'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. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
So again Jesus said to them, “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.”'
--John 10: 1-10
1 The Lord is my shepherd; *
I shall not be in want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures *
and leads me beside still waters.
3 He revives my soul *
and guides me along right pathways for his Name's sake.
4 Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil; *
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
5 You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me; *
you have anointed my head with oil,
and my cup is running over.
6 Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, *
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
--Psalm 23
The Good Shepherd.
While I know that there are a fair number of folks reading this who go to other churches, or maybe don’t even go to churches at all, we are very much aware that the majority of you tuning in are members at the parish I serve, the Church of the Good Shepherd in Asheboro, NC. So I suspect that these readings today will hit the Good Shepherd folks a bit differently simply because of that recurring image that we see today, in our Psalm and Gospel, and a little later even in our collect for the day. It’s the image of the Lord as our shepherd.
This picture of a shepherd always seems to be so comforting to those of us in great distress. We read Psalm 23 very often when we are times of trouble—most notably in our tradition we read it at funerals. Shepherds protect their flock against a variety of dangers. Their rod and staff—objects used to both ward off thieves and wolves and to herd the sheep back together—are tools of comfort and peace. It’s no wonder that Psalm 23 is so well known and so loved; it reminds us that as long as the Lord is our shepherd, our protector, our guide, our comforter, we have nothing to fear, no matter how perilous things may get.
Our Gospel for this week comes from the 10th chapter of John, two-thirds of which is devoted to Jesus making a similar comparison, though he does not actually refer to himself as the ‘good shepherd” in this particular section of John that we read today. We read verses 1-10 of John, chapter 10, but it isn’t until verse 11 that Jesus actually makes a direct link with Psalm 23 and calls himself the “good shepherd,” the one who lays down his own life for the sheep. Instead, Jesus begins by talking about the difference between shepherds and thieves. The shepherd comes in through the gate and calls the sheep by name, and they respond to the shepherd. The thief sneaks in to steal, kill, and destroy the flock, and the sheep respond in fear.
But the people don’t understand this metaphor. So Jesus uses another one. He tells them, “I am the gate.” Unlike his later statement that he is the good shepherd, this statement by Jesus often goes unnoticed. Maybe that’s because, while there are a bunch of churches out there called Good Shepherd, I’ve never once in my life seen a “Church of the Gate.” So what does he mean by this?
Jesus didn’t feel the need to have to explain this metaphor to his audience, because their culture was one that understood shepherds and their customs very well. But perhaps those of us who are not shepherds ourselves or who don’t know about the customs of shepherds from ancient Palestine aren’t quite as quick to grasp the significance of this statement. As theologian William Barclay points out in his commentary on this passage, at the end of the day, the sheep were gathered together in a makeshift circular pen of brush, sticks, and rocks—you can actually still see some of these temporary sheepfolds around the Palestinian countryside today. But the doorway to these pens didn’t actually have a gate or door attached to them. So as night fell, the shepherd would lay down in the doorway, literally becoming the gate by which anything and anyone entered or exited the pen.
An example of a shepherd serving as the gate for his sheep.
This, then, is who Jesus is. He provides support, comfort, and protection by placing himself between us and the thieves, bandits, and wolves of the world. We do, however, need to point out that when Jesus says in this text that all who came before him were thieves and bandits, he is not talking about the prophets of old, nor is he talking about the Pharisees, scribes, and other folks that we have incorrectly labeled as the “bad guys” in the Gospel story. Instead, Jesus is referencing all those other would-be messiahs who were popping up in 1st century Palestine on a daily basis. Josephus, the great Jewish historian, made note that there were as many as 10,000 different disruptions in Judea caused by charismatic, zealous leaders claiming to be the ones who would save Israel. These are the thieves and bandits to which Jesus is referring: those who use their charm or infectious personality or charisma to sway a person into following their cause. I think it can truly be said that we still have a number of such thieves and bandits in our own time, people who would rather inflate their own egos and advance their own personal interests than protect, comfort, and support the people.
This is what Jesus offers when the rest of the world cannot. He provides a kind of security that is not built on force, or defensiveness, or lies. Instead, he is the one who is the gate, who puts himself in that liminal space between the sheep and the world, placing himself directly at the threshold of our lives. It is his light that surrounds us and shines in our darkness, his love that supports us when we are most afraid. We are walking through a literal valley of the shadow of death right this moment. Here in the United States we have about a third of the worldwide cases of COVID 19, even though we represent only 4% of the world’s population. As states begin to reopen while the death toll from COVID 19 continues to rise over the quarter million mark, plenty of thieves and bandits tempt us to walk that treacherous path with them. But Jesus is the gate, the one whose first priority is the safety and security of his flock. Like the shepherd whose voice is known by the sheep, he calls each of us by name right now, but he is not the only one. So the question is whose voice will we listen to: Jesus, or the thieves and bandits?
