“The thief comes only to steal and kill
and destroy. I came that they may have
life, and have it abundantly. 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 up and scatters
them. The hired hand runs away because a
hired hand does not care for the sheep.
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. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 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. For this
reason the Father loves me, 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. I have received this command from my Father.”
Why have you come to church this
morning? Why are you here? You could literally be anywhere else today
doing anything you wanted, so why have you come to church this morning? My hope is that you have come looking for the
very thing that Jesus promises in the first verse of today’s text. Were you paying attention? Jesus said he came to give us something - do
you remember what it is? Jesus said, “I
have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10b). Abundant life. That phrase captures what most
people--including myself--long for. May we pray.
In the Church’s calendar, does
anyone know what season we are currently in? We are in the Easter season, which began on
Easter Sunday and lasts for 7 weeks, all the way through Pentecost Sunday. We celebrate Easter not as a single day,
but a season that lasts 7 weeks. I find
this significant because the experts indicate that it takes 6 weeks to form a
habit, and so we are given 7 weeks of
Easter to make Easter a habit, to cultivate the joy and celebration of Easter
as a lifestyle. We are Easter people,
and we spend this season allowing God to bring about Easter within us.
On the Sundays of Easter, we have
heard stories of Jesus making post-resurrection appearances to his disciples,
showing up wherever he pleases and whenever he wants, making himself known
outside the tomb, along the road, in the breaking of bread, in locked rooms,
and along the shore. But today, on this
4th Sunday of Easter, the lectionary takes a hard left-turn away from the
post-resurrection stories. In today’s
text, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11), and so today we
explore the risen Christ as our shepherd, and what sort of flock we are
supposed to be.
I AM
In this text, Jesus is making a
clear statement about his identity. “I
AM the good shepherd,” he says. Those
first two words, “I AM,” have incredible significance and we would do well not
to miss it. In English, two little
words, with huge significance.
You have to go way back in the Old
Testament, to the story of Moses. Moses
was working as a hired shepherd at the time, tending the flock of his
father-in-law, and he saw a bush that appeared to be burning, yet was not
consumed. A voice called out to Moses
from the bush, and Moses approached it, and the voice said, “Remove the sandals
from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus
3:5). The voice then identified itself
as the God of Moses’ ancestors, and commissioned Moses to lead his Israelite
people out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land.
Moses wants to know who is
speaking to him. He asks for God’s name,
and in the Hebrew, God replies, ehyeh
asher ehyeh: “I AM WHO I AM. Thus
you shall say, ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14). Those two words, “I AM,” are a play-on-words
that represents the one, true, only God.
And so, back in today’s Gospel
reading, Jesus says, “I AM the good shepherd,” thus linking his identity to
God. No one in Jesus’ day would have
missed this connection. In fact, 7 times
in John’s Gospel, Jesus makes an “I AM” statement about himself, clearly
identifying himself as God, which, if you remember, that’s precisely the point
John was trying to make from the start: “In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
Meet the Good Shepherd
Jesus says, “I am the good
shepherd,” but what do we really know about sheep and shepherds? I certainly don’t know much about sheep! This may surprise you, but growing up on
Linwood Avenue between 24th and 27th Streets, not one single family had sheep. The Presbyterian Church put on a live
nativity every year and I have a few wool sweaters, and that sums up my
personal experience with sheep.
When it comes to shepherds, my
guess is that we all have about the same level of personal experience as we do
with sheep. When you think of a
shepherd, is the image gentle, warm, and pastoral? A shepherd with soft hands
lovingly cradling the sheep against his chest?
Let’s get that image out of our heads right now. Nancy Blakely says, “The life of a shepherd
was anything but picturesque. It was
dangerous, risky, and menial. Shepherds
were rough around the edges, spending time in the fields rather than in polite
society.” Kathryn Huey goes further and
says, “Jesus was offering a most unexpected image to the ‘nice’ religious folks
who must have been quite surprised and taken aback by it.”
Shepherds were rough-and-tumble
people. They didn’t really fit in. They were outsiders, especially to good,
polite, religious people. Yet throughout
the Gospel story, Jesus has a way of bypassing religious people and showing
preferential treatment to outsiders, and as they encounter his love and grace,
outsiders become insiders. That’s good
news for outsiders, and a word of caution for insiders.
Another part of the image of
shepherds that’s important for us consider in thinking about Jesus as the good
shepherd is the shepherd’s staff. You
know, that big, long, heavy Gandolph stick the shepherd carries around. We read the line in the 23rd Psalm, “Thy rod
and thy staff, they comfort me,” and we think, “Well isn’t that nice.” Really?
Think for a minute about what that staff would have been used for. It was sometimes used as a way of guiding and
directing the sheep. It was also used as
a weapon to fight off wolves and other predators. And sometimes the blunt end was used to give
the sheep a gentle but firm nudge in the backside to get them moving in the
right direction. “Thy rod and thy staff,
they comfort me” - there are times God needs to “comfort us” right in our
backside to move us toward the green pastures where we find abundant life.
