The Good Shepherd

(Scriptures: Acts 4:1-12 Psalm 23, I John 3:14-24 John 10:1-18)

Today’s reading from John’s Gospel gives us one of the most beloved images from Scripture – Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Among our stained glass windows is a window dedicated to long-ago former Pastor Forster, showing Jesus as the Good Shepherd. The image is widespread within the church: pastors, who are called to serve Jesus the Good Shepherd, think of their congregation as their flock. Among pastors, there are even bits of humor associated with the image: I remember a former pastor who had a coffee cup with a picture of a sheep, which carried the phrase “get your sheep together.” (As disorganized as I was last Sunday, I could have used some help getting my sheep together – or getting my own act together, at least.) As is often true, the challenge of lifting up these beloved images is that they’ve been worn out from overuse, have been domesticated to the point where we think they have nothing new to tell us. So with such a familiar passage of Scripture, I’d challenge each of us to listen carefully, to see if God may have something new to say to us, even through such familiar words and timeworn images.


In today’s reading from John’s Gospel – as is generally true in reading Scripture – context is crucial. Today’s reading from the 10th chapter of John’s Gospel immediate follows the story in the 9th chapter of John’s Gospel in which Jesus had just healed a man who had been blind from birth. The man, of course, was overjoyed to receive his sight, and you’d think that everyone who knew him would share in his joy. And you’d be wrong. The religious authorities, who saw Jesus as a threat, interrogated the man closely and even frightened the man’s parents with their many questions. Ultimately the man, who had been given his sight, was driven away by the religious authorities. And Jesus responded by commenting that it was religious authorities, not the healed man, who were truly blind.

Unlike the other Gospels, in which Jesus is endlessly cautioning people not to tell others of his miracles, in John’s Gospel, it sometimes seems that Jesus hardly ever stops talking about himself. Todays’ reading is no exception. In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ works and healings are called signs – they are not just random good deeds, not just random acts of kindness, but carefully chosen ways in which to understand who Jesus is. So in John’s Gospel, Jesus talks about himself, not only by his many “I am” statements - for example, today’s statement “I am the good shepherd” – but by his signs – sort of like Jesus’ version of show and tell - signs which first show us and then tell us who Jesus is.

John’s Gospel has been called “the gospel of love” – it’s often recommended reading for new Christians - but the love within John’s Gospel is a particular kind of love, a kind of solidarity or mutually supportive love among the members of a persecuted faith community, which provides strength to deal with opposition and persecution from outside. John’s Gospel has a very strong dynamic of insiders and outsiders, those who are inside the beloved community of Jesus’ followers, and those outsiders who are persecuting the community. This dynamic of “us and them”, “insiders vs outsiders” surfaces strongly in today’s Gospel reading. It is after Jesus watches the formerly blind, now healed man being driven outside the synagogue community that he begins speaking of himself as the Good Shepherd, contrasting himself, who lays himself down for the sheep, with the bad shepherds who drive sheep away from the community and leave them to their own devices. The whole incident really provides quite a sharp commentary on the religious establishment of his day. Consider that the man had been perfectly acceptable to the religious leaders when he had been blind and dependent on the kindness of others. It was only after the man received his sight, only after he was able to act for himself, only after he began to challenge the religious leaders, that he was thrown out of the synagogue. This incident acts out Jesus’ description of the religious establishment as blind guides leading the blind. Since the man was no longer blind and no longer receptive to the blind guidance of the religious establishment, he was driven out – only to be welcomed into Jesus’ community of those granted the gift of spiritual insight.

So Jesus and his followers, who have in effect been kicked to the curb by the religious community in which they were raised, respond by forming an alternative religious community. Jesus, rejected by the leaders of the Temple religious community, becomes the shepherd of an alternative religious community. As the sheep of a given flock know the voice of the shepherd, so the mark of inclusion in the alternative community formed by Jesus is the ability to hear the voice of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. The formerly blind man who received his sight was able to hear that voice. The religious establishment, for the most part, was not.

How about us? Remember that a mark of inclusion in the community formed by Jesus is the ability to distinguish the voice of the shepherd. It’s at least as true in our day as it was when Jesus spoke the words – not every voice we hear speaking in God’s name is the voice of the Good Shepherd. There are the hirelings, those only in the pastorate for a paycheck, who will cut and run at the first sign of trouble. And there are the thieves and robbers, who seek to misuse the pastoral office and the good faith of the congregation for their own benefit. And having heard the voice of the Good Shepherd, a mark of inclusion in the beloved community is the ability, not only to hear, but to respond. In the words of a hymn popular in the Roman Catholic church, adapted from Psalm 95, “if today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

The mark of inclusion in the faith community of Jesus is the ability to hear and respond to the voice of Jesus. Unfortunately, just as was true in Jesus’ day, many religious leaders of our day want to impose other litmus tests for inclusion in the church: Do you believe the right creed? Do you have the correct marital status and family configuration? Do you have the right kind of friends? Listen to the right kind of music? Dress the right way? Support the right political causes? But those who would impose these additional tests ignore the words of Jesus, when he says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Remember the mistake made by those who excluded the early Christians from the synagogues – may we learn from this mistake, so that we don’t repeat it. We must never presume to exclude those whom Jesus himself invites, those who respond to the voice of the Good Shepherd.

Take another look at our Good Shepherd stained glass window. Let it remind each of us who it is who calls us, and whom it is that we are to obey. Where the Good Shepherd leads, may Emanuel Church follow. Amen.