4th Sunday of Easter

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

John 10:11-18

11“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I 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. 17For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

I have very strong memories, from when my children were young, of taking them to a public place like a grocery store or a playground where there were other mothers with their children. If one child called frantically, “Mommy! Where are you?” you could see every mother in the vicinity immediately tense up and listen and look around to determine if the child was hers. The actual mother of the child would then call out, “I’m right here!” Even after my children were too old to be interested in accompanying me, for a long time every time I heard a child’s cry I would have an immediate sharp response of, “Is that my child?” before I would remember that I had no children with me.

When I was at the Calgary zoo recently, a mother beside me suddenly whipped around and cried in a loud voice, “Oh my God! Where’s my son?” Fortunately, the little boy wasn’t far away and heard his mother’s voice and came running, just as I was asking her, “What was he wearing?” I was completely ready to drop everything and help search for that boy in order to calm the strong anxiety in that mother. I felt her fear. It was probably heightened by the fact that we were spending the day at the zoo with our wee grandson who was safe in his own mother’s arms. It could have been him lost in the milling crowd.

Mothers are like shepherds. Shepherds are like mothers. In Jesus’ time, a shepherd was with his sheep 24/7. He looked after the sick and wounded ones and searched for the lost ones. If a small lamb couldn’t keep up he would carry it on his shoulders. He led his flock to the pasture that he had already scoped out to make sure it was safe and that there were no noxious plants or dangerous predators. He led the sheep to pools of still water because sheep will not drink from running water.

The sheep trusted the shepherd and knew his voice. Their shepherd’s voice was often the only voice they ever heard during the day when they were out grazing but it was also common for a number of shepherds to bed their sheep down for the night in a walled enclosure with a single door. Several flocks would sleep together. In the morning when it was time to go to the pastures, each shepherd called his sheep and his sheep followed him because they knew his voice so well. And the Shepherd knew his own sheep. He would often call each sheep by name according to its features or characteristics. The sheep never got confused and started following another shepherd. The sheep knew all the nuances and tones and cadences of their beloved shepherd’s voice and they knew their own names.

The whole image is very comforting. But in this scripture Jesus wasn’t speaking to his followers; he was speaking to the priests and scribes and Pharisees. Yes, he was saying that he is the shepherd of his people but he was also identifying himself as the God of Israel. In Ezek 34, the Lord God spoke of himself as the True Shepherd of his people and he was immensely angry with the leaders who were leading his people astray, abusing them and abandoning them to great dangers. Jesus, in portraying himself as the Good Shepherd, was making a statement to those listening that he was indeed God. He wasn’t saying he was a good shepherd as if he was one of many; he was saying that he was the Good Shepherd. And he was being very clear that he was not happy with the spiritual leadership of the day. Huge burdens of law were being laid upon the shoulders of his people; there was little mercy or compassion. Power, riches and political advantage were of far more concern to many of the leaders than the spiritual well-being of the people.

Not all who read this reflection are mothers but I have a question for those of you who are: have you ever had your heart wrenched by witnessing your child being bullied, unjustly treated or excluded? Your whole being aches to be able to rescue your child. You would do anything you could to relieve the misery and heal the grieving heart, the fear and the loneliness. The word “innocent” means unwounded. It is a mother’s greatest burden that she cannot keep her child from everything that might wound her child. We all yearn so much to keep our children innocent and protect them from the wounds that life can inflict on all of us.

This is exactly how Jesus felt. He couldn’t force change in the hearts of those who were abusing his people and excluding them from the compassion and love of their God, but that didn’t stop him from giving everything he had to protect his people. He gave his life and by that action he proved once and for all that he is God; he is the The Good Shepherd who was (and is!) willing to die a horrible death to restore our lost innocence and heal our wounded hearts.

“I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” In other words, “I am God and I will lay down my life - for my people - and take it up again – for my people. That’s how much I love each one of my children. Just see if any of these other false shepherds, these hirelings, are willing to do that.”

Two small items of interest:
1. A shepherd goes in front of his flock and leads them, but the butcher follows the flock and drives them.
2. In Greek, the word for “good” also means beautiful and attractive.

Take heart. You belong to Jesus, the Beautiful Shepherd, the one who leads, not drives, the one who calls you by a special name, the one who will not leave you behind or lose you, the one who knows you and who laid down his life and took it up again so that he could shepherd you home to safety and innocence. This is the one to whom you belong.