Reflections on John 10:1-11
Emmanuel Baptist Church
April 26, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley
Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apse_interior_and_triumphal_arch_-_Sant%27Apollinare_in_Classe_-_Ravenna_2016.jpg © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0
A recording of the service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/12sBoIDKpJU
The Sheep
From their earliest days, the people of Israel were nomadic herders. The tasks and patterns of tending animals shaped their lives on a daily and seasonal basis. Sheep were a primary life source, providing a staple food supply and raw materials for clothing and shelter. In the Bible sheep often become a metaphor for people. There are many comparisons made between people and sheep, but an important one is the sense that, for all their faults, sheep were highly valued.
Shepherding is still a way of life in many places, with its own wisdom and tools and language. For example, Arabic has an array of unique words to categorize sheep by age and fertility and the season in which they were born and by color, including “white sheep, black sheep, black sheep with white spots, white sheep with black face and neck, brown-faced with white nose sheep, brown-and-white-spotted-faced sheep, grey headed sheep.”[1]
Sheep are a prey animal with very few natural defenses. They stick together to protect each other. When one runs from perceived danger, they all run. When separated from their flock, they can become stressed. Once a sheep knows it is lost, it will often hide under a bush or rock and begin quivering and bleating. The shepherd must locate it quickly before a predator does. When found, it may be too traumatized to walk and must be carried back to the flock.[2] Sheep are communal beings. We are keenly aware just now of how much humans also need to share a common life, and how stressful separation is.
We are often told how dumb sheep are. I have certainly witnessed humans acting very dumb this week. Maybe you have too. It is worth noting that sheep have the ability to remember faces, not only faces of other sheep, but all faces, for years and years. And as Jesus said, they know the voice of their shepherd.
During some riots in Palestine in the 1930’s, a village near Haifa was punished by having its sheep and cattle sequestered by the government. Individuals were allowed to redeem their possessions at a fixed price. Among them was an orphan shepherd boy whose six or eight sheep and goats were all he had in the world. Somehow he obtained the money for their redemption. He went to the big enclosure where the animals were penned, offering his money to the British sergeant in charge. The man told him he was welcome to that number of animals, but ridiculed the idea that he could possibly pick out his “little flock” from among the hundreds which had been confiscated. The little shepherd just gave his call on his shepherd’s pipe and “his own” separated from the rest of the animals and trotted out after him.[3]
The Shepherd
If you go into almost any Christian church today, you will find a cross or a crucifix. The cross has become a universal symbol for our faith, but it wasn’t always that way. For hundreds of years, Christians embraced the symbols of the Good Shepherd, the fish and the vine. These are images found in the art in the Roman catacombs in the first four centuries after Jesus. The image of the Good Shepherd suggested the recovery of the lost sheep, the tender care and protection, the green pastures and still waters, the self-sacrifice: in word and image, the whole picture of a Savior.[4]
Art from the oldest existing church buildings, dating from the fourth and fifth centuries echoes that from the catacombs. In those times, Christians focused not on the cross and not on the empty tomb, but on Jesus very much alive in the world. They believed that in his death and resurrection, Jesus had re-opened paradise. Paradise was not limited to a heavenly realm, but it was first and foremost this world, permeated and blessed by the Spirit of God. It was on the earth – in the craggy landscapes, the orchards, the clear night skies and the teeming waters of the Mediterranean.[5]
One Anglican scholar says that the religion of these first Christians was the religion of the Good Shepherd. “The kindness, the courage, the grace, the love, the beauty of the Good Shepherd was to them the Prayer Book and Creeds and Canons, all in one. They looked on that figure, and it conveyed to them all that they wanted.”
Psalm 23 is beloved and familiar, a frequent reading at funerals when it conveys comfort, peace and tranquility. However, it’s primary intent is to convey life and vitality. The images of green pastures and still waters and right paths are about food and drink and safety. “God restoreth my soul” is a beautifully poetic way of saying “God keeps me alive.”
