fourth Sunday of Easter

This fourth Sunday of Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday, because in all three lectionary years, we read the Good Shepherd monologue from the tenth chapter of John. Today we hear Jesus saying, ‘I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep’.

When the Bible uses the term ‘shepherd’, it not only refers to spiritual leadership, but often to political leadership as well.  In the Old Testament, the prophet Ezekiel complains about the ‘shepherds of Israel’, and their failure to care for the sheep. In other words of the nation of Israel. Then the rulers of the nations that occupied Israel and exiled the Jewish people, are castigated for being ‘wicked and bad shepherds’.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus appears to focus more on leadership within the community of faith, and the lack of leadership and faithfulness to God’s Covenant that the Jewish religious leaders displayed. Jesus attacks the spiritual leaders again and again for being in the Priesthood for the perks of the job, and the influence they can exert, rather than it being a calling, a true Priesthood, to them. So this passage draws the contrast between the good and the bad, the faithful and the unfaithful shepherd, it’s also about strength and nurture, and there is no better loved image of Jesus than the Good Shepherd.

The picture of a shepherd is woven into the language and imagery of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, which is understandable because the most familiar figure in the Judean uplands was the shepherd. The land is rough and stony, not much soil for growing things, but is ideal for grazing sheep. To perhaps understand this parable, we have to understand the Palestinian shepherd had different ways of doing things from the shepherds of our own country.  Firstly he doesn’t use a dog, he uses a sling to protect the sheep and to stop them straying away, and he carries a rod, with a shepherd’s crook on the end, to catch and pull back any sheep which is moving away from the herd. At the end of the day the shepherd would hold the rod across the entrance to the fold, quite close to the ground, so the sheep had to go under it to get in.  In this way, he counted them and he checked to make sure none were injured or sick. This is known as the gate to the fold, and the shepherd who controlled the sheep going in and out was the gatekeeper.  

The relationship between sheep and shepherd is quite different in Palestine. In this country, farmers keep sheep mainly for the meat, so the sheep stay on the farm for only a comparatively short time to be feed up before slaughter.  In Palestine the sheep are kept mainly for their wool, so the sheep will be looked after by the shepherd for some years, so the bond between them is significant. The shepherd walks in front of the flock, not at the back as our shepherds tend to, and they follow his voice, which they are used to, after all they spend most hours of the day, every day in the company of the sheep.  He quickly knows their individual characteristics, markings, likes and dislikes.  Shepherds throughout the world do this, that’s their job, their life, and the sheep get used to, and become dependant on the shepherd so they never follow the voice of a stranger. As so often can happen in Bible passages, we don’t hear the previous reading, and so can take a reading out of context, or misunderstand it.  The previous chapter is about Jesus healing a blind man on the Sabbath, a heinous crime in Jewish law.  The Pharisees said Jesus was not from God because he didn’t observe the Sabbath, but some said he must be a prophet, so a disagreement broke out between them, because Jesus clearly had restored sight to the blind man. Is Jesus from God? Is he a prophet? Can he really heal and restore the sick? Is he truly the long expected Messiah, the Son of God, who God will set as judge over the world?  The answer they were seeking is the image in the Old Testament, the shepherd of the sheep as an earthly political leader who looks after the Jewish nation against all their enemies. The most favoured picture for Jewish people is of King David, the shepherd-boy who became King.  This wonderful image of a peasant boy who is chosen by God to rule his chosen people in a benevolent, kind, caring way, the shepherd truly taking care of his sheep. That’s the ideal, but the reality is very different.  All too often those in charge forget their responsibilities to the ordinary people and feather their own nests, and cause real hardship to those who they are supposed to protect. We only have to look at Mugabe and Zimbabwe at this time to see a modern day parallel, but for the Jewish people they had had a succession of tyrannical rulers over many centuries, the Romans being the last in a long line of invaders, and of course their religious rulers, the Scribes and the Pharisees were no better at all! Hence we have Jesus telling us that, ‘The hired hand, who is not the shepherd, sees the wolf coming and the wolf snatches them and scatters them’.  In other words the Jewish Religious leaders weren’t really representing God, they were representing their own interests.  And it is so easy for any church to fall into that trap. And whilst all of the descriptions in the gospel reading about sheep and shepherding are applicable to tending real sheep, this isn’t a manual for sheep husbandry, John’s purpose is not to teach the basics of shepherding as if it were a lost art, so before this sermon gets too much like an episode from ‘One man and his dog’, lets look at what John really intends.

John writes in this way, to deepen the faith of the people and the community to which he belongs, those who never knew Jesus personally.  For those who ‘have not seen, and yet believe’, which of course includes us, and just like Jesus did, he uses images people can understand, that’s what parables are about. Jesus tells us the true image of kingship is the Good Shepherd who looks after his sheep, and being a shepherd carries with it tremendous responsibilities. But you know, so does being a member of the flock. All church congregations should ask themselves on a regular basis, ‘are we here to serve God and grow His Kingdom in the community around us, or are we here to serve our own ends and exclude the community around us’.  Deep down we all know the answer to that, but do we honestly put it into practice.  Are we a welcoming church? And is the flock inclusive and united in serving God through Christ, or are we fragmented and exclusive? Jesus is our trusted leader who calls us out by name, and leads us to places that will bring us a nourishing and fulfilling life, and because we recognise his voice, we can safely follow him. ‘I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly’, is what Jesus tells us. Others may come and call us to follow them, but they lead us to places of destruction and death. The irony is that if we become one of his sheep, and follow Jesus, the Good Shepherd, it can look as if we are being led to death and destruction, because Christ makes it very plain that we have to take up his cross to follow him, and figuratively speaking that is what we must do, die to the trivial life we lead.

When we talk of living life abundantly, we so often mean plenty; plenty of food, drink, (an interesting news article yesterday about the measures of a glass of wine being served in pubs and restaurants today. Not the standard 125 but 250). leisure activities, holidays, spending all our time on the acquisition, accumulation, and consumption of things, instead of spending our time living in community with each other, caring about others. The world of acquisition, accumulation and consumption is a lonely life in reality, where we can spend all of our time building and filling barns with more and more stuff we don’t need or want in the hope it will satisfy us and make us happy. Remember what Christ warns us in the Bible, ‘you fools, God may demand your very lives this night’.  What good will all our acquisitions do us then?

God sent Jesus to help us understand all this.  God sent Jesus to deliver this news, and to call us back into community with God. We all want to experience the care and protection that the Good Shepherd gives to his sheep, but we also see in Jesus that being a shepherd carries with it tremendous responsibilities. But you know, so does being a member of the flock. All church congregations should ask themselves on a regular basis, ‘are we here to serve God and grow His Kingdom in the community around us, or are we here to serve our own ends and exclude the community around us’.  Deep down we all know the answer to that, but do we honestly put it into practice.  Are we a welcoming church? And is the flock inclusive and united in serving God through Christ, or are we fragmented and exclusive?

We have a responsibility to each other as Christians, to try and live as a Christian community, helping each other and others that need our help, and that should be demonstrated in our lives, our relationship to others in the church family and outside it, and in our giving to the church, so that not only do we maintain the church presence here in this parish, but we help to maintain a church presence in other places, locally, nationally and in areas of the world, where the presence of Christ is desperately needed. The good news is that God wants us to experience an abundance of all that really matters in our lives.  God, through Christ, wants to take care of all our needs and offers us a life full to overflowing with his love, all we have to do is listen for his voice, and follow him to find that abundant life, shared with all his followers. Amen.