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Sermon, Theology & Culture

Unexpected Shepherds and the Good Shepherd

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GOSPEL: John 10:1-10
Jesus said:] 1“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out… (Read the whole passage)

The early church understood the 7 week season of Easter to be like one great day of celebration. Time kind of gets mushy in Easter, unlike other seasons of the church year where we are so often counting the weeks as they go by. And while many comparisons to our pandemic isolation have been to the season of Lent, there have been also similarities to Easter. Disciples hiding out in upper rooms, sticking to small groups and avoiding crowds, time becoming mushy and hard to keep track of. We just might be living the most authentic Easter season of our lives. 

Today, we are four weeks into the season of Easter, nearly a month since first hearing about the women going to the tomb early on the first day of the week. And yet, today is the first time that we are moving on from that first day. We divert somewhat to familiar images of the pastoral Jesus. Psalm 23, and John 10. Shepherds and sheep. Comforting images of the love and care of God, poured out for us. 

The church that I grew up in had a stained glass window of Jesus the Good Shepherd, a blonde hair blued-eyed Shepherd lovingly gazing at the lamb he is holding in his arms. An imagine imprinted on my mind, that often surfaces on this fourth Sunday of Easter, or when I hear psalm 23. 

And there is a certain amount of comfort and safety that we imagine into the image of the Good Shepherd, especially in times of struggle and hardship… such as in this moment in time. 

In John’s Gospel, Jesus gives us another comforting image of the Shepherd, who is known by the sheep. The Shepherd who lays down as the gate to the pen to provide protection for the sheep. 

Yet, Jesus isn’t talking his disciples or the hungry crowds about the Shepherd, but rather the  Pharisees. The Pharisees who have just criticized him for healing the Blind man… a story that we heard only a few weeks in Lent. Jesus is speaking to those who bear responsibility for caring for the sheep, caring for the community. To the religious and community leaders who are balking at any change to the social order, even if it comes in the form of  healing a blind beggar in their midst.

As Jesus describes the familiar voice of the shepherd, he also describes the voice and motives of the thieves, bandits and strangers… labels he is applying to the religious leaders. Jesus suggests that not everyone charged with the care of the community is tending to that charge as they should. They are instead more concerned with the status quo, with keeping the power and control in their own hands and out of the hands of others…. Whether it is Jesus wantonly offering God’s love and care, or a blind man becoming self-sufficient. These are voices and leaders who are calling the sheep into danger for their own gain, their own selfish purposes. 

Does this sound at all familiar?

As we enter into week 8 of lockdown and staying at home, the calls to #OpenforBusiness are starting to get louder and louder. Here in Manitoba, we are beginning the slow yet still ambitious move of opening up some businesses tomorrow – hair cuts and restaurant patios and select other businesses will be aloud to open. Even as public health officers tell us it is isn’t exactly safe yet.

This pandemic moment has taught us a lot about the voices that we listen to, the voices who call us sheep to follow. And what is clear is that there are those in our world too, charged with caring for our communities who might not have our best interests in mind. 

And while Jesus declares that the sheep know the voice of the Shepherd, I am not so sure that it is easy for us to recognize. In fact, perhaps what is clear is that most of the voices out there are seeking something from us other than our wellbeing. Our votes, our dollars, our consumption, our attention, our productivity and labour… even our willingness to be sacrificed for the sake of profit and maintaining social order. And all with promises fo green pastures, still waters, prepared tables, and cups running over. 

Knowing the shepherd’s voice is one thing, hearing the shepherd’s voice at all is another. And if the Pandemic has made something clear, it’s that shepherds and their voices are not heard as often as they should be. 

So as Jesus declares that the sheep know the shepherd’s voice, we might be asking, do we really know it?

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We always hear Psalm 23 on Good Shepherd Sunday, but there is of course a reason far more common for us to hear this most familiar of psalms. 

Over the years, as I have presided at many funerals, I have often read Psalm 23 as I lead mourners into worship. Pall bearers and casket, followed by grieving family. And in that moment, we enact that what the familiar psalm describes. We walk together into the valley of the shadow of death.

You see the Good Shepherd does not promise us that everything is green pastures, still waters, and abundant tables and cups. Rather, the Good Shepherd is honest about the world, about the dangers and risks. The Good Shepherd tells us that the there are dark valleys ahead, there is the shadow of death in store. And there is no going back, no staying in the green pastures. There is only forward into our future.  

