Easter4C22.  Acts of the Apostles 13:14, 43-52.   Because of the success of Paul and Barnabas in making converts from among the Jews, the Jewish establishment “were filled with jealousy and with violent abuse contradicted what Paul” was saying.  Because those Jews were rejecting Christ as their Messiah, Paul and Barnabas invited the Gentiles to accept Jesus as their Savior.  A persecution was stirred up and Paul and Barnabas were expelled from Antioch.  Though rejected by some but accepted by many, “the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit” that they had served God faithfully in Antioch.

John 10:27-30.  To be Jesus’ sheep means to choose to draw life from the Holy Spirit and to reject being creatures who live from the life of this world.  In John 17:14 Jesus said, “I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.”   Jesus’ sheep are attentive to his life-giving direction of our lives.                         The ways of this world are death-giving and destructive.  Following Jesus as his sheep gives us eternal life and we “shall never perish.”  God the Father’s grace enables us to resist the death-dealing yet powerful attractions of this world.

Psalm 100.    “We are his people, the sheep of his flock.”  “Know that the Lord is God; he made us, his we are; his people, the flock he tends.”

Revelation 7:9, 14b-17.  John the Evangelist “had a vision of a great multitude which no one could count” who had “survived the great time of distress” or persecution under the Romans.  What was good or meaningful about their suffering?  Their suffering, like that of Jesus, was the result of being a loving people whose love was not only rejected but was the reason for their being hated, tortured and abused. The world sees love that is not self-serving to be repulsive.   A self-giving love is viewed as an attack against the underlying foundation of what it means to people of this world.  This world makes suffering the price of being God’s self-giving people.  Jesus, whose sacrifice of himself on the cross was love, extends his love to those who have joined their suffering to his.  In his Almightiness, he shepherds those who suffer with him.  He calls upon us not to be so comfortable in the daily routine of this world, in which God is given no role, that we are anesthetized or sedated into avoiding any suffering that Christian love might bring on.  Physical exercise has an expression or saying: “No pain; no gain.”  That is often true of Christian love.