Jesus said, “Whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice. But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.” (John 10.2-5)
Traditionally, the Fourth Sunday of Easter goes by the name “Good Shepherd Sunday.” The reason is easy to understand. The gospel selection for each Sunday of the three-year cycle (A,B,C) is always taken from Chapter 10 of the Gospel of John, a chapter known for Rabbi Jesus’ use of the shepherd image to describe himself, at one point in the section stating, “I am the good shepherd.” Since we are in Cycle A, we hear the first ten verses of that chapter today. Years B and C will take subsequent passages from the same chapter.
As we have seen before in the fourth gospel, Rabbi Jesus often uses familiar images when he describes himself and his mission, always prefaced by the “I am” introduction. So, he will say “I am the light of the world.” Or, “I am the living bread.” Or, “I am the true vine.” It is not surprising, then, that he uses another everyday image when he says, “I am the good shepherd.”
Shepherds were well-known figures in the Judean landscape at the time of Rabbi Jesus’ life. Much of the countryside is poor soil for cultivation, often covered with rocks. As a result, it is better used for grazing, sheep being one type of livestock that can subsist on such terrain. So, when Rabbi Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd, his listeners understand the image quite well.
In the section we want to highlight today, we hear him speak of the voice of the shepherd, pointing out that the sheep recognize the voice of the shepherd and so will not follow a stranger. If we wish to have a better understanding of the image, it is important to know that shepherds often brought their herds together at night and secured them within an enclosure, usually made of rocks stacked atop each other.
Sometimes, the enclosure would have a gate. But if it was a smaller enclosure, the shepherd would lay on the ground in front of the entrance, his body forming a barrier so that thieves or wolves could not snatch away the sheep. When morning came, the shepherds would call their sheep out of the enclosure and the sheep would follow their respective shepherd to their grazing place, his voice familiar to them. The larger herd divided itself into smaller herds on the basis of the shepherds’ voices.
We don’t have to have a knowledge of sheep to understand this behavior, since it is shared by a good many creatures. Anybody who has a dog for a pet knows very well how the dog recognizes its owner’s voice and comes running when called, separating itself from a pack of other dogs when the familiar voice calls it home.
And, for that matter, babies also recognize the voice of their parents before they recognize any other voices, especially the voice of their mothers, a voice they have heard while they were in the womb, becoming familiar with it over the course of months, finding in it a soothing and a comforting sound. So, they seek out and respond to it much quicker than they do to a stranger’s voice, a voice with which they have had no history.
It is clear from the passage that Rabbi Jesus expects his followers to recognize his voice, following him and not being misled by the voice of thieves and robbers. Truth be told, he may be putting too much confidence in his followers who, unlike sheep, do not always follow his voice, but, in fact, too often follow the voices of con men and hustlers.
The evidence surrounds us. His voice tells us to feed the hungry and to give drink to the thirsty, but how often do we really give priority to the cries of the poor? His voice tells us to give the shirt off our back to the person in need, but how often do we show that kind of generosity to the needy and to the abandoned? His voice tells us to become peacemakers, but how often do we strive for peace with people we don’t like or see as different from us or our values?
This handful of examples is enough for us to see that we are not following the voice of Rabbi Jesus as faithfully as he expects of us. Instead, we apparently are allowing other voices to grab our attention, falling in step behind these voices instead of the one that we should be listening to. Were we truly listening to the voice of Rabbi Jesus as we should, then the world would be a very different place.
So, the question we have to ask ourselves is why are we listening to the wrong voices, even as we tell ourselves we are faithful followers of the Lord Jesus. Why can’t we tell the difference between his voice and the voice of robbers and thieves? That is the million dollar question. And it is a question that we should not lay aside too quickly.
If, for whatever reason, we seem unsure or unclear about the voice of Rabbi Jesus, lost in the sea of voices that surround us on an everyday basis, bombarding us and drowning out the voice of the one whom we call the way, the truth, and the life, then we can find a clear means of discerning which is the voice of Rabbi Jesus and which is the voice of a thief.