However, the Good Shepherd also promises to lead us through the valley of the shadow of death. 

Jesus promises that the sheep know the Shepherd’s voice not because the sheep are good sheep, but because the Shepherd is a Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd whose only concern is the well being and care of the sheep. The Good Shepherd who knows the sheep. The Good Shepherd who gathers and collects the confused and lost sheep, wherever we are going – green pastures or dark valleys. 

And as we navigate this shadow valley of pandemic, there have been voices emerging from the fray, voices whose only concern has been our health and well being. Shepherds who didn’t know they were shepherds only a few months ago. 

Often in this pandemic the voices of Chief Public Health Officers have cut through the fray of the voices out there calling us to follow. And these unexpected shepherds have surprised us by being singularly focused on our health and well-being…  voices that are seldom heard among the leaders of our world. Shepherds that tell us the truth, that do not promise all green pastures and still waters, but who warn of the valley of the shadows of death ahead. 

But Shepherd voices who also promise to lead us through. 

To lead us through the dark valleys to whatever lies in wait for us on the other side. 

To go with us all together. 

And this promise is of course the promise of the Good Shepherd. 

In this pandemic moment, our whole world feels as though it is gathered at the back of a church about to walk into the dark valley. Yet today, the Good Shepherd promises that we do not go alone, that the Good Shepherd will see us through, that the shadows of death will not be the end of our story, that there is life on the other side.  

This is the only voice, the only promise that really matters. 

And so on this fourth Sunday of Easter that on the surface it feels like we have moved on from Easter morning, the promise of the Good Shepherd takes us right back to the empty tomb, right back to glimpse of the other side of the shadow of death. 

The Good Shepherd comes to us in the middle of Easter because the Good Shepherd is an Easter Shepherd, a shepherd whose voice knows the sheep, whose voices knows us and knows what we need, a shepherd who has been through the valley of the shadow of death and promises us see us through, to the other side and into New Life. 

Sermon

Worshipping before the Shepherd’s Throne

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John 10:22-30

At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” (Read the Revelation Reading)

It is still the Great Day of the Resurrection! We are half way into the 50 day season of Easter. And for the past three weeks, we have stuck close to the events of the early days after the empty tomb. Jesus meeting the disciples and Thomas behind locked doors. And Jesus meeting Peter and others on the beach, calling Peter to feed his sheep.

Yet, the 4th Sunday of the Easter begins to move us along from the early resurrection moments. Traditionally, the 4th Sunday of the Easter has been observed as Good Shepherd Sunday… a day to be reminded of our Shepherding God calling us into God’s great flock. We hear familiar readings like Psalm 23 and we hear Jesus use familiar sheep and shepherd images in John. And as church folk, we love those quaint images of Jesus with a fuzzy sheep… usually on some oil painting found in a church basement or at grandma’s house… Yet, Good Shepherd Sunday has a deeper sense that it is moving us along in the story of resurrection. From resurrection moments to resurrection community.

And so we hear also from Revelation, John’s vision of the great multitude, the great flock before the throne of the great shepherd at the end of time.

A few decades on from the resurrection, and the first communities of Christians, of Jesus’ followers, were struggling in Roman society. They were social outcasts because they refused to follow the social order. It was essential in the Roman world to know where you belonged. Society was divided up by class, ethnicity, gender, occupation, citizenship, language, and religion. And those early church communities were marginalized because they had this inconvenient habit of declaring that under the One God of All, there was no Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free. They rejected a world that saw gods in everything, mountains and bubbling springs, the sun and moon and stars, in war and harvest, in nature and animals. They worshipped the one God of all things who died on the cross and rose again on the third day.

This was a threat to the Roman Military cult who believed the essence of their success at conquering new lands was that in each new place they came to conquer, they adopted and prayed to the local mountain gods or river gods or whatever kind they found for victory on the battlefield – and they go it.

For a community living under oppression, marginalized and ostracized, sometimes even sent to the coliseums to be eaten by lions, the Revelation of John provided a vision of God’s great promise of reconciliation… the unity of God’s people worshiping before the throne, the Shepherd’s one great flock.

