Jesus said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber. But 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.” Although Jesus used this figure of speech, the Pharisees did not realize what he was trying to tell them. So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” (John 10.1-10)
Each year on this Fourth Sunday of Easter we celebrate what has become known as “Good Shepherd Sunday,” the title coming from the selection from Sacred Scripture for this day, specifically Chapter 10 of Saint John’s Gospel, a text that has Jesus speak of the Good Shepherd, a title with which he will identify himself. The first part of that monologue is presented to us today.
Whereas the celebration of Good Shepherd Sunday was traditionally held earlier in the Easter season, that changed with the liturgical reforms of the 1970s, allowing it to fall at the halfway part of the season. It stands to reason that the text was chosen because Jesus speaks of the Good Shepherd as someone who lays down his life for his sheep, making it an appropriate selection for the Easter season as we recall Jesus’ laying down his own life for us.
Before we examine the text more closely, we may want to step back and see its placement in the gospel, where the evangelist puts an episode always being worthy of our consideration. It falls immediately after the healing of the man born blind, an event that takes place in the Temple in Jerusalem. We may recall that the restoring of sight to the man brings down the wrath of the Jewish leaders upon Jesus, these leaders shown as having a much more severe form of blindness than the man who was born blind. They are incapable of seeing Jesus as the one sent by God to save his people.
Jesus concluded that event in the Temple with the statement to the blind man whose sight has been restored, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.” The Good Shepherd monologue follows, its connection to the healing made clear by Jesus’ use of the transitional phrase, “Amen, Amen, I say to you.”
Knowing the connection between the event in the Temple and this parable of the Good Shepherd, we are better able to understand the contrasts that play a pivotal part in this story. They are meant to explain and expose the conflict between the Jewish leaders and Jesus, the images in the Good Shepherd story serving as stand-ins for the two parties to the conflict.
If we listen closely to Jesus’ words, we will see these contrasts staring us in the face. The first contrast is between the shepherd and thieves. The shepherd enters through the gate while thieves climb over elsewhere. We do not have to wait long for an explanation. The intentions of the two different parties serve as the second contrast. The shepherd wants to protect the sheep while thieves want to steal and slaughter the sheep.
This moves to the third contrast, a logical conclusion overall, this being the voice of the shepherd versus the voice of the stranger. Jesus says that the Good Shepherd walks ahead of the sheep and the sheep follow him because they recognize his voice, but they do not follow a stranger, insteading running away from him because they don’t recognize the voice of strangers.
As we have seen Jesus do on many other occasions, he utilizes images from the ordinary and everyday lives of the people who are in his audience. The pastoral life of the shepherd and his sheep that serves as the background for these contrasts is familiar to all his listeners, requiring little to no explanation. The people have seen all these actions play out many times before.
However, the evangelist is also quick to inform us that the Jewish leaders failed to see the underlying message that Jesus was telling the people. As John writes, “Although Jesus used this figure of speech, the Pharisees did not realize what he was trying to tell them.” In other words, the blindness that they exhibited earlier in the healing of the man born blind still remains, their recalcitrance as strong as ever.
Obviously, the evangelist shares this story with us because he wants us to learn something from it just as he wanted the early Christian community at the close of the first century to whom he wrote this gospel to take a lesson from it. While there are several angles from which we could approach this story, I would invite us to look at two.
The first is that of the Good Shepherd, so called because his concern is with the sheep. Since we do not have the entire monologue presented today–it is sliced into three parts to allow a section for each of the years in the liturgical cycle–it is important that we hear what Jesus says in verse 14 when he states, “I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep.”
In this first part, Jesus identifies himself as the gate for the sheep, stating “whoever enters through me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.” While the double identification may cause some confusion–is he the gate or is he the shepherd–it is generally settled by seeing the two images as separate or as “an image within an image.” They do not compete with each other, but complement one another.
