Professor Luke Timothy Johnson (no relation) speaks of the very early Christians experiencing what he calls "cognitive dissonance." He defines this as the tension we feel when our experience does not match our convictions. An abused child, he says as as example, feels cognitive difference due to the tension created when his convictions -- parents are good, they love you -- and his experience -- my parents are beating me.

The first Christians experienced cognitive dissonance. Paul says in 1 Cor. 1:23: "we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles." It was a stumbling block to Jews because their convictions told them that Jesus was cursed. Deuteronomony 21.23 says, "anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse." Jesus hung on a tree, He must be under God's curse. For Greeks it was foolishness because Jesus' manner of death certainly did not match what they expected of a "son of God."

And yet, their experience told them Jesus was alive! He was like a magnetic power, an energy field living in their lives. How could one cursed by God live again? So the early Christians felt cognitive dissonance, a tension between their convictions -- Jesus is cursed -- and their experience -- Jesus is alive. No one likes to live with cognitive dissonance -- it must be resolved. But how for these early Christians?

Professor Johnson points out that one can resolve cognitive dissonance in one of two ways: either in favor of the conviction -- "My parents beat me, parents are loving, therefore I must be deserving of this beating" -- or in favor of the experience -- "My parents are beating me, I am not deserving of this beating, therefore parents must be capable of being not-loving." The early Christians resolved their cognitive dissonance in favor of their experience of the resurrection. Jesus must be blessed, not cursed, by God.

They then began to read their Old Testament with new eyes, looking for ways in which Jesus was to be found there. They found many examples. One we encounter in today's reading of John 10:1-21, where Jesus says, "I am the gate for the sheep" and "I am the Good Shepherd," along with Ezekiel 34, where God condemns the shepherds of Israel (their kings and religious leaders) and promises to be Israel's shepherd Himself. It is easy to see how the early Christians saw Jesus all over this Ezekiel passage. "For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out." Read that and then hear Jesus say, "I am the Good Shepherd" and the connection is easy to make and the cognitive dissonance begins to melt away. Jesus was there in the scriptures all along. Jesus is not cursed. This is all somehow part of God's plan. The punishment Jesus endured must be for, not His own sins, but for the sins of the world.

"I was blind, but NOW I see."