This great unified multitude gathering before the One God’s throne is as counter-cultural today as it was for early Christian communities. We too live in a world that encourages us to look around for people who are like us, who resemble us, and to fear anyone who doesn’t. We constantly navigate the many and various divisions that categorize people. Whether it is which political party we support, what religion we practice, what education level we have obtain or job we do, what the colour of our skin is or the gender we identify as or generation we belong to, what sports team we cheer for or tv show we are fans of. Our world is just as divided and categorized as the ancient world. And the narratives, the stories that we are told push us to fear those who are different, those who don’t belong to the same tribes and groups we belong to.

The idea that we belong to one great multitude is one that goes against most of what we are told by the world around us.

And so it is no wonder that when we talk about Jesus the Good Shepherd, we hold on to the images of shepherd staffs and fuzzy lambs. We love those paintings of a kindly Jesus holding a little sheep in his arms. We want to be comforted, we want to hear that we are one of the sheep, one of the people who gets to be a part one of the most important groups we can think of.

Yet having just come from the cross and empty tomb, from Thomas seeing the marks in Jesus’ hands and side, from Peter’s shame being met by Jesus’ compassion over a breakfast of fish on the beach… is fuzzy sheep and kindly shepherds where we have been headed with all of this?

If we are honest, the radical inclusive of God’s kingdom is something we don’t usually want to imagine. The idea that those whom we fear, those who are different, those whom we often would rather keep out and keep away from, are actually a part of us can make us uncomfortable. A great multitude of people full of those who we struggle to imagine as being anything but other from us is hard to grasp.

So it is no mistake that the place and time that this great multitude comes together is not the end of time, but a moment that we know all too well.

My seminary internship was in Calgary, and I was placed in fairly affluent congregation in a neighbourhood just a few blocks from the University. Recently, the C-Train, Calgary Light Rail transit system, had just added a stop close to the church. And one of the consequences was that this sleepy neighbourhood was all of a sudden accessible from anywhere in the city. Many poor and homeless figured out that begging in the burbs was more profitable than downtown. And the church’s back porch and beneath the spruce trees in the yard became convenient places for homeless folks to sleep off a high. This also meant that from time to time, this mostly affluent congregation would welcome some of Calgary’s poorest to worship.

As the intern, one of my usual roles in worship was to serve the common cup at communion. Since most people chose individual cups, I often stood back and watched people coming and going from the altar rail. In those moments, it seemed like a glimpse of the great multitude. As people came to rail, there were oil executives and bank mangers next to retirees and school children. Ex-CFL players alongside teachers and retail managers. Homeless people next to engineers and nurses, people who had lived in the neighbourhood for 80 years next to new immigrants.

Despite all the ways in which we seek to divide ourselves, to find ways in which we are different, the veil between heaven and earth is pulled back as we all came to the table in the same way. Hands open and empty, we are given bread and wine… God gives us the Body of Christ to make us the Body of Christ. As a seminary prof once said to us, “Swirling around in the cup are all your brothers and sisters in Christ.”

Good Shepherd Sunday and the great multitude gathered before the throne tells us a story of God’s desire for us that is very different than any story we hear the other days of the week. It is a story rooted in this gathering that we belong to right here and now. It is the gathering of God’s people before the throne… it the story of God gathering us, and all creation before the word, before the waters, before the bread and wine.

Jesus the Good Shepherd is not just a gentle shepherd holding a fuzzy little sheep, but a God who is gathering us, all of us, all the varied and different kinds of us… gathering all of us up into the great multitude worshipping before the throne. Worshipping before the throne of the one who has come to die with us, and who shows us the way to resurrection and new life…

To new and resurrected life in the one great multitude, God’s great flock to which we now belong.

Sermon

Good Shepherd Sunday – An Easter Let Down

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John 10:11-18

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 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…. read the whole passage

Today marks the half-way point of the seven week season of Easter and the fourth Sunday of Easter is called Good Shepherd Sunday. We hear images of the Good Shepherd on the 4th Sunday. 

And in some respects this Sunday represents a departure from the urgency and immediacy of Easter that we have been hearing for the first 3 weeks of Easter. We first heard the story of the women at the tomb fleeing in fear and telling no one. We followed it up the next week by going back to the day of the resurrection and the fearful disciples hiding out as Jesus appeared in their midst, and how Thomas missed the whole thing. And then last week, we again returned to the day of the resurrection as Jesus appeared to the disciples, this time according to Luke, where they thought he was a ghost. 