Ask yourself - has God “comforted
you” in the backside lately? Has God
nudged you in a certain direction, and if so, how have you responded? Here’s what I know - if God hasn’t nudged you
lately, you probably haven’t been paying close enough attention because God
nudges his sheep all the time. And, if
God has been nudging you, how have you responded? Have you followed God’s leading and gone out
to the place where you find green pasture and abundant life? Or, despite God’s nudging, have you just sat
on your backside and said, “Hey God, knock it off!”?
The shepherd is nudging us all the
time, inviting us to follow where he leads.
He leads us out of ourselves and opens us to loving God and neighbor in
all that we do. In our young adult group
which meets on Wednesday nights at 7, Carrie Davis was talking about this
point. She was talking about how getting
involved in church in the last year and thinking about others has really helped
her. She said, “When you get involved,
when you invest your time, when you stop being selfish and start giving more to
the church instead of keeping it all for yourself - I dunno, it just makes you
feel better.”
It makes you feel better because
it gets your heart - your affections and desires and passions - in line with
what God desires from his flock. Doing
those things are part of following the Shepherd. They are ways we grow in our love of God and
neighbor. When we get our heart aligned
with God’s heart, it just feels good, and it is how we experience the abundant
life Jesus promised.
Contrast: The Good Shepherd and the
“Others”
Jesus as the good shepherd stands
in stark contrast to some other folks in the story. Verse 10 identifies the thief, “who comes
only to steal and kill and destroy.”
Verse 12 identifies the hired hand, who abandons the sheep when danger
gets too close. There is the wolf in
verses 12 and 13, who snatches and scatters the sheep. It is eye-opening to realize just how many
folks, other than the sheep and the shepherd, find their way into the
sheepfold.
Jesus himself said, just a few
verses before today’s reading in John 10:1, “Anyone who does not enter the
sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a
bandit.” Then in verse 7, he says, “I am
the gate for the sheep.” You following
all that? Jesus is the gate, and anyone
who enters the sheepfold, the church, if you will, without coming through Jesus
is a thief.
This thought is very disturbing to
me. There are those who get into the
sheepfold without ever coming through Jesus, the gate, who know nothing of his
joy, and in their wake you will find destruction, as they steal abundant life
from the sheep and kill their joy. Don’t
be surprised by this. Disturbed,
perhaps, but not surprised. Church has
always been one of the destroyer’s favorite places to hang out, because if the
thief can get in and promote disunity, and discord, and disruption, and
distraction, and all those things that work against the abundant life that
Jesus promised, then he’ll take that deal every time.
But friends, we are called to
something different. We are called to
abundant life. Those who want to do the
things that promote destruction, stealing joy, and spiritual death, well, I’m
not sure who they’re following, but it ain’t Jesus. Try this: before you say or do anything, ask
yourself, “Does what I’m about to do lead to joy and abundant life for me and
others, or does it kill joy and rob abundant life?” If we would each do that in all the things we
say or do, it’s amazing how much of the ugliness so often committed by
Christians could be eliminated.
Listening for the Shepherd
We are God’s flock, the sheep of
his pasture. Jesus says in verse 16 that
his sheep will listen to his voice and recognize him and follow him. If you’re going to recognize and respond to
the shepherd’s voice, however, you’ve got to be listening.
I read this week that one of the
most loving things we can do for another is to listen to them. Question for
you this morning - do you love Jesus? If
so, are you actively listening for the voice of the shepherd? One of the most loving we can do for another
is to listen to them.
You know, when we come to worship, that’s one of the things we are here
to do - to listen for the voice of Jesus.
Now, as a preacher, I am aware that people do all sorts of things during
worship that ain’t listening; in fact, people do things that are the very opposite of listening.
Just because you come to church,
does that mean that you’re listening to and following the Shepherd? Truth is, we all know Christians whose lives
are completely devoid of joy and who exhibit nothing of a personal walk with
Jesus. Un-Christlike Christians are in
serious spiritual danger, and it is because they are not spending enough time
with the Shepherd to even recognize his voice.
I come back to the question I
first posed back at the beginning of the sermon. Were you listening? Do you remember what it was? Why have you come to church this
morning? Why are you here? You could literally be anywhere else today
doing anything you wanted, so why have you come to church this morning?
My hope is that you have come to
listen for the voice of the Shepherd.
That you have come to follow him wherever he leads. That you have come to center your life upon
him, and that the joy of his resurrection makes its home in your heart and
spills out everywhere you go. You are a
beloved part of the fold of God, and that comes with a calling: to listen for
the voice of the Shepherd, and following wherever he leads.
And as you look at your life and
examine your heart, who are you following - really? The thief comes to steal and kill and
destroy. The hired hand looks after
himself and runs away when it gets too real.
The wolf comes to snatch and scatter the sheep.
Friends, Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He doesn’t come to steal, kill, destroy, or
run away. He is the one who lays down
his life for the sheep. The voice of the
Shepherd is calling, and those who know and love the Shepherd will listen to
his voice, and follow him to green pastures of abundant life where we love God
and neighbor in all that we do.
The Shepherd is speaking all the
time. Is the flock listening?
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