Scripture: Ezekiel 34:1-16; John 10:1-18

“I am the good shepherd.”

-- John 10:11 & 14

In our series of sermons on John we have been meditating on the symbols that the Gospel gives to point us to life. So far the symbols have all been stories with a deeper meaning. The raising of Lazarus, the restoring of sight to a man born blind, the healing of a cripple, the talking to a Samaritan woman, and the changing of water into wine have all been symbolic narratives that point to the Glory of God in Jesus Christ. Today we have a symbolic discourse, and an image that is not a narrative but a metaphor. Jesus is like a good shepherd.

The discourse begins not with the metaphor of the shepherd but of the gate or door. Jesus is the gate by which the sheep go in and out of the sheepfold. This is a compact metaphor for the fact that those who follow Jesus will be led into the sheepfold of abundant life through the proper, authorized gate, and not be involved with the thieves and robbers who try to break in by climbing over the wall. There is a right way in, through Jesus, and there is a wrong way, over the wall with the thieves and robbers. Who are these thieves and robbers? They are the rival Christian groups that challenge the claims of the community of this Gospel to be the one, true sheepfold of the one Good Shepherd.

The metaphor of the gate/door comes into being like this: Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd who will lead you through the proper door, indeed, I am the door.” We can hear more than echoes of the struggle within earliest Christianity over the proper understanding of who Jesus is and what a right relationship with him might be. That controversy goes on today, even more than in those early times! We cannot avoid controversy; Jesus himself warned that he had come to bring not peace but a sword and that members of the same household would find themselves at loggerheads. John does not hesitate to call his opposition “thieves and robbers,” who lead the sheep astray, away from the door of the sheepfold of life, that is, away from Jesus himself.

The dominant metaphor therefore is not the door but the Shepherd. The door is the result of a development and concentration of the shepherd metaphor. The Shepherd is the dominant image. Twice Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd;” the first time he explains this claim by saying, “I have come that they may have life and have it to overflowing” (vs. 10), and the second time by saying, “I know my own and my own know me…” and both statements are qualified by “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (vs. 11, 15).” It is the death of Jesus on the Cross, that makes him the Good Shepherd. He dies rather than abandon the sheep to their predators.

The image of the shepherd is deeply imbedded in the culture of the Bible. In the time of Jesus the literal shepherds were known not for their benign caring but for their thieving, cowardly ways. They stole sheep, fleeced sheep, abandoned them to predators and rustlers, and were assumed to practice bestiality. I knew briefly and at a distance some Yak herders in Tibet and a more rascally crew it is hard to imagine. The very first night they stole one of our expedition’s latrine texts, and if we had not had Sherpa guards all night after that they would have stolen all the other tents from over us while we slept. That is why John emphasizes that Jesus is not just like a shepherd but that he is that unique case, the Good Shepherd.

Shepherds were assumed to be thieves, liars and self-serving thugs, so what an act of unconscious humor it was when the governments of those days presented themselves as the Shepherd of the People. Pharaoh traditionally held two objects to symbolize his rule, a shepherd’s crook to symbolize care of the people and a flail to symbolize the scourging of his enemies. Everyone knew, however, that the crook meant the fleecing of the people and the flail the crushing (crucifixion) of anyone who dared to try to be a Good Shepherd. Things have not changed; to this day crooked shepherds are everywhere, crooks with crooks claiming to be good shepherds, of our pensions, our policies and our people. To all of them, and to us, Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd,” the rest are thieves and robbers.

The first claim to be the Good Shepherd promises abundant life. If you enroll as a sheep in his flock and persevere in following him, you will find abundant life. The second claim is that enrollment in that flock comes because he knows who are his own people and we know we are his own people. Here is the mystery of faith.  We all want abundant life; that desire is the driving force of everything we do and are. Only the deeply sick fail to long for life in its fullness. The mildly sick, which is most of us, long for abundant life, and therefore long to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd calling us to himself. Some of us believe we hear that voice and are enrolled in that flock already, others have not heard it yet but keep listening intently, and many of us do not believe that there is a voice to be heard at all. Why is there this difference among people? I do not know. What I do know is that there is a voice of the Good Shepherd, and I think I have heard it on occasion, and the sweetness of that sound surpasses the most beautiful chords of all the world’s music, and even that sweetest sound of all, the voice of the earthly beloved calling to us to come to her/him. 

John says of the Good Shepherd, “When he leads forth all of his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers (vs4-5).”

Amen.