The point of both is the same. There is an intimacy and a closeness between the shepherd and his sheep, a connection that cannot be broken. It is expressed most clearly in the familiarity of the voice of the shepherd to the sheep, Jesus repeating several times that the sheep hear his voice, following him because they recognize it.
If that does not convince us of the closeness of the shepherd with the sheep, then the fact that the shepherd calls each sheep by name should seal the deal for us. “The shepherd calls his own sheep by name,” Jesus states, not a hyperbole on his part, but a fact of pastoral life as it was experienced in ancient Judea. Names were given to sheep just as horsemen and ranchers today give names to their horses.
That reality is meant to remind us that each one of us is special to Jesus. While we may think of ourselves as nobody special, just one face in a crowd of people, Jesus thinks otherwise, seeing each of us as individuals, calling us by our names. It is a reminder of something that Isaiah the prophet said on behalf of the Lord God when he told the people of Israel, “I have called you by name; you are mine.”
Truly, there is something very comforting and reassuring in those words. There is nothing more isolating and more intimidating than to be in a space where nobody knows our name. Such anonymity takes from us one of our essential characteristics–our name, which tells the world who we are. Without a name, we are unknown, unrecognized, unremarkable. We also know from experience how embarrassing it is when someone forgets our name, the inability to call us by name putting us in the category of “forgettable.”
But Jesus knows each of us so well that he can call us by name, seeing each one of us as special, singular, and set apart. That fact is reinforced by words he spoke in other places. This is not a one and done, but is something near and dear to him. He never wants us to think that we are forgotten or that we aren’t important to him.
For example, in Luke 15 he tells the story of the lost sheep. “What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them,” he asks the Pharisees and scribes, “would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’”
So, again here in this story of the Good Shepherd, Jesus is making it very clear that we are special to him, so special that he can call us by name, the one thing nearest and dearest to us, giving us our identity as someone specific and separate from others. In those moments when we feel we are all alone in our fears or forgotten in our infirmities, we need to remind ourselves that the Lord Jesus is with us, always calling us by our name.
The second lesson that I would recommend we take from this story of the Good Shepherd is our response to the fact that Jesus calls us by name. As Jesus points out, “As the shepherd calls his sheep by name and leads them out, the sheep follow him because they recognize his voice.” In other words, the familiarity goes both ways. Not only does Jesus call us by name, but we also recognize his voice. Just as he knows us, we know him.
That familiarity assumes and requires a commitment on our parts. As we know from experience, we recognize another person’s voice only if we have spent time with him or her. It is for this same reason that a young child often cries when an unfamiliar person speaks to them. The child doesn’t recognize the voice and feels frightened. If we are to recognize the voice of Jesus, then we also must spend time with him, hearing his voice in the scriptures and listening for his voice in the silence of our prayers.
Our ability to recognize his voice is critically important. As Jesus points out, his sheep “recognize his voice and they will not follow a stranger, but instead they will run away from him because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.” In other words, we put ourselves at risk when we do not spend enough time with the Good Shepherd to know his voice, a voice that often is heard in our hearts more than through our ears.
When we fail to recognize his voice, calling to us to follow behind him, then we become vulnerable to the slick talk of con men and the hawking of snake oil salesmen who have no intention of helping us, but rather want to use us for their own benefit, exploiting our naivete or our weakness. In the process, they steal us from the Good Shepherd and we will find ourselves going down a deep and dark path that spells our self-destruction. “A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy,” Jesus reminds us, rather than giving us “abundant life” as he has promised us.
However, even in those times when we have strayed and have lost our way because we have not stayed close to the Good Shepherd, we can find comfort in the promise of the prophet Isaiah who, speaking for the Lord God once again, promised us, “Your ears shall hear a word behind you: ‘This is the way; walk in it’ when you would turn to the right or to the left.”
That word, of course, comes from the Good Shepherd who never deserts us or abandons us, however far from him we find ourselves. He is before us when we follow him and he is behind us when we have fallen off the path, either way calling us by name, never at peace until we are with him, not leaving us in the clutches of thieves and robbers.
–Jeremy Myers
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