.
So that is one way we can look at the “figure of speech” Jesus used, and learn from it. Because whenever we find ourselves in the place of the man born blind—when the “thieves and bandits” of the world would rather keep us from seeing and experiencing true and abundant life—that’s when we can turn to Jesus, and listen for his voice to lead us into a caring community of faith.
How do these spiritual “thieves and bandits” operate? Who are they? They are whatever tries to steal your connection from a caring community, and make you feel like you’re isolated and alone. They’re whatever tries to steal your attention from the things that really matter in life, and that distract you from the things that give you a sense of meaning, purpose, love, or hope.
I recently heard a fascinating interview with Ben Sasse, who was a U.S. Senator from Nebraska; before that he was the president of Midland Lutheran College, and after that he was the president of the University of Florida. Sadly, he has terminal pancreatic cancer, but even in his suffering he’s finding gifts that God is giving him; this is alluded to in the title given to the interview: “How Ben Sasse is Living Now That He Is Dying”. [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/opinion/ben-sasse-death-pancreatic-cancer.html] He’s reflecting on how to have abundant life with the very limited time he has left. One point he makes is about the impact of where you focus your attention.
For example, there’s a common question people asked him about artificial intelligence when he was on the road giving speeches. They’d ask: “Do you think A.I. is going to bring heaven, or is A.I. going to bring hell?” And the answer he gave is “Yes”. Both. Sasse recognizes that, as he puts it, “A.I. is going to be [impacting] human activity and behavior at warp speed for good and for ill. A lot of the stuff that we’ve been good at, we’re going to get more of it faster, cheaper and more broadly distributed. But a lot of what’s horrible about human addictions and distractions, we’re also going to get a lot more of it faster, cheaper, and more ubiquitous. …The grand divide that’s coming [between the good and the bad effects of A.I.] is about intentionality and what you do with your affections and these supertools.”
So, if we take what Ben Sasse is saying about Artificial Intelligence and look at it through the lens of Jesus talking about sheep and shepherds, we can ask ourselves, will artificial intelligence be like a shepherd, or will A.I. be like a thief and bandit? And the answer is “Yes”. Both. Perhaps doctors will use A.I. to do scientific research that will bring sight to people who’ve been born blind? Maybe they’ll use it to find a cure for the kind of pancreatic cancer that Ben Sasse will die from. That’s how A.I. can be like a shepherd, used intentionally for better and faster research in service of health care and making human life better.
And at the same time, there are bad actors out there. How about all the scammers who send us spam emails and text messages and phone calls, trying to trick us into giving them our credit card and bank information? We’ve all been affected by that already. They’ll use A.I. to sound more convincing, to get more sophisticated at making us believe their scams. That’s how A.I. can be like a thief and bandit, used intentionally for fraud in the service of some people getting rich at the expense of their victims.
Whether artificial intelligence will be used for good, life-improving purposes, or for bad and harmful purposes, there is still something that it cannot do, at least not on its own, and that is to create lives of meaning and purpose. Meaning and purpose is what Jesus offers by promising that he will be “the shepherd of the sheep”. His focus, and attention, and affection is always on our behalf, even to the point of giving his life on the cross for our forgiveness, and being raised again for our salvation. Jesus will always be our shepherd as he “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out”.
He knows each one of us, he knows the gifts the Holy Spirit has given us, and he forms us into a Church, where together, in Jesus’ name, we can build the life-giving connections we need to have with other people; and together we can work on the worthwhile challenges that need to be addressed in our community. This is what the earliest Christians were doing right from the start; we heard about them this morning in our first reading from Acts 2, building life-giving connections and addressing worthwhile challenges. As we listen for the voice of Christ our shepherd, he leads us to join him in those things as he continues to fulfill his purpose for the world: “I came [Jesus says] that they may have life and have it abundantly”. Amen.