Three weeks of immediate urgent experiences of the resurrection. 

Honestly…today can be a bit of a let down. 

While these words are familiar and much beloved… I serve a church named Good Shepherd after all… they don’t seem to carry that same earthiness of the resurrection stories that we have been hearing. Jesus giving one of his wordy speeches found in John’s gospel isn’t as exciting as appearing to the disciples who think he is a ghost. 

Yet these familiar words about Good Shepherds are not really about the hard and unheralded job of being a sheep tender, and Jesus isn’t really talking about the job of tending sheep out in a literal field. 

We have a habit of taking this good shepherd passage out of context… we name churches, we make idyllic pastoral art work of Shepherd Jesus, we compose sanguine hymns about “The King of Love my Shepherd is” all clinging to the sweet and cuddly of image of Jesus gently caring for little lambs (the lambs are us by the way). 

The image makes us feel good, Jesus the Shepherd is like a warm blanket we can wrap around ourselves to keep our faith warm and comfortable. 

And to be certain, there are times in our lives when we need that image of the good shepherd loving and caring for us. 

But this passage is a little more complex than we tend to make it. 

This monologue delivered by Jesus doesn’t happen in isolation, nor are these words intended to provide comfort to the disciples or the crowds following Jesus. Rather, we have to go back to a story that we usually hear during Lent – the story of the blind man. Jesus heals a man born blind and moves on. Then the blind man’s community question his healing and declare that he is still a sinner and eventually send him away. Jesus finds him again, reveals that it is Jesus, the Messiah, who has healed him and then says that it is the religious leaders who are blind. 

Nearby pharisees overhear and challenge Jesus. 

And this speech about the Good Shepherd is what results. 

So imagine Jesus, with a man whose blindness has been healed yet has been sent away by the religious leaders of his community, standing in the bustling streets just outside the synagogue. And there is Jesus and the pharisees are arguing about sin, arguing about the responsibility of leaders to tend and care for God’s people. And Jesus says this, 

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand sees the wolf coming and runs away…”

These words of Jesus take on a very different meaning and character. 

They are fiery and bold. They are words that condemn rather than comfort. 

They condemn the leadership of the pharisees. The religious leaders of God’s chosen people who have been given the responsibility of making God’s love and mercy and forgiveness accessible to all. The religious authorities of Jesus’ day had turned this responsibility into a commodity, into a withholding. They withheld righteousness for the privileged few, only for those who could afford its great cost, only for those who could afford to keep the law of Moses. They had turned their call to serve, into selfish ambition and benefit.

They had let their self-concern, their desire to seek their own benefit, get in the way of this task given to them by God. 

And Jesus was calling them on it. 

Of course this tension and conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees is what eventually leads to the cross, but by the end of this particular speech about the Good Shepherd those listening in were divided into two camps. Those who thought Jesus was nuts, and those who thought he might have a point. 

And while the church has been guilty of the same kind of letting our own selfishness get in the way of our call to make God’s mercy accessible -remember Martin Luther’s central issue in the reformation and the sale of indulgences – we probably find ourselves somewhere the middle those two groups of listeners. 

Somedays we probably think that Jesus and his habit of turning everything we think makes sense upside down is infuriating. 

And other days we can see that Jesus has a point. 

And we know we have the same habit of letting ourselves get in our own way as the pharisees do. We know that we can make things more about ourselves and what we want or fear or desire or detest or prefer or abhor. We know that we get in our own way when it comes to our relationships with others, with our families and friends, with our work and vocations, and of course, even here at church. 

We cannot help it, we are human. We get in the way of God’s calling to share God’s mercy with God’s people. We make things about ourselves and we know it. 

Yet, as Jesus calls out the the pharisees for their selfishness, for self-centredness, he also proclaims something else. 

Something deeply tied to this resurrection season that we are in. For you see on Good Shepherd Sunday, half way through the season of Easter we pivot from the urgency of the resurrection to trying to figure out with the rest of the church, just what we are to do next. 

And heard in context, this Good Shepherd speech of Jesus’ retains some of that resurrection urgency. 

As Jesus calls out the pharisees for getting in their own way of proclaiming God’s mercy for the world, Jesus also declares that God is doing what we cannot. 

