INTRODUCTION
Today is the fourth Sunday in Easter—the season when we celebrate the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit—we’re building up to the big outpouring at Pentecost (May 19 – still 4 weeks to go).
This Sunday, today, is “Good Shepherd Sunday”, with the focus on the Parable of the Good Shepherd—or at least the second part of it, John 10:11-18. It’s such a familiar passage: “I am the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” In this one short passage Jesus in fact lays out God’s whole plan for our salvation and for the Kingdom—the whole thing!—as we’ll see in our Message today.
And we couldn’t have Good Shepherd Sunday without Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd”, which will also feature in our service. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me”—we think of ANZAC Day coming up next Thursday, when we remember and the honour the sacrifices made by Australians in past conflicts—many who, like the Good Shepherd, have laid down their lives for our nation.
GOSPEL READING John 10:11-18
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
12 The 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.
13 The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.
14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.
16 I 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.
17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.
18 No 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.”
REFLECTION
So, the Parable of the Good Shepherd: as I said in my intro, in this one short passage Jesus lays out God’s whole plan for our salvation and for the Kingdom—it’s got everything you’d want to know in it! Let’s now have a detailed look through the part of the parable we’ve just listened to, then we’ll try answer the question: OK, so Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life to save us, but what exactly from, and what for?
“I am the Good Shepherd”—the very first line—Jesus makes a very bold and direct statement—he is not just a good shepherd, he is the Good Shepherd, the one and only! This is a real “I am” statement: “I am who I am”. Jesus is channelling several passages in the Old Testament where God himself is described as “the Shepherd of Israel”. It’s a creational statement: Jesus is the shepherd of all human beings, his shepherdship of us is part of creation itself, part of how God created, intended, us to be.
“I am the Good Shepherd”. Jesus uses the word “Good” here also in a direct, creational way. You’ll remember that in the first creation story in Genesis God declares all creation to be good, but not in any kind of moral sense— not good as opposed to bad, however—good and bad haven’t come into the world yet. It is goodness in a practical sense – good as opposed to useless or unreliable. The good shepherd is the shepherd who does what a shepherd does and does it well. Jesus is the Good Shepherd in the same way that creation is good—he’s useful, absolutely reliable, you can bet your life on him.
Throughout the parable [John 10:1-18] Jesus contrasts himself, the Good Shepherd, with thieves and robbers, a stranger whom the sheep don’t know, and, as we read today, a hired hand, none of whom can be trusted because they either mean harm to the sheep or are of no use in protecting them from the wolf. These false shepherds are the leaders of Israel who came before Jesus, especially the current dodgy lot, the Scribes and Pharisees.
“The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” [11]—unlike the hired hand, who runs away when the wolf comes! A Galilean shepherd of the day might risk danger for his sheep, but he probably wouldn’t expect to actually die for them. Jesus, by contrast, is the Good Shepherd, and his specific, God-given creational task is to lay down his life, when the wolf comes, to save his sheep. But how can dying save the sheep from the wolf?! Surely if the shepherd dies the wolf actually gets the sheep?!
Ah, it’s a parable, don’t take it literally! Jesus laying his life down on the Cross saves us, humanity from ….. the wolf?? Does Jesus mean the Devil? Well, yes, but the very real evil that’s in the culture around us only has any hold over us because of our own natural sinful selfishness which allows us to be tempted by it—so Jesus is really saving us from…. ourselves! And this, again, is creational—part of God’s plan, from the beginning, from Creation.
“I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father.” [14-15] More creational stuff: Jesus’ relationship with us, his sheep, is direct, natural, absolute—when he calls to us, we hear his voice, even if our capacity to hear him is often diminished by our addiction to selfish sinfulness.
“I know my own, and my own know me”: we are called to have a sheep-like trust/faith in Jesus, although not a blind, purely instinctive trust, like real sheep might have for their shepherd, but an active, intentional, intelligent trust.
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. [16] I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd”. Well, again, not the normal behaviour of a shepherd, taking over all the flocks of sheep around the place and amalgamating them into one. But Jesus is a different sort of shepherd, the shepherd of all humanity, if we but respond to his call. Here, in parable form, Jesus lays out God’s amazing plan for the Kingdom, to save and bring all people into a new way of living, free from the ravages of selfish sin and evil—one flock, one shepherd.
