The Good Shepherd
A sermon by Jamie Howison, for the 4th Sunday in Eastertide
Painting by Helen Lyons
The painting beside me was done by Helen Lyons, way back in 2004 in the very first Eastertide that saint ben’s observed together. On the 4th Sunday in Eastertide—a Sunday known as “Good Shepherd Sunday” on account of the imagery in the reading from the Gospel according to John and the use of the 23rd Psalm—I’d preached about shepherds. Specifically I spoke about the way many of the typical portrays of Jesus as the Good Shepherd show him as a very clean, very neat shepherd, but that in fact shepherding was hard and dirty work, and how that was not an unimportant thing to keep in view when we read these texts. The next Sunday Helen arrived with this painting in hand, portraying a shepherd with big, work-worn, dirty hands, his clothing and face marked with smudges of grey and black. It has hung in my bedroom over the dresser ever since, but always making its way back here for this 4th Sunday in Eastertide.
Of course it wouldn’t have been out of line for Helen to have incorporated a woman or a child in the painting, as they were often the ones entrusted with caring for the flocks, though on a Sunday in which Jesus is so clearly identified as our Shepherd this portrayal makes good sense. I like to think of him as being unafraid of getting a bit of dirt embedded in his hands as he goes about doing his work, both in the days in which he walked the dusty roads of Galilee with his disciples and now. We can be rather grimy characters, after all, and need that kind of Shepherd to tend us.
At that time Jesus said, ‘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. 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.
It is not unimportant to recall the setting for this teaching. The story that precedes this is the one about the healing on the Sabbath day of the man who was born blind, which has caused real consternation for some of the Pharisees. “Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.’ But others said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’” Back and forth they go, questioning the man and then his parents, trying to get clarity as to what has actually happened, but behind their investigation is one key question: Is this Jesus from God, or not? These teachings that use the imagery of shepherding start there, though John is quick to note, “Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.”
Here Jaime Clark-Soles comments on how,
John showcases Jesus’ habit of conveying truth not propositionally, but poetically. Jesus carries on about sheepfolds, gates, thieves, sheep, and gatekeepers, strangers, and voices. After five verses he pauses and notes that they haven't got any idea what he's talking about. So, what is an effective speaker to do at that point? Explain the figure of speech? Drop the use of metaphor? Apologize for using such elevated speech and dumb things down, put it all in simplistic terms? Maybe. But that's certainly not what our Lord and Savior did. Rather, he again throws out the same word-pictures. The whole Gospel of John is nothing if not a piling up of metaphors, figures of speech. How else are we to convey truth about God?
How else, indeed? And so Jesus continues,
Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
The imagery shifts sideways, from the shepherd to the gate: “I am the gate for the sheep,” I am the one and only entry point to life, imaged here as the pasture. I am not a thief, I don’t come to steal or prey on the sheep. This talk of thieves and bandits… who does Jesus have in view? Perhaps the zealots, trying to coax the people into rebellion against the Roman occupiers, perhaps the Herodians who have comfortably accommodated themselves to Roman rule, and perhaps the Pharisees themselves, who in other places Jesus critiques as being “blind guides” who lay the heavy burden of religious legalism across the shoulders of a people hungry for God. I am not like that, he’s saying to them, I am not a thief, but instead—as he says with the greatest clarity in the very next verse that follows tonight’s reading— “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
As N.T. Wright summarizes it, in these teachings,
Jesus is posing the question: how will you tell God’s true, appointed king when he comes? The answer is that you can tell the true king the same way you can tell the true shepherd… the sign of the real king is the response that comes from the heart, when people hear his voice and, in love and trust, follow him.
[T]his is what I’m doing; this is what gives substance to my claim to be sent by God as Israel’s true king.
The connection Wright is making between “shepherd” and “king” is an important one, as kings and rulers were quite commonly seen as “shepherds” to their people, both within the tradition of Israel and in the Greek and Roman political tradition. Caesar, in fact, could be imaged as a good shepherd to his subjects… which might have worked if you were a citizen of the Empire, but not so much if you were a Judean or a slave, a woman or an indentured servant.
And in Israel, too, there were shepherd kings and leaders who favoured the powerful over the vulnerable, as is in clear evidence in the stunning indictment uttered by Ezekiel:
Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. (Ezekiel 24:2-4)
As Ezekiel’s prophetic utterance continues, God is identified as the true shepherd, and one who will gather the lost, bind up the wounded, and nourish the starving. By extension, unless a human leader—king or otherwise… a priest, maybe?—is prepared to acknowledge that God is the true shepherd, they themselves can be no shepherd. And so here, the words of the 23rd Psalm begin to sing.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
The Lord makes me lie down in green pastures; leads me beside still waters; restores my soul.
Even walking through the darkest valley or the valley of the shadow of death, I will not be afraid of any evil, for the great good shepherd’s staff and rod protect me and comfort me.
I don’t do this on my own steam or of my own accord, and I don’t determine my own destiny, because, frankly, I can’t. I am but a part of the Shepherd’s flock—we are but a part—but isn’t that good? Not that things don’t get difficult, and not that there aren’t things of which we could rightly be afraid, right? The psalm does acknowledge the reality of dark valleys and of evil and will go on to refer to “the presence of my enemies,” no doubt. Yet in the presence of those enemies the Shepherd sets out a meal for his lamb, anoints his head with oil, fills his cup so full that it brims over. Enemies and dark valleys can’t overwhelm with fear and anxiety when you stay close to the shepherd. But do stay close…
The long tradition of this psalm being associated with King David is notable here. David, of course, was the shepherd boy who became Israel’s most beloved king; “a man after God’s own heart,” as the scriptures say. But also a man who knew what it meant to be pursued by enemies, a man who knew the pain of betrayal by his own son Absalom, and a man who fell badly—oh so badly—when he neglected the core truth that the Lord was his shepherd, and determined instead to make his own choices, cut his own path, take Bathsheba because he wanted her, arrange to have Uriah killed because he was a potentially embarrassing inconvenience… David had not stayed close to his Shepherd, and it caused such damage; so much hurt.
Look again at the big, work-worn hands on Helen’s Good Shepherd. Look, and listen to a few closing thoughts from Jaime Clark-Soles, who writes,
Read Psalm 23 to me while my eyes are closed and ask me how I do or don't experience God as a shepherd. If Psalm 23 is read along with the 10th chapter of John, the listener will immediately hear the connection. Inundate me with shepherd language from the Hebrew Bible. Then show me the places in John where this theme recurs. If you do this, I will discover that John wants me to understand that I am known by name and constantly cared for, never “orphaned” (14:18) or forsaken.
And we are not forsaken or forgotten, even or especially in such challenging days as these.
