Laying Down Our Lives

Homily for April 26, 2015 (4th Sunday of Easter)
Acts 4:8-12; Psalm 118; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-12

Laying Down Our Lives

One of the common challenges that people make while learning the English language is the difference between “lay” and “lie.”  For example, while one lays a baby in her crib for a nap or lays a document on a desk, when he wants to settle in to “binge watch” Season 2 of House of Cards he lies down on the couch.

Yet as the Good Shepherd, Jesus spoke repeatedly about laying down his life for his sheep, almost as if his life was something external to him.  In one sense, that was true:  he lived as if his life was not his own.  In obedience to his Father’s will, Jesus opened himself to persecution and became “the stone rejected by the builders.”  In the process, he became “the cornerstone” of a new community and movement that we know as the church.

At the same time, however, Jesus at all times had possession of his life.  As he noted in today’s passage from his Good Shepherd discourse in John 10:

“This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own.  I have the power to lay it down, and power to take it up again.”

Like the Son of God, we are God’s children and our lives are not totally our own.  We have come from our Creator and we will one day pass from this life to eternity, hopefully dwelling in the loving presence of the One who brought us into being.

Yet like Jesus, we also have the power while on earth to lay down our lives for others in response to our vocations.  With graduation season looming we will soon be reminded of the many ways that parents lay down their lives for their children to support their educations:  working extra hours or extra jobs, foregoing vacations or newer cars, and ferrying them to various extracurricular activities.

Teachers similarly lay down their lives for their students, typically working long hours with relatively modest compensation and in some cases trying to overcome the effects of various family or social dysfunctions.  First responders—police officers, firefighters, EMT’s and others—head into natural and human-made disasters at the very time that others are fleeing the scene. 

God has also given us the freedom and power to lay down our lives for other values and other things:  the latest and most sophisticated electronic gadgets (even if what we have works perfectly well); whatever the fashion trends and ads tell us that we “must” have (even if it will languish in our closets a year from now); the upper rungs of the corporate ladder (even if we have to step on others to get there); or, as our responsorial psalm warns us, political allegiances (even when they prove to be fleeting).

Jesus laid down his life for us and our world.  How will we respond? +