The Good Shepherd is laying down his life for the self. 

Jesus is laying down the self – God’s self – for the sake of the world. 

Human beings just cannot get out of our own way. 

So God does what we cannot do, and gives up self. 

God gives up God-like power and God-like control, in order to give us mercy. In order that we may be shown forgiveness. In order that we can hear good news in our dying world. 

God gives it all up for our sake. 

And Jesus know that this will take him to the cross. That selfish humanity will kill God in order to take God’s place. 

But as we have been hearing for the past three weeks, God’s selfless act incarnation, of coming in flesh to live and be among us combine with God’s triumph over death on the cross…

That leads also to empty tombs. 

To empty tombs that frighten Mary Magdalene and the other women who loved Jesus. 
To resurrection appearances in locked rooms that remind Thomas that the one he loves lives. 
To resurrection callings to make us witnesses of all that we have seen and heard. 

And the empty tomb leads us to the Good Shepherd. 

To the Good Shepherd who lays down his life, his self for our sake. 
To the Good Shepherd who gives up the self for the sake of the world, for our sake. 

So that God’s love and mercy is given to us in the Word of God that hear. 
So that God can clothe us with forgiveness, life and salvation in the waters of baptism. 
So that God can give us God’s Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper, so that we can be shed our selfishness and become God’s Body the Church. 

The Good Shepherd does what we cannot. 
The Good Shepherd lays down his life for us in order that we might have new life. 

Life given by the resurrected Christ, who is shepherding us into this new  resurrection reality. 

And so today, on this Good Shepherd Sunday, we are reminded that this is not about being sheep and God being our heavenly shepherd. 

But rather, that the Good Shepherd Christ is leading us, the Body of Christ, into a new resurrection world in order that we become Easter people. 

Sermon

The Good Shepherd or Good Sheep?

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John 10:1-10Jesus said, “… He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” (Read the whole passage) 

Even, far away from the fields and pastures of first century palestine, far away from the shepherds and sheep that Jesus spoke of, the image resonates with us still. The promise of a shepherd who is with in the valley of the shadow of death, the shepherd who searches for the lost one in the 99, the shepherd who guards the gate. Somehow we know what it is to be gathered and care for, protected and loved. Or at least we like the idea…

Shepherding hasn’t changed much in 2000 years. Then, and in many parts of the world now, tending to flocks is done in the same way. When Shepherds come to town for supplies, they put their sheep in pens, guarded by a gatekeeper. After they purchase supplies, they return to the pen and call their sheep. The sheep know their shepherd and follow him or her out to pasture again. 

Out in the wild, Shepherds will gather bushes and rocks to build temporary pens at night. In the opening, the shepherds will sleep, using their own body as gate. This way the predators must pass over them to get to the sheep.

For the disciples, shepherds should have been common place, and the image of God as Shepherd was familiar. The psalms would have been well known by most people in Jesus day. 

And somehow, despite the fact that they know the psalms and shepherds, they do not know what on earth Jesus is talking about. 

The part that the disciples don’t understand isn’t the shepherds, or the sheep gate or the sheep pen. The problem is the sheep. The problem is that Jesus doesn’t tell the disciples how to be good sheep. 

For nearly 2000 years, Christians have called God the Shepherd, have called the church the sheepfold and have called ourselves the sheep.Yet, we don’t have to look much past ourselves to know why the disciples couldn’t understand Jesus. We like the idea of a Shepherd that lovingly chases after us and cares for us. But we want to go into the pen on our terms. We want to be free to be sheep in our way. 

Like the disciples, we have resisted, or even been unable to see Jesus calling out to us. The Blind Man whom Jesus heals in the pool of Siloam does not recognize Jesus once he meets him later on. The disciples cannot imagine how 5 loves and 2 fish will feed a great crowd. Mary Magdalene cannot recognize Jesus near the empty tomb on Easter morning until Jesus calls her by name. Thomas will not believe, unless it is on his terms. 

All of these actions, washing the blind man, feeding the 5000, naming Mary, giving Thomas faith. These are the same actions that God does in the Church. This is how the Shepherd cares for the sheep in the pen. And this is what we resist. We do not want to arrive here empty, we do not want to be washed, and fed and loved. We come here, to the church, to the pen, hoping to earn our love. We want God to reward us. We want to be here on our terms. The Shepherd can stay here in the pen, and when we are ready, we will show up with our best face on… but most of the time we are out there in world and not really wanting a shepherd. We don’t want God to be a hassle in our lives. 