Rabbi Jesus gives us that means of discernment in the passage we hear today when he says, “A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy. I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” In these few words we find the litmus test for the voice of the Good Shepherd. His voice gives life–an abundance of life–while the voice of the thief brings death and destruction.
Surely, that distinction is easy enough for us to understand and is one that we can carry with us as we make decisions that will show we are, in fact, following the voice of Rabbi Jesus, and not following the voice of the thieves that fill our airwaves and our highways. Does the voice give life or does the voice bring death?
A thief, by its very definition, is someone who takes away from another, who is intent on satisfying his own needs regardless of the needs of others, and who shows no concern for others, only his own self-interests and his own self-advancement. Fueled by gross greed and by selfish intentions, he festers destruction wherever he goes, leaving behind him a path of darkness and doom. His followers fall in step behind him, destroying anything or anybody that doesn’t serve their purposes, denying others the same rights that they want for themselves, hoarding goods and privileges for themselves.
The opposite is also true. The Good Shepherd, as exemplified by the words and works of Rabbi Jesus, brings life and light wherever he walks in the world, building up others, not tearing them down, helping others, not hindering them, and upholding the dignity of one and all, not denying dignity to those deemed unworthy or unequal based on some arbitrary matrix or measure.
Again, it should not be difficult to decide which voice we’re listening to. Is the path we have walked filled with life, the hungry fed, the sick healed, the forsaken found? Or is our path littered with dead bodies, the poor left to fend for themselves, the persecuted left to fight their own fights, the powerless hounded by the powerful without any relief from us?
One backward glance and we should be able to determine which voice we have followed. Either we have left behind us a landscape flourishing with an abundance of life, or we have left behind us a landscape floundering in darkness and decay. The difference should be as clear as night and day, one path dark as night, the other path light as day.
The problem, it seems, is we find something appealing or attractive in the voice of the thieves who surround us with their false promises and their fake pledges. Something in our twisted minds and crooked hearts convinces us that the words that come out of the mouths of these thieves are words of life, when, in fact, they are words of death.
So, when they cry out for division, we rally behind them, quick to divide others into us and them. When they shout out denigrating diatribes against people with different creeds, different skin color, or different cultures, we jump on board, adding our voices to their own, filling the country with venom and hate. When the thieves propagate slurs and slanders against persons or groups, insisting they are inferior and beneath us, we join the rabble rousers, the noise we make drowning out the cries of the dying, the destitute, and the defenseless.
When Rabbi Jesus spoke of thieves and robbers who want to steal and slaughter the sheep, he was speaking of the Pharisees, the politicians, and the false prophets who have hounded him as he sought to do the work assigned him by his Heavenly Father. But we would be foolish to think that they have gone away. They are still very much with us, now dressed in modern street clothes, their voices little changed.
They continue to propagate injustice in the world, denying equal rights to one and all; they continue to feed on the powerless, taking from them instead of giving to them; they continue to condemn and castigate any who are different from them, dividing the world into war regions, factions fighting each other for no good reason except someone has decided that anything different should be removed from the face of the earth.
As always, Rabbi Jesus puts a choice before us. He tells us that if we want to be his follower, then we will recognize his voice. We will follow his voice as he leads us through the highways and byways of this world. We will not be fooled by the voices of the thieves and the robbers that are always close at hand, waiting to lure away the sheep from the Good Shepherd.
Or, we can turn a deaf ear to his voice, choosing instead to march behind hooligans and hucksters who are hell bent on bringing death and destruction everywhere they go, using their power and their privilege to subjugate and to subject the sheep to slavery and slaughter, a feeding frenzy that leaves in its wake carcasses and corpses.
Rabbi Jesus makes clear to us today the difference between the two choices. He says, “A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy. I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” Now, we are left to decide which it will be for us–slaughter and destruction, or life in abundance. And, need we state the obvious, we can’t have it both ways.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 