The Good Shepherd
Sermon preached on Sunday 8am 21 April 2024
John 10:11-18
This fourth Sunday of Easter with its Gospel reading about Jesus as the Good Shepherd has come to be known as Good Shepherd Sunday, so familiar is this beautiful and reassuring image for us. It is often a time to think about the idea of vocations, and pray for those who are trying to discern their vocation – possibly to licensed ministry, or ordained ministry in the church, or a vocation even to religious life.
But I want today to explore our vocation to be sheep. For Jesus to be truly our Good Shepherd, we need to be truly his sheep.
This may sound a bit lighthearted, but there is a deep truth within this idea. The word Good in Jesus’ saying ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ is one of two words in Greek which can mean good – and I think in our usual idea about the Good Shepherd we might get them a bit mixed up.
One word for good in Greek is agathos: this means good in a moral, virtuous sense – and I think this is sometimes how we picture Jesus: a good, virtuous shepherd who says his prayers and meditates on his relationship with the Father and is pious and holy - and really rather otherworldly.
But this is not what Jesus in fact says. A good shepherd in that virtuous otherworldly sense would probably not be much good at shepherding, not much use to the sheep –
altogether too much preoccupied with his prayers and meditations to notice or be much use if the sheep are running off or straying or getting lost or getting into danger with robbers or wolves threatening.
What Jesus says is I am the Good Shepherd and he uses a different word in Greek for ‘good’ - Kalos. Ego eimi ho poimen ho kalos. This kalos word for good can sometimes mean beautiful: I am the beautiful shepherd; it is sometimes translated ‘wonderful: I am the wonderful shepherd.
But it basically means: competent, capable, accomplished, effective. Jesus is saying ‘I am a shepherd who is good at being a shepherd… I am a shepherd who above all else is good at looking after my sheep.’
And here is the point about our vocation to be sheep. If Christ is above all else good at looking after us, Christ is the one who can care for us and provide for our needs, and give us the greatest measure of potential, fulfilment, pasture, sustenance, comfort, understanding, nurture and encouragement. And so Christ it is whom we need to trust as the best Shepherd for our souls, our lives. And we need to be sheep that look to this Shepherd, listen to this Shepherd, trust this Shepherd and respond to this Shepherd…
Jesus himself says how his sheep are best to respond to him, the one who is their best Shepherd:
‘I know my sheep and am known of mine; my sheep listen to my voice’.
So as we learn to listen - through the voices of Scripture, or through quiet times of meditation, and in times of worship and prayer, and in the wise voices of friends – we are becoming sheep better able to listen to our Shepherd and hear his voice for our needs and our lives. If he is the best shepherd, then it is his voice above all else we need to tune ourselves to hear, amidst the clamour of other concerns and distractions and temptations and dangers.
Jesus has said earlier that his sheep do not know the voices of strangers but flee from them: this is very true in terms of actual shepherding: Bryn Hughes one of our layclerks who keeps a smallholding with sheep says that they really only will follow his voice, and even his wife or his son can’t get the sheep to listen or follow them. That is how we need to be also as sheep: listening above all to our Shepherd’s voice.
And Jesus says of his sheep that they follow him – they seek to go where the shepherd leads, and he ensures they come in and go out and find pasture. So as sheep we need to be prepared to follow, and not to run off or run away from his leading.
Sometimes the journey is easy, following our Shepherd, walking in the footsteps of Christ – there may be green pastures and still waters. But sometimes the way can be really tough: with challenges and thorns and suffering: Jesus himself does not ask us to go through anything he has not already endures, but even he had to face the crown of thorns and the suffering of the cross.
In the end Jesus says, as the good shepherd that he lays down his life for the sheep – he says this notably three times in today’s Gospel passage. We might think that there are not many actual shepherds, however good, who might go this far for their flock; we might think that the Son of God might not go this far for us as an erring and foolish part of God’s creation. But Christ promises that the sheep he knows by name will have life, and have life abundantly.
- Here the image finally resolves: ‘my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. And I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.’
Jesus the Good Shepherd promises to lead us to the end: to lead us beyond death into eternal life, if we follow him. And there are others he will invite to come with us – the emphasis is on growth and increase – ‘I have other sheep not of this fold; them also I must bring’. So our vocation to follow is also a vocation for us to share – and offer that invitation to others also – to make known the beautiful, wonderful Shepherd who is good at shepherding above all else: the Shepherd who holds us in a strong grasp of abundant eternal love, and will never let us go.
This central passage of John’s Gospel, as David Ford says, gives us a dynamic set of images which can draw us deeper into the rest of the Bible, deeper into relationship with God and Jesus, deeper into life in community with whoever Jesus calls by name, deeper into a vocation of love and trust and compassion which shares in the eternal abundant life of the Father and the Son and further into a world in need of such abundant love.