John 10: 11-18
11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
12 But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.
13 The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.
14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.
15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.
16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.
17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.
18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.
Christ offers himself to the people as the good shepherd, recalling a favourite theme of Old Testament prophecy. Priests and kings are so described, and indeed God is spoken of as a shepherd, as we hear, for example, in Psalm 23:
THE Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
God’s promise is to take care of his people. His promise is that a new shepherd will come to us, descended of the house of David. We hear in Ezekiel 34:
11 ¶ For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out.
12 As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.
13 And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains ofIsraelby the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country.
14 I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains ofIsraelshall their fold be: there shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains ofIsrael.
15 I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God.
16 I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick…
23 And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd.
24 And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the Lord have spoken it.
Today’s Bible verses continue to develop Jesus’ declaration of himself as the Good Shepherd. We have heard how false teachers have, as it were, crept into the sheepfold over the wall, rather than entering through the gate as the shepherd does. Jesus has developed the thought, going on to describe himself both as the shepherd and as the gateway to the sheepfold. It is through Jesus that we enter into the sheepfold to be saved.
Now Jesus distinguishes himself further, as the good shepherd, from false teachers who, like mercenaries, care only for their own interests and not for the sheep. Such are those who block the people’s way to Jesus, among them some teachers of the Old Law, the Jewish authorities, the scribes and the Pharisees, whose position, whose vested interests, Jesus threatens. These are deceivers of the people, blind men, blind guides, who seek to occlude our love and knowledge of Jesus.
In this parable, Jesus tells us that he will save us by laying his life down for us. He adds that he has further flocks of sheep to gather together, all the people over the whole world, who are to be joined as one flock with one shepherd. Jesus’ giving of his life flows from his infinite love for us, in complete contrast to the attitude of the hirelings who do not really care for the sheep.
Further to this, Jesus speaks of the mutual knowledge between himself and those who believe in him, and he compares this to the mutual knowledge of the Father and the Son, which itself is a truth at the heart of our salvation. Through his divinity, and through his relationship with God the Father, Christ will freely lay down his life for his sheep, for us, and then have power to have life again, and to bring us to life.
‘So the sheep find the Lord’s pastures; for anyone who follows him with an undivided heart is nourished in a pasture which is forever green. What are the pastures of these sheep if they are not the deepest joys of the everlasting fresh pastures of paradise? For the pasture of the saints is to see God face to face; when the vision of God never fails, the soul receives its fill of the food of life for ever.
‘And so, dear brethren, let us seek these pastures and there join in the joy and the celebrations of so many citizens of heaven. Let their happiness and rejoicing be an invitation to us. Let our hearts grow warm, brethren, let our faith be rekindled, let our desires for heavenly things grow warm; for to love like this is to on the way.’ Pope St Gregory the Great
Audio Bible KJV | Endnotes
The parables of Jesus anticipate Jesus’ Passion – crucifixion of Jesus. ‘I am the light of the world… I am the way, the truth and the life.’ We look forward in the parables to the Christian Cross – to Jesus on the Cross – to Easter. Jesus’ parables are an ongoing and yet in part secret revelation of Jesus Christ as God the Son. Within the parables, we anticipate Easter. There is clarity and strength and conviction in the success of Jesus’ mission. We are in a sense risen again already, howsoever a part of yet in the journey must acknowledge Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. The torment is not yet. We are as yet in joy to walk with Jesus. May we have the strength so sustained to encounter our Gethsemane. A prayer with Christ.
