He is...We Are To Be: The Good Shepherd - John 10:11-18
A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly
a brand-new BMW advanced out of the dust cloud toward him. The driver, a young man in a Broni suit,
Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses, and YSL tie leaned out the window and asked
the shepherd, “If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock,
will you give me one?”
The shepherd looks at the man, then looks at his peacefully
grazing flock and calmly answers, “Sure.”
The young man parks his car, whips out his notebook and connects
it to a cellphone, then he surfs to a
NASA page on the Internet where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system,
scans the ara, and opens up a database and Excel spreadsheets with complex
formulas. He sends and email on this
Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a 150-page report on
his hi-tech, miniaturized printer, then turns to the shepherd and says, “You
have exactly 1,586 sheep.”
“That is correct, take one of the sheep,” says the shepherd. He watches as the young man selects one of
the animals and bundles it into his car.
Then the shepherd says: “If I can tell you exactly what your
business is, will you give me my sheep back?”
“Okay, why not,” answers the young man.
“Clearly, you are a consultant,” says the shepherd.
“That’s correct,” says the young man, “but how did you guess
that?”
“No guessing required,” answers the shepherd. “You turned up here although nobody called
you. You want to get paid for the answer
to a question I already knew, and you don’t know anything about my
business. Now give me back my dog!”
We find ourselves in the midst of a pasture for the second week in
a row as we continue our journey through the “I Am” statements of Jesus.
We have head Jesus say, “I Am the Bread of Life,” and it is only
through Christ we find that which fills the hunger in our souls.
We have heard Jesus say, “I Am the Light of the World,” and know
that it is Jesus who brings God’s creative order to the world, shines light
into the darkness of sin and reveals our true intentions, gives life to those
who walk in His light, and gathers folks to Himself.
We have heard Jesus say, “I Am the Gate,” and understand that it
is only through Jesus, not the things of this world, that we will truly find an
eternal and abundant life.
Each week we have also examined, in light of Jesus’s words, “As
the Father has sent me, so I send you…”[i]
and Paul’s words to the church in Corinth, “Now you are the body of Christ and
individually members of it…”[ii]
what these “I Am” statements of Jesus mean for us, the Church, as the Living
Body of Christ in the world. In other
words, as Jesus states what He is in each “I Am” statement, He is revealing what
we are to become.
As I mentioned earlier, with Jesus asserting His identity as “the
Gate,” He let those listening know that it was through Him, and Him alone, that
we pass through to find abundant, eternal life.
This week, continuing with the same thinking, Jesus assures us that we
will not have to find “the Gate” on our own, for He is the Good Shepherd—not
only is He the Gate that opens to a fulfilled life, He is the One who gets us
to that life.
We’ve talked about in past weeks how Jesus’ use of the “I Am”
statements was controversial due to its connection to the revelation of God to
Moses at the burning bush, and how those Jews hearing Jesus say, “I Am” would
have heard Jesus equating Himself with God.
If there was any doubt as to that illusion, Jesus left no question in
their mind when He said, “I am the Good Shepherd.” With those words, everyone who heard would
have immediately thought of the Words of God spoken through the prophet
Ezekiel: “For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and
will seek them out. As shepherds seek
out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out
my sheep. I will rescue them from all
the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick
darkness…I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep…says the Lord God.”[iii] By saying, “I Am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus
identifies Himself with God in the Ezekiel passage and claims to be the
fulfillment of this prophecy.
So what is in Jesus’ claim of being the Good Shepherd?
For something to be called “good” in our culture is not really
that significant. We live in a culture
where “excellence” is what is striven for, so we might hear “the Good Shepherd”
and think of “good” in terms of being “okay” or “average.” However, the Greek word used in the Scripture
is Kalos which is better translated
as “ideal,” “model,” or “noble.” Jesus
is saying I am the Ultimate Shepherd.
As the Ultimate Shepherd, Jesus sets Himself up opposite two other
groups, the thieves and the hired hands.
The thieves, Jesus declares, don’t come to care for the sheep, as
we read last week, they come to kill and destroy. They don’t use the gate, Jesus says, they
jump the fence to try and steal the sheep, only to take them, not to a pasture
of abundant life, but to death. We’ve
encountered those thieves in our lives, those life-robbing destroyers of men
and women. Come of those thieves promise
abundant life in an attempt to get the sheep to voluntarily go with them. They come in, like someone abducting a child,
offering balloons, candy, or a puppy to lull the sheep into thinking they are
safe, and the next thing the sheep know they are on a trailer heading for
slaughter. Drugs, gambling, and
pornography come in like this, offering a temporary pleasure but likely ends in
physical, financial, or emotional death.
Other thieves come in and are obvious in their attempt to murder the
sheep, often without even taking them out of the pasture—they just drive by and
shoot the sheep where they stand, or slip in and poison their food supply. Greed and anxiety top the list of this host
of bandits, robbing the sheep of any sense of peace and security.
In this morning’s reading, Jesus moves away from the thieves and
bandits, and as the Good Shepherd, contrasts Himself with the hired hand,
someone being paid to watch over the flock.
There are many differences between the Good Shepherd and the hired hand,
but there are two in particular that I want to lift before us this
morning. They revolve around knowing and
commitment.