That is what the disciples don’t understand. That is what we don’t understand. Jesus gives us this image of the Shepherd and what the shepherd does, but there is no mention of how to be good sheep.  
And in the end, that isn’t the point. Good Shepherd Sunday is not about how to be good sheep. Today, is a reminder of who God is. Jesus is our Shepherd who calls us, who cares for us and washes us, who feeds us, and names us. 

Washes us in Baptism, and brings us to new life. 

Feeds us in the Lord’s supper, at the Lord’s table, with his own body and blood. 

Names us as his sheep who belongs to the Shepherd. 

Gathers in faith, gathers into this community, this family, this flock. 

These are the actions of God in Christ.

Here in this place, it is the shepherd who is good, not the sheep. It is the shepherd whose actions matter, not those of the sheep. Here in the church, here in this congregation, Jesus calls us home. Yes, we are sent out each week into the world. We go out to pasture to a world fraught with the danger, a world that tells us it is all about the sheep, and what sheep do. 

But in God’s church, in God’s sheepfold, Jesus reminds us again and again, that in washing, feeding, naming and calling that Jesus brings us to himself. 

Jesus’s sheep pen, Christ’s church, is not a place were we need to earn our way. It is not a place where we give of ourselves or where we offer something to God, to the Shepherd. It is a place where God gives to us. It is a place where we receive. It is place where we come to know the Shepherd by his voice. “I baptize you. I give my body for you. I forgive you. You are mine”. 

Wherever we have been scattered, or lost, whatever we cannot understand or are confused about, the voice of the Shepherd gathers us to him, brings us back into the flock. 

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

Sermon

I am the Good Sheep

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John 10:11-18

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”… (read the whole passage)

Sermon

Today, is Good Shepherd Sunday. Each fourth Sunday in the season of Easter, Christians around the world and through time celebrate Jesus as our Shepherd. Good Shepherd Sunday is the middle Sunday of Easter connecting those first resurrection accounts to Jesus preparing his disciples for the beginning of the church. And as such, our focus today shifts from the resurrection accounts that we have been hearing for the past 3 weeks to the Gospel of John and to Jesus’ sayings regarding the Good Shepherd.

A shepherd can be a bit of an odd image for Jesus to use to describe God’s relationship with the community of believers. For us, Shepherds conjure up images of idyllic meadow scenes. We imagine that male model in a robe version Jesus holding a lamb in his arms. You don’t even have to look around here much to find that kind of image.

Yet, for the people hearing Jesus’ speak, shepherds were more complicated image. One the one hand, King David the greatest king of Israel, had been a shepherd and so the image applied, from then on, to the kings of Israel. But being a shepherd in Jesus day was not an ideal career path. Shepherds lived out in the fields with their sheep. They were dirty, smelly, and uncivilized. They were mysterious nomads who only came into towns and villages on occasion. Shepherd were something between beggars and gang members. So it is odd that Jesus would choose that image, and odder still that he wouldn’t immediately tie it to the kingly side of the image.

Instead, Jesus talks about the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, not the shepherd who sends his sheep to war demanding they lay down their lives for king and country.

Yet, along side the Good Shepherd, it is the contrasting figures that Jesus’ hearers would have known. The Good Shepherd who is willing to die for his sheep stands against the bad shepherd, who is willing to sacrifice the weak sheep for the flock. The Good Shepherd stands against the hired man who cuts and runs at the first sign of trouble. The Good Shepherd stands between the sheep and wolves, the wolves who are out to kill the sheep.

Jesus’ audience lived in a world full of bad shepherds, hired men and wolves. Their world was dangerous and threatening. A Good Shepherd, a Good leader, a Good King was a rare blessing to sheep flocks and nations alike.

We too know what it is like to be sheep and to have bad shepherds, hired men and wolves around us. We know it in our families, our workplaces, our communities, our political leaders, our churches. In fact, we know the bad shepherds, hired men and wolves so well, that we find it hard to imagine or to identify Good Shepherds at all. We find it hard to trust that our Shepherds are Good, and often we are waiting for a Good Shepherd to reveal themselves as a bad one.

