“I am the Good Shepherd” we hear – and what springs to mind? For me, from my years in Sunday school, no doubt, it’s colouring sheets of Jesus holding a cuddly sheep. Maybe, if the budget stretched to it, you got to stick cotton wool on the sheep – oh yeah!
Well, this morning we are going to discover that there is much more to this than cotton wool and colouring sheets.
Firstly, let’s turn to the passage, and I think we would find it helpful to see the passage in its context. So, let’s turn to page xxx in our Bibles. So often we encounter these passages on their own, particularly when, as we’re following the lectionary, we find ourselves jumping around quite a bit – after all, last week we were in Luke’s Gospel, in the upper room with the disciples on that resurrection day. Now we find ourselves in the Gospel of John, we’ve rewound about 6 months, and we are in Jerusalem where Jesus has been attending the Feast of Tabernacles – the Jewish equivalent of the American Thanksgiving celebration – but he has gone there in secret – we see that at the beginning of chapter 7. Then we see that he teaches in the temple courts, where he amazes the crowd with what he says. What kind of person teaches like this, they ask each other. They’re still reeling from the the last time he was in Jerusalem when he healed the lame man at the Bethesda pool – on the sabbath, of all times. Here some of them are beginning to wonder if he might be the Christ, the promised messiah. Of course, the Pharisees and chief priests don’t like this one bit, so they try to have him arrested – that all happens in Chapter 7 – but in Chapter 8 the debate continues and it ends up with some of them trying to stone Jesus, because of the claims he makes about himself. The following chapter, the tension ratchets up even more as Jesus does something unacceptable – he heals a man born blind, on which day? The sabbath. The Pharisees launch an investigation into the healing, dragging in the man who had been healed as well as his parents, and the man born blind makes this quite frankly beautiful statement, “One rthing I know, I was blind but now I see. … Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” This leads onto more debate with the Pharisees, this time about spiritual blindness – and, finally, in chapter 10, Jesus begins to talk with them about the Shepherd and his flock. The reason I’ve gone through all of that with you is that it helps us to see that although we see this passage and the image of Jesus as Good Shepherd as one that is primarily comforting, actually it has an edge to it that we may miss.
So, Jesus begins by telling what is basically a parable – a parable about sheep and two different figures, the thief and the shepherd.
Now, for Jesus’s hearers the figure of the shepherd was hugely significant. The concept of shepherd was symbolic of a royal caretaker of God’s people. God himself was seen as the Shepherd of Israel and God has given responsibility to the leaders to be shepherds of Israel. But time and again in the ot we see that they have fallen short and been denounced as false shepherds. Then he promised God himself would send a Messiah, the true shepherd who would care for the sheep, who are the people of Israel – I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the Lord have spoken (Ezekiel 34:23-24).
So, given the discussion that there has been about Jesus being the Messiah, or not, given the controversy over his healing of the man born blind – a healing that itself had symbolic power, as giving sight to the blind was predicted as a Messianic activity – Jesus’s hearers, some of whom were Pharisees, when Jesus began to talk about a shepherd and his sheep, his hearers would have been listening carefully to what he had to say. It starts fairly innocuously as Jesus seems to be talking generally about the shepherd who knows his sheep by name, and whose voice is recognised and trusted by the sheep – so they will follow him. On the other hand, the thief is a stranger. They don’t trust him, they run away, because they don’t recognise his voice. Jesus is, in short, talking about the difference between true shepherds and false ones. The false ones Jeuss is referring to would be various leaders who had emerged in Jesus’s lifetime … they may have been revolutionary leaders or warlords who wanted to lead Israel to confront the might of Rome. Others, like Herod and his successors, were happy to submit to Rome as long as they kept their power.
We can probably think of modern-day equivalents of these false shepherds, both leaders of nations and leaders of churches and church movements.
So, how do we tell the true King, the true shepherd? Well, the real king is the one whom, when people hear his voice, in love and trust, they follow him.
Jesus is using this figure of speech, and is presumably faced with blank stares from his audience – we’re told, in verse 6. “the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.”
So, Jesus expands, and as he does so, he gets more personal …
7 Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. 9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
It might be confusing here for Jesus to suddenly be talking about being the gate for the sheep, but it’s helpful to understand thst in Jesus’s day, and stll today in many Eastern sheepfolds, the shepherd lies down at night in the gateway, to stop the sheep getting out and to stop predators getting in. He literally becomes the gate. This is how the shepherd keeps the sheep safe, and watches over their going out and coming in.
“The emphasis is on the safety, and the fulfilled life, of the sheep.
The shepherd has no business in looking after his own interests.
His priority is the sheep. Find a king like that and you’ve found your Messiah and Saviour.
Then we have this beautiful promise. I have come to bring life in all its fulness. This is as relevant now as it was then. There are so many things in our materialistic western world which promise so much but deliver so little – things which steal rather than give life.
Jesus alone gives us something more – a full life, to overflowing – through the one who is prepared to give up his life for us.
So, then, Jesus continues to speak.
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
As I mentioned earlier, Jesus was using language that his hearers would have found very familiar. The good shepherd equalled the true king of Israel. And that is me, says Jesus. This is a huge claim to make. He is making a divine claim about himself. And he redefines what it means to be a good shepherd – one who will risk his life, even die, for the sheep. This contrasts with the hired hand who runs when the wolf comes, allowing the wolf to attack and scatter the flock. In contrast, the shepherd dies to protect the sheep from the wolf. This is a foreshadow of what was to face Jesus the next time he would appear in Jerusalem.
He emphasises this again in verse 15, “I lay down my life for the sheep” – but that won’t be the end of the story – as we see in verse 17.
I lay down my life —only to take it up again
He will take it up again, as he is resurrected. And again, he makes clear that he is choosing to do all of this –
. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
So, the Good Shepherd is Jesus, the true king of Israel, and of the world.
16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.
We have a hint of his worldwide mission – he has been called to be shepherd not just over Israel but for the whole world – Jew and Gentile alike, who will be united under him. It’s a big picture – there are currently a couple of billion people who are part of his flock, from many different sheepfolds. But there is comfort for those who worry that we might get a bit lost!
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father —and I lay down my life for the sheep.
The good shepherd, Jesus, knows and cares for his sheep individually. This means you and me. Isn’t that incredible?
I remember being on retreat almost exactly ten years ago, at Scargill House in the Yorkshire dales. The weather that week was incredible – cloudless skies all week, and I made the most of it to walk. On one particular occasion, I walked through a field of sheep and the bible verse that came ot mind was this one – “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”
This is what I wrote in my journal afterwards –
Jesus truly is the good shepherd. Moreover, he’s my Good Shepherd. He knows me, loves me and will look after me. I’m safe in his arms. He knows all I’ve been through, and it matters to him. He loves me and laid doen his life for me. He will lead me beside still waters, he will restore my soul. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is with me and his rod and staff will comfort me. In the end he will bring me to a place of everlasting joy. Why? Because he made me and loves me. My greatest call above all is to live in his grace and rest in that place of total, unrelenting forgiveness and acceptance.
This feels like a good place to land just before I head off on sabbatical. It’s a challenge to let go, because I will miss so much about this role that I have – there is so much that God is doing here, through those things that we talked about last week, and I’m profoundly grateful that it’s only for a short time, but as I step away from you for this time, I’m reminded that Jesus is the shepherd of this church, not me, and that I leave you in his hands – he is your Good Shepherd and mine, the one whom we’re called to follow, who offers us life in all its fulness and my prayer is that he would lead us all into a closer relationship with him over this time.
Halwill Publishing 