Jesus, as the Son of God, perfectly embodied the essence of this commandment. He lived in complete submission and obedience to his heavenly Father, never allowing anything or anyone to come before God’s will and purpose for his life. Jesus declared, ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10:30, KJV), emphasizing Jesus’ unity with God and unwavering devotion to Him [ … ]
Capernaum was a small city on the crossroad of two important routes, one from Asia Minor, leading to Petra on the south of the Transjordan, the other from the region of the two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, descending toward Egypt. Jesus’ move to Capernaum helped his contact with the people, and so the spreading of the Good News [ … ]
‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense requires in us the loss of our everything. Which, as with Mary at the other end of Jesus’s life, is God’s truth.’ The Gospel reading is of John 11: 1-45, which is a long passage, and His Grace’s homiletic theme commences in textual wilderness. Our brokenness – in this place – a family home. Our faith, our doubt, our death… The irruption – death, doubt, fear – within our precious scenes and our most intimate places. Our domesticity. His Grace speaks from the chair, as is a bishop’s prerogative, and says: ‘So much is obscure in the Gospels. We’re always reaching through them. We’re never there. Really, we never are. Our knowledge, our understanding, of the Gospels is never complete, and with each reading comes a new revelation. There are always new riches there. Just as there are between all of us, between myself and you. The Gospels are living texts. This is a part of the conversation we have with our own Christianity. It is a part of who we are in our relationship with Jesus. We are in this sense always on the brink. ‘So yes, there is plenty that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one of the order of bishops, we would be lying if we said that weren’t the case. They are not easy texts to encounter, if by that word we may signify something more than a superficial glancing off against, but rather a profound search for the word of God. The Gospels are written by people who had their own ideas, and often didn’t know what had really happened. Luke is quite explicit on this point. His is an investigation, from the explicitly claimed point of view of an historian, rather than that of a first-hand witness, who attempts, so he says, to set out an orderly account, out of the chaos, the sheer muddle, that has been handed down to him. It is possible to imagine Luke researching and composing his account after many years, when there has arisen a desire to know what exactly happened, and this implies a certain call to faith and certain demands of historicity, to historical exactitude. So in these different ways, the people of the first years of Christian faith are in the dark. There is also a decisive need to define the life of Jesus. And people didn’t get Jesus. The whole meaning of Christianity is only now beginning to take root throughout the composition. So much needs to be evangelized. The light shines almost in tentative fashion like that first star, which drew the wise men from the east to our Lord’s cradle. ‘John’s is widely held to be a very late Gospel. There are others who say that John’s Gospel might have been the first to acquire its true shape, because it most fully expresses Jesus, as we know him to be, as members of the Catholic Church. We don’t really know when any of this is being written, but we get a feel in John of a Gospel refined over many years, through a community. So there’s a lot going on there that I’d like you to think about. ‘What I would like to suggest to you is that, while within the Gospels we are often confronted with clues, guesswork, stories that have been handed down through so many people, and so in this sense we might find ourselves to be in the wilderness, this is the very desolate space itself to which we must give ourselves in order to experience Christ’s full redemption in our lives. I suggest it is for God’s glory that we do so. ‘As we become aware of ourselves, in this seminary, we find ourselves in a very secure, comfortable setting, and there are signs of Easter everywhere. Within the very fabric of these buildings, our Lord is risen; our Lord lives. But now this is our Lenten journey, where death enters, where death breaks us. We are to ride into Jerusalem in triumph, and then we are to be utterly broken, all hope gone, our hope extinguished. And really, I suggest to you, it is only by inhabiting this thought, as if we don’t know Easter is there, that our new life can follow, just when we have given up all hope, when every promise that Jesus made to us seems to have been cancelled. ‘And here now we have the story of Lazarus. I should like to suggest to you that we have a very powerful call now. In our very comfortable space, our domesticity, with all this comfort, where so very little might seem to happen each day, so it might seem to you, there is a disturbance within all of this comfort, and that is a disturbance within ourselves, and that is our call to Jesus. I think it is correct to say that our most comfortable places break in the light of Jesus from the inside, in order that we may take the necessary steps to be with Jesus. ‘Faith is not comfortable. I think that we can all receive the message of the rolling away of the rock from the tomb of Lazarus to say something of vital importance to ourselves concerning our openness to God’s love. The rock we roll away can come in all sorts of guises, but we know when we are blocked, and I firmly believe if we are truthful then we know where those blocks might be. ‘Next Sunday, which will be Palm Sunday, we process as it were to Jerusalem, to begin our Holy Week. Now as I speak to you we are on the brink. Even now, I suggest it might be very good for all of us to lay aside what we think we know, to fall apart a little, and so […]