“For this reason the Father loves me, [17-18] because I lay down my 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 power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” Jesus’ laying down of his life for us is a completely free act, an act of pure, divine love—selflessness, as opposed to selfishness, is always a free act, something we are not really even capable of except for Jesus opening the way. “I lay down my life in order to take it up again……. I have power to take it up again.”—referring to his own Resurrection, and to our Resurrection, the new life, the Kingdom-life, we are able to take up now, because of Jesus.
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So, that’s the amazing Good Shepherd parable. Let’s now try to answer the question I posed at the start of this message: OK, so Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life to save us, but what exactly from, and what for?
What is it from first? Well, the usual thing to say is, from our sins. “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”, we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. Forgive us our “trespasses” maybe, or “transgressions”. When I was a kid, growing up as a good little Catholic boy, going to Confession, before I went I would rack my brains for some sins I could confess: “I was mean to my sister”, “I didn’t do the dishes when mum asked”, “I used bad language”, that sort of thing.
We have a sense of sin as disobedience, as disobeying a set of rules, a law. Where does this set of rules, law, come from? From our parents, from society, from God. We feel guilty, we’re left with a vague sense of guilt all our lives, no matter how many times we confess our sins and get forgiven (in theory)—if we’re not careful we come to resent this God who seems to lay down all these rules for us to break, then judge us for it; and pretty soon, without thinking too much about it, we come to not really believe in this God any more, at all!
But no, a thousand times no: sin is not trespassing, transgressing, disobeying the law, any law. Sin is the thing that motivates us to trespass, transgress, disobey: common or garden, very natural, human selfishness, self-centredness. As I said when we were going through the parable, Jesus basically saves us from ….. ourselves.
Laws are always about how we relate to other people, in family, community, society; so when we disregard rules, laws, conventions we put ourselves and what we want first, regardless of others, which invariably causes hurt and harm to others. Sin is selfishness, and it’s completely natural—just spend some time with a little child as they’re growing up and you’ll realize how naturally selfish they are, and how hard parents and teachers and others have to work to teach them not be selfish, to consider and respect others, be polite, play fairly and so on. Unfortunately, this looks like laying down the law, and it is one of the great challenges of parenting/teaching to not merely teach obedience, because that is where our children can come to resent us, where they, eventually, come to resent and reject God.
To put it another way, and I’ve said this before here, God is not a God of law and judgement, but a God of love and grace—and we see this clearly in the image of the Good Shepherd, who loves us so completely that he lays down his life for us—the very opposite of judgement.
So, Jesus saves us from … our sinful selfishness: Through his death and resurrection he opens up for us the ability to overcome our natural self-centredness, and be, at least some of the time, when we put our minds to it, genuinely selfless.
Now that—living selflessly, living for others and not just self all the time—is in fact what Jesus saves us for. But, no, the usual thing we think salvation is for is so we can go to heaven when we die! Unfortunately, this is only half true, and it’s not even, really, the most important half of the truth. Yes, we do eventually, I believe, beyond this physical life now, get to share in Jesus’ resurrection. But, more importantly, we get to share in Jesus’ Resurrection now.
“I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture”—that’s verse 9 of the parable, before the bit we read today. Jesus is not just the Shepherd, he is the gate of the sheepfold itself. Now the sheepfold is not the Kingdom, it’s the place we come into for safety and refuge, to get saved; then, when we’re ready we go out and find new pasture. “Come in and go out“: the Kingdom, in other words, is not in here—inside of us, or in the Church—but out there, in the big wide world, now! Yes, it may also be a wonderful future life beyond the grave—I certainly believe it is—but before it is that it is a wonderful life, the best possible life, now—living in genuine selflessness, gradually freeing ourselves from the selfishness that really only ever causes us grief, serving others, living for others, even to the point of, like our great role model, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, being prepared to lay down our life for others. This is what we’re saved for.
So, to put it in simplest terms, we’re saved from our natural, sinful self-centredness, for a greater life now, serving and living selflessly for others, in our family life, our work life, our life in the community, working to eventually bring this great way of living to everybody—yes: one shepherd, one flock, one Kingdom!
Amen.
