The Good Shepherd
By Rev. Daniel Smith
April 27, 2010
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Lessons: John 10: 22-30
I was in Arizona this past week for a family vacation. On Tuesday, the day before Earth Day, we awoke to a magnificent sunrise over the Southern Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was breathtakingly vast and beautiful, to say the very least. The psalmist’s line “how majestic is your name in all the earth” was a mantra that ran through my mind throughout our visit. On Friday, the day after we left, we awoke to news that the Governor of the Grand Canyon State was signing into law measures that would mandate immigrants to carry documents on them at all times and that requires police to question the immigration status of anyone they suspect may be in the country illegally. This was also breathtaking, in that punch-in-the-gut kind of way. Truth to tell, Nancy, Julian, Nellie and I spent most of the week oblivious to these and other current events. But for a heated political conversation or two with the in-laws in Scottsdale, we mostly just hunkered down for some time with each other and within the gorgeous natural settings that surrounded us. At Nellie’s request, and especially on the 4-hour ride up and back from the Canyon, we played a lot of cards together, mostly an eight year old’s version of Poker.
In our text for today, and on this day that church tradition tell us is Good Shepherd Sunday, John deals us an undeniably difficult hand. Every year, on the Sunday three weeks after Easter, the lectionary turns our attention to the 10th chapter of John. If we had read the entire chapter, we would know it is full of imagery of sheepfolds and shepherds. These pastoral images point to the providential care and perfect protection that we are all promised by virtue of the risen Christ, the so called “Good Shepherd” who laid down his very life for his sheep (John 10:10). It’s a Sunday on which we might point out First Church’s earliest Tiffany window from 1893, titled… you guessed it … the “Good Shepherd” window. It was first displayed in a chapel at the Chicago World’s Fair that very same year, then it came home to rest just under the dome, right in the middle, for over a hundred years until a small fire destroyed it. Today is also a Sunday in which we might reach back farther into our congregational heritage and remember that the first churches on this soil were never thought to be founded. First Church was not founded in 1636. Old South Church was not founded 1669 by its pastors nor by their original members. Instead, New England congregational churches were known to be “gathered” and gathered not on their own volition but gathered by the loving work of God who is the great shepherd that gathers us in, leads us by still waters and makes us lie down in green pastures – pastures not unlike the one right outside our door. In fact, the town commons or greens in this region were once town pastures, places for sheep, and cows and even people to gather in the knowledge that they were held in Christ’s loving hands. Indeed, Good Shepherd Sunday might have had more resonance in an earlier time when sheep were a far more common sight. To unpack meaning of this image today, and to play this hand we’ve been dealt, requires a bit more effort on our part.
First, we’d be remiss if we ignored the great wild card in our text for today – John’s treatment of the Jews. I’d call it a Joker but it’s not funny in the least. “The Jews,” so-called here in an intentional over-generalization by the gospel writer, start by asking Jesus a reasonable question, one to which many of us can relate. “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are our longed-for Savior, tell us. Make it clear!” It’s a fair enough question, but our fairest Lord Jesus’ seems anything but fair in his response. He tells the Jews: “You don’t believe because you don’t belong to my sheep.” Ouch. So much for that radically inclusive Jesus we are used to. Fortunately, most scholars agree that Jesus himself did not say these words. Instead, they are part of the gospel writer’s agenda which was in conflict with the synagogue authorities of the day. Tragically, texts like this one have been used repeatedly through the centuries in degrading protest against the Jews. This is just one thread that is part of a broader anti-Jewish polemic found throughout John’s gospel. The very next line depicts “the Jews” beginning to throw rocks at Jesus for blaspheming that he and God were one.
We can and should call out and then set aside from the gospels these and other anti-Jewish wildcards. The fact remains though that the broader image of shepherd and sheep in Chapter 10 can be traced to Jesus’ own expression. So why does Jesus use it here, and why in response to the question about whether he was the Messiah? Bear with me for just a little more background.
We know that the setting is Jerusalem, a place that even in the first century already had a reputation for conflict. We know that the timing is during the Festival of the Dedication, a.k.a. Hanukkah, the season when the Jews commemorate the heroic reclaiming of the temple by the Maccabeans after it had been conquered and desecrated by the Hellenistic King Antiochus the IV. This context of this king-driven controversy is significant given the question the Jews are asking of Jesus. Are you the Messiah? They might just as easily have been asking – are you the future King of Israel, descended from the line of David? Are you one that will trump the likes of King Antiochus, or King Herod?
Jesus’ answer is elusive if not downright evasive. His model of leadership simply does not fit their preconceived notions of how a divine figure ought to carry him or herself. Instead of giving them the face card or ace they wanted, he plays a card they’ve never before seen. He casts himself as a shepherd. A lowly, outlying, marginalized, powerless, un-credentialed shepherd! The image may not have much contemporary resonance for us, since we’ve grown so used to hearing it in church that it’s lost all of its original punch. As one commentator Nancy Blakely has noted, “The life of a shepherd was anything but picturesque. Shepherds were rough around the edges, spending time in the fields rather than in polite society. For Jesus to say ‘I am the good shepherd’ would have been an affront to the religious elite and educated. The claim had edge to it. A modern day equivalent might be for Jesus to say [get this] ‘I am the Good Migrant Worker.’ ”
Couple Blakely’s image with the last line of the passage: ‘The father and I are one’ and all of a sudden, we find we are being gathered into a totally new fold, a brand new game, a whole new world with completely different rules where Aces and Kings are low. The rest of the rules might go something like this.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom in heaven. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth!
Or maybe the new rules are more like this, from Matthew 25: “Then the son of man comes in his glory…All the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. Then the King will say to those at his right hand: ‘Come you that are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food. For I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.’ ” To this we might add, “I was a migrant worker and you gave me safe passage through your land.”
“I am the good migrant worker!” What a starkly illuminating contrast to the ways we usually interpret this imagery of the good shepherd. Imagine a stained glass window depicting Jesus as an undocumented Mexican working in, say, Arizona. Imagine the good migrant worker as a Haitian immigrant who has been sending money home every week for 30 years to build his uninsured retirement home on a hillside that is now rubble.
What would it look like for us to be gathered into the same fold with all the good shepherds, the good migrant workers, the good car wash attendees, the good housekeepers, the good school bus drivers, the good home health aides, the good people of God who have been dealt difficult hands, in round after round of their daily lives? What would it look like to be gathered with them and for all to be treated like Kings and Queens of God’s amazing love and grace? Can we begin to ante up for this brand new game? Are we willing to put our own cards down on that table?
There’s at least one more card in this passage that we have not yet played and it’s one of enduring promise. Jesus tells us “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” Can you sense the undying commitment of love, for us, that this suggests. Wise as a serpent and gentle as dove, Jesus is surely playing all sides of this shepherd image – the side with the rough edged-affront to power on the one hand, and the side with the good news promise of lasting guidance and relationship and nurturing care on the other. Indeed there’s an echo of peaceful words of Psalm 23 about which we will soon sing.
“How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly!” Tell us plainly, indeed. Remind us that you are the Good Shepherd of our very lives, and in so doing remind us to put our trust in your gentle and patient guidance, again and again.
Let us pray. Loving God, keep it simple for us. Tell us plainly how we can best follow you, as sheep, as shepherds, as laborers in your kin-dom. Help us to be better leaders and better followers, never forgetting the ways that you hold us and gather us in to loving community. Help us to keep the gates ever open to all those who come from far afield of our experience. These things we ask, in Jesus’ name. Amen.