In John’s gospel, Jesus says that the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. He goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. In many places, flocks of sheep are driven from behind, but in Palestine, even today, the shepherd leads from the front. And some sheep always stay near the shepherd and are his special favorites. He calls them by names like “Split Ear, Short Tail, Bright Eye, Angel, Lazy and Black Spot”[6]
The shepherd leads the sheep to graze in green pastures which are farther and farther away as the season progresses. Alone in the open spaces, they might face any number of threats, including thieves, wild animals, sudden blinding dust storms, water shortages and loose rocks. The sheep are entirely dependent on the shepherd for guidance and protection. The rod is not a walking stick, but a weapon to protect from enemies. It was also held horizontally at the entrance to the sheepfold, just high enough for each sheep to pass under it one at a time, allowing the shepherd to count the sheep, because every single one matters.
According to Walter Brueggemann, “the term shepherd is political in the Bible. It means king, sovereign, lord, authority, the one who directs, the one to whom I am answerable.”[7] To declare “The Lord is my shepherd” is to declare absolute loyalty to God and the intention to live under God’s reign.
Ezekiel was one of the prophets who bore witness to the failure of earthly kings. Because those king-shepherds tended to themselves instead of the sheep, and because the flock was being plundered by human enemies, God took on the role. In Ezekiel 34, God says, “I will feed them with good pasture, and upon the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on fat pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will watch over; I will feed them in justice.”
When Jesus says “I AM the Good Shepherd” he identifies with this God of ancient Israel, a source of deep security in a dangerous world.
As we share some silence together, I invite you to reflect on these ideas.
The sheep know the shepherd’s voice. What other voices are clamoring for your attention? How do you practice listening for the voice of God? How do you recognize it when you hear it?
Or you might think about Jesus’s death and resurrection as a re-opening of Paradise on earth. How do you appreciate and care for and live purposefully in this world which is permeated and blessed by the Spirit of God?
Let us center ourselves, allowing all that has been shared so far to be part of our thoughts, but seeking what God would have us attend to. We will simply be still together for a few minutes.
The Gate
Jesus says “I AM the Good Shepherd.” In late summer and early fall, the shepherd leads the sheep farther from home each day to find good grazing. Eventually, they must spend the night in the open country. In the evening, the sheep are led into an round, roughly built enclosure with no roof or door. Once the sheep are safely inside, the only vulnerable spot is the opening which is just wide enough for the shepherd’s body.
The shepherd will sleep across entrance, putting his body between the sheep and any danger. Jesus is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.
Jesus also says, “I AM the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” Anna Carter Florence, Professor of Preaching and Worship at Columbia Seminary, describes it this way:
We go out and we come in even when we are saved. The gate marks a place to rest and a place to graze. The rhythm of in and out is necessary to life because the green pastures are outside the gate; a sheep that flat out refuses to go out will die. Likewise, a sheep that flat-out refuses to go in, when the call comes, may soon be lost in the night. So the gate is part of life and key to life, but not because it keeps us out or in. It simply marks the boundary between what we are to do in each space. The secret of saving the life of a sheep is to know when it is time to go out and when it is time to come back in. The point is to listen to the voice of the shepherd—the voice you recognize above all others—and follow that call.[8]
We cannot live our lives in the sheepfold. It may be safe there, but we need the pasture, the still waters, the green grass that lies beyond. To move in and out through the I AM gate means to live a life that is abundant in freedom and sustenance.
The shepherd calls us by name, tends, protects, and has gone ahead of us. May we together, continue to lean into the day when the Shepherd’s voice is the only voice we hear and the Good Shepherd is the only one we follow into life abundant.
[1] Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Gospel of John, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1998) p.182
[2]Kenneth E. Bailey, The Good Shepherd: A Thousand-Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament, (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2014), p. 45
[3] Bailey p. 42, quoting Eric F.F. Bishop Jesus of Palestine (London: Lutterworht, 1955), pp 297-298.
[4] Bailey, p.21
[5] Rita Nakashima Brock, Rebecca Ann Parker, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), p. xv
[6] Bailey, p. 217
[7]Walter Bruegggemann, “Trusting in the Water-Food-Oil Supply” in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Vol 1, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011), p. 112
[8] Anna Carter Florence, Preaching the Lesson John 10:1-10, Lectionary Homiletics, April 13, 2008, p. 15