The Good Shepherd knows the sheep and the hired hand does
not. How is that possible? Wouldn’t the hired hand have to know that
there were sheep in the field and how many sheep that are in the flock? Wouldn’t
the hired hand have to know the difference between a sheep and the shepherd’s
dog? Probably. But knowing that there are sheep and knowing
how many sheep you are looking after, does not mean you know the sheep. We have to remember that in Biblical times,
“knowing” meant a lot more than how we toss the word around. In Biblical times, knowing implied
relationship. Remember, all the way back
to Genesis when we read that “Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived
and bore Cain…”[iv] While not always used in the sexual content,
to know someone, to really know someone, implies that there is a
relationship. Just as Jesus says, “As
the Father knows me and I know the Father,” there is a deep abiding
relationship. For the hired hand, there
is knowledge of the sheep, and most like how many sheep…but that is as far as
it goes. There is no relationship. The person is being paid to care, you take
away the pay, the hired hand is gone.
The sheep are mere objects, and if he or she does care what happens to
one of the sheep, it is not out of concern for the sheep, but out of concern
for what it might mean for their pay.
The Good Shepherd, on the other hand, knows and loves the sheep. The Shepherd has a relationship with the
sheep, and desires to deepen that relationship.
That is how the Shepherd knows His sheep and how the sheep know the
Shepherd’s voice. Time has been spent
together, a relationship has grown.
Because there is a relationship between the Shepherd and the
sheep, it leads us to something more, the second difference between the
Shepherd and the hired hand. For the
Shepherd, there is commitment to the sheep, for the hired hand, there is a very
good chance that when push comes to shove, there is no commitment. Caring for sheep was a dangerous job. Considering we have already differentiated
between the Shepherd and the bandit or thief, we know that there were those to
contend with. However, there were
greater dangers than a thieves or bandits.
We remember that when young David was convincing Saul that he could go
out and fight Goliath, he spoke of how, as a shepherd boy, he had had to take
on both lions and bears: “David said to
Saul, ‘Your servant used to keep sheep for his father, and whenever a lion or a
bear came, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after it and struck it down,
rescuing the lamb from its mouth; and if it turned against me, I would catch it
by the jaw, strike it down, and kill it.’”[v] Shepherding was no piece of cake job…it was
dangerous. Have you ever had a job that
you though was just not what it was going to require of you so you either
didn’t take it or walked away from it?
Well, consider you are being paid to help a shepherd watch over some
sheep…and you see a vicious wolf come in and make off with one of the lambs,
what are you going to do? Are you willing to risk your life for someone else’s
little lamb? Most likely not?
The Good Shepherd, on the other hand, have a relationship with his
sheep, is deeply committed to them. He has vested interest in the sheep, and
lives to protect those sheep he knows and cares so deeply for. The Shepherd, unlike the hired hand, is
willing to lay down his life for the sake of the sheep. He will risk confronting the lion, bear, or
wolf to save a little lamb.
Jesus lives out this promise as the Gospel of John
progresses. The Jewish police force who
helped arrest Jesus in the Garden did not take Jesus’ life from him. Remember Jesus’ words to Peter after Peter
struck the high priest servant’s ear with the sword, “’Put your sword back into
its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup
that the Father has given me?”[vi] When Pilate confronted Jesus saying, “’Do you
not know that I have the power to release you, and the power to crucify you?’
Jesus answered him, ‘You would have no power over me unless it had been given
you from above….”[vii] Jesus goes to the cross voluntarily to offer
up His life as the Good Shepherd, so that we, His sheep, might be rescued from
the greatest enemy any could ever encounter—not the Sanhedrin, not the Roman
Empire, but the enemies of sin and death themselves—Jesus says, “For this
reason the Father loves me, because I lay down might life in order to take it
up again. No one takes it from me, but I
lay it down of my own accord. I have the
power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.”[viii]
Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and we are the sheep. We are called to follow the Good Shepherd as
sheep who know His voice and are called into relationship with Him. And though we will never be the ultimate
Shepherd, in following Jesus, we are called to be good shepherds in His
Name. If there is any doubt that we are
to become shepherds, Jesus erases that doubt in his post-resurrection
conversation with Peter:
“When they
had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you
love me more than these?” He said to
him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’
A second time he said to him, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He
said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of
John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt
because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know
everything; you know that I love you.’
Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.
Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your
own belt and to go wherever you wished.
But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else
will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death
by which he would glorify God.) After
this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’”[ix]
What does it mean that we are to follow Jesus as sheep becoming
shepherds…it means we are to continue to heed His voice, following Him…and
caring for those He entrusts to us…it means that our commitment to our Jesus is
not only about our relationship with Him, but also about our relationship with
our brothers and sisters in the faith…the lambs and sheep we are called to tend
to and feed. It means that we are deeply
connected to one another and we are to know and be committed to one another…not
seeing one another as objects, or folks who might put some money in the collection
plate or help out at a BBQ, but as valued members of the flock…it means that
when we see a need in their lives or the life of the church, it means we need
to be willing to lay down our lives---maybe that means organ donation (with
next weekend being that time to remember that we can offer the gift of life
with our lives), maybe it means confronting a wolf if someone is in danger of
being attacked, maybe it means running into a burning building if someone is
trapped inside, or maybe it simply means being willing to give of our time if a
brother or sister needs help (even if it means that we don’t get to do
something that we had planned or wanted to do), in their personal lives or with
a church project. It means putting the
care of God’s sheep—one another, ahead of our own lives—remembering that
regardless of our sacrifice, the Good Shepherd’s was greater, and just as God
raised Him up, He promises to raise us from whatever sacrifice we make in His
Name.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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