This Sunday in our Easter season is sometimes called ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’. We call it that because, in our gospel this morning, we hear Jesus call himself, ‘the good shepherd’ — the one who lays down his life for his sheep, the one who protects them from the wolves and gathers all of his scattered sheep into one fold. This is in contrast to the ‘hired hands’ who run and scatter when the wolves show up because they’re more concerned with themselves and their own security than with the well-being of the sheep.
And this contrast makes a lot of sense because when we meet Jesus in this gospel, he is in the middle of a conflict with the Pharisees (a fairly normal day for Jesus). Jesus has just healed a man of blindness, but he has done this on the Sabbath. The Pharisees, tunnel-visioned into their particular interpretation of Torah, believe that Jesus has broken the law by doing this. This is a theme with them, throughout the gospels, Jesus heals a suffering or crippled person on the Sabbath, and the Jewish leaders try to punish him for it, believing it would be better to let that person suffer than to risk compromising their own personal holiness by helping on the Sabbath. Like we often do, the Pharisees here prioritize their own personal comfort and security at the expense of the people they are meant to be guiding and caring for. They sound a lot like those ‘hired hands’ Jesus is describing.
This is a solid parable on its own, but if we’ve spent much time with the Scriptures, we know that this imagery of shepherd and sheep shows up all over the place. So let’s back up a bit. Not only is God often referred to as the shepherd, guiding and protecting his people, Israel, but a whole bunch of important figures in the Old Testament are connected with the language of shepherds and sheep. The prophet Amos, King David, Moses, a whole bunch of the patriarchs — many of the most important leaders in Israel’s history were actual shepherds, spending at least part of their lives caring for and protecting the flocks of others. Throughout the Scriptures these and other leaders are referred to metaphorically as the good ‘shepherds’ of Israel, guiding the people in the ways of God and keeping them from being ‘scattered’. On the other hand, the Scriptures refer to leaders like Pharoah and the later, increasingly corrupt leaders of Israel and Judah as bad shepherds, who lead the people astray and allow them to be scattered, so that they become like ‘sheep without a shepherd.’
If we zoom in a bit more, we start to see a bit of a pattern emerge. On the one hand, those ‘bad shepherds’ in the Old Testament lead the people to prioritize security, accumulating wealth and often engaging in idolatry and violence in attempts to secure their power and rule. Ultimately, these shepherds, in their pursuit of wealth and security, lead the people into war and exile. On the other hand, the ‘good shepherds,’ like Moses or the prophets, lead the people away from relying on wealth and power for their security, and they try to gather the people towards justice and mercy, towards faithfulness and reliance upon God’s provision — because these good shepherds know that if they follow the voice of the true shepherd, they will always have enough.
That, I think, is what the shepherding imagery is mainly meant to communicate to us in the Scriptures. Remember that for the people of the Bible, a shepherd is someone who leads and sustains her flock in the middle of a desert. This is what Psalm 23 is about. Often, we get confused because the picture we associate in our minds with shepherds and sheep is a lush meadow, right? We imagine rolling hills and flowing streams and green and flowers and ‘mary had a little lamb’ — or something like that. But none of that exists in the land of the Scriptures. A shepherd in the ancient near east (or in the middle-east or Palestine today) led her sheep through mostly dry and desolate terrain — through a desert, where drinkable ‘still waters’ are scarce and ‘green pastures’ are small patches of grass amidst the rocks. “Paths of righteousness” is both a metaphor and a technical term for a safe path that has been beaten through the treacherous desert terrain, and a rod and staff were needed to beat off the beasts who might attack a stray sheep. In other words, Psalm 23 is not about how God is the shepherd who always leads us into lush green lands of comfort and abundance, far from danger and the shadow of death. Psalm 23 is about how God is the good shepherd who — if we listen to his voice — can always lead us to water and sustenance in the midst of a harsh world, who finds sure footing for us when the way is rough and steep, and who does not hesitate to journey with us through the shadow of darkness and death when that is the direction we must go. Christ does not promise us that we will always have comfort or security, wealth or abundance; but he does promise that, if we follow his voice, he will always make a way for us and be there to provide for and guide us — to ensure that, no matter how desolate or dark things may get, we will always have enough.
This is all in the background when Jesus calls himself ‘the good shepherd’ in our gospel this morning. But, as much as this reading is about what it means for Jesus to be the ‘good shepherd’ who lays down his life to provide for us, there’s something else that I want to draw our attention to this morning:
In the middle of his parable, Jesus calls out that his sheep “know him”, they “listen to his voice.” If we back up a few verses to the start of chapter 10, this theme is even more pronounced. Let me read it for you (vv.2-5): Jesus says that, “the one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out… and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger… because they do not know the voice of strangers.” You see, today is just as much about the sheep as it is about the good shepherd.
Everything we’ve talked about so far is predicated on the idea that we are ‘the sheep’ in these passages, but what does it mean for us to be ‘the sheep’ of this ‘good shepherd’? Sheep aren’t always the smartest creatures, but, as the passage points out, they are very good at recognizing and following their shepherd’s voice. A teacher I like tells a story about how a shepherd can mix her flock with a whole bunch of other flocks in the same fold together overnight and then separate just her individual flock from the fold in the morning by opening the gate and calling to them — because the sheep only listen to the voice of their particular shepherd. If we are going to be Christ’s sheep, if we are going to journey with him wherever he is leading us, we have to learn to recognize Christ’s voice.
We live in a world where we are surrounded by bad shepherds and ‘hired hands’, to use Jesus’ term. We are surrounded by voices, inside and outside the Church, who promise comfort and security and purpose in exchange for our energy and our money and our allegiance. We live in a world that is often confusing and exhausting, where we don’t always know which way to go, and so our own fears and anxieties also push and pull and scatter us. Even in our own denomination and here at St. Matthias — we are in transition, we don’t have a rector, we are aging, there aren’t as many of us as there used to be, and we are often just not sure where to go or what to do next.
But the way forward for us is not to give ourselves to one of those voices that promises us security and purpose, just as the way forward for St. Matthias is not to just wait for a new rector to come in and give us direction. If we are to be Christ’s sheep, if we are to go in the way that Christ is calling us, then we have to do the hard and uncertain work of making space to listen to Christ’s voice. This isn’t something we can just pay for or subscribe to. We have to do the difficult work of drawing close to Christ and listening — in the Scriptures, in the people around us, in the Eucharist, in prayer. We have to spend time soaking in Christ’s presence and staring at Christ’s face and listening to Christ’s voice until we begin to know him, until we begin to taste and see and hear him calling to us in our day to day lives, our communities, our responsibilities, our challenges, our relationships — until we begin to be able to recognize his voice calling and see where he is leading us. Because he is leading us, Christ is the good shepherd who is right there, ever and always calling, waiting for us to recognize his voice so that he can go with us and guide us, so that he can show us the way to new life even in the midst of the barren places of our lives — if we can just learn to listen, to know his voice.
Amen.