Good Shepherd Sunday is a certainly a day to talk about the shepherd-like qualities of God. To name the ways in which God cares for, loves and looks after us. Yet, the point of the day may just as much be the sheep as it is the shepherd. But not that solitary sheep safe and comfortable in the arms of the shepherd, like those paintings on the walls of so many churches would suggest. No, it is the flocks, the way that sheep are a group that is truly significant.

While bad shepherds, hired men and wolves are dangers for flocks, often it can be other sheep who might pose just as much risk. Sheep, individually can be intelligent, caring, delightful animals. It is when sheep are in groups that they have problems.

Sheep flocks are poor decisions makers, they are jumpy herd animals, easily tricked by predators. Sheep flocks will stand and let predators hunt them down out of fear. Sheep flocks will run from the one wolf nipping at their heals, into the mouths of the waiting pack in the other direction. Sheep will follow a leader off a cliff because they are taught from an early age to follow no matter what.

Sound familiar? Like how people act in groups.

And so often, because we have experienced the dangers before, because many churches and faithful people have been sacrificed by bad shepherds, abandoned by hired men, eaten up by hungry wolves. Because we know what it is like to stand and do nothing in the face of danger when no sheep wants to be the first to act, because we know what it is like to run from a small problem only to be faced with a much bigger one, because we know what it is like to follow our panic off a cliff… because we know these things — we have real trust issues.

We have been hurt as sheep, and we find it hard to trust. We find it hard to risk ourselves. And sometimes we even sabotage our shepherds and our flocks so that the bad thing that we know is bound to come is at least something in our control.

Despite our trust issues, Jesus says a curious thing today about sheep and shepherds.

“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.“

It is curious, because throughout the gospels it is pretty clear that the disciples, the crowds, the pharisees and scribes, the temple priests, the Romans… none of them really know who Jesus is. None of them really understand what Jesus is doing.

In fact, if the sheep really knew the shepherd… we wouldn’t be celebrating the season of Easter right now. We wouldn’t be celebrating Easter because the sheep wouldn’t have put the shepherd to death on Good Friday.

If Good Shepherd Sunday is really just as much about being a good flock as it is about Jesus being a Good Shepherd, there is a disconnect. Because human beings are not usually good sheep.

But Jesus knows that. That is why when Jesus starts talking about the Good Shepherd he doesn’t begin by saying that the sheep know the shepherd.

Jesus starts by saying this,

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The Good Shepherd is not a King to rule over the sheep. The Good Shepherd is not an uninvested caregiver like a hired man. The Good Shepherd is willing to not only stand between the wolves and the sheep… The Good Shepherd is willing to stand between sheep and sheep, even when that leads him to a cross.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is willing to die for his sheep… is willing to die for us. And only a few weeks ago we told that story. We heard that Jesus did in fact die and it wasn’t the wolves that killed him… it was the sheep, it was us.

For us, that just doesn’t add up. A Good Shepherd who dies? Wouldn’t a good shepherd just make the problems go away? Wouldn’t a Good Shepherd keep the sheep away from the dangers?

Well, not if the sheep are the problem.

Jesus’ doesn’t make the problems go away. Jesus faces them head on. Jesus faces us head on.

Jesus faces our sheep problems right along side us. Jesus faces them by becoming a sheep along with us.

Jesus confronts our sheep problems, our trust issues with Shepherds, by becoming part of flocks.

Jesus the Good Sheep has come to lay down his life for the sheep, with the sheep. Jesus the Good Sheep comes to show us a new way to be sheep, a way of trust, forgiveness and grace. Jesus shows us to the other side.

Even in a dangerous world. Even if we are expecting the worst and treat Jesus like a bad shepherd, even if we turn into wolves and want him dead. Even if we have trust issues… Jesus comes to lay down his life for us. Jesus comes to give himself to us. Jesus comes to wash, to forgive us, to feed us, to go out into the dangerous world with us. Jesus comes not take the dangers away, but to face them with us. To show us to the other side. To show us that even when there is a cross, what follows is an empty tomb.

The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, but the Good Shepherd also rises again on the third day. And the Good Shepherd, the Good Sheep rises so that we will know what is it is like to rise too. The Good Shepherd knows his sheep because he has been through life and death with us, and we will know the Good Shepherd when we rise to new life.

Amen.