The Good Shepherd

27 April 2015 | 4 Easter
John 10:11-18, The Good Shepherd

I am the Good Shepherd.

This is about as straightforward a metaphorical statement of role and identity as you could ever have from a speaker. The speaker is Jesus, as reported in John’s Gospel. I’d like to look at this passage with you tonight in terms of what it says about the reasons for Jesus’ death and life, and how God intended Jesus’ mission, because they are fundamental and instructive for our life as Christians. I guess they should be obvious. But my experience is that what is obvious to me isn’t always obvious to others, and vice versa.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.

1. The shepherd shares the lot of the sheep.
2. The shepherd was killed because someone was killing sheep.
3. Most sheep don’t have a clue about what the shepherd has to do.
4. God commanded this.

 

1. The shepherd shares the lot of the sheep.

That’s just true. The shepherd in Jesus’ time slept out there on the hillside with the sheep. There wasn’t much they went through that he didn’t go through. No Winnebago, no warm house next to the sheep pen. The shepherd was paid – and paid very little – to be out there with the sheep, where they were, so they would be protected and fed and their issues would be dealt with as they arose.

If there was someone higher up or richer who owned the sheep, he didn’t want to be the shepherd. He also didn’t want to lose his sheep. He needed someone to be with them.

Human class systems are all about not having to share the lot of the sheep. As soon as we can, we get off the hillside. We roll up our sleeping bags and pack away our pup tents, and we trade them in for wheels and shelter. We try to make enough money so we aren’t compelled to be on the ground, in the field – unless we just want to do that, to rough it by choice.

But Jesus’ own behavior and his teaching are in concert here, as they always are. He’s like the shepherd who shares the lot of the sheep.

Now just a little bit of political economy and moral theology: If you don’t want to spend the night on the hillside with the sheep – if you’re fortunate enough to be able to sleep in a bed with a roof over your head and to have a job or investments that take care of you and your family, I can certainly understand.

But what of the sheep and the shepherd? Will you lock them in a separate political jurisdiction so that your tax payments from your higher income won’t help them? Will you make them pay the same or higher taxes than you do, calling it “being fair?” I know you’re not sharing the desolate hillside, but are you in the same world?

Will you cut funding for public education so that they won’t have a chance to move forward and find a roof of their own? I know you’re not sharing the hillside, but is that their permanent place?

Will you restrict transportation to people who already have money so that persons dependent on public transportation are locked in a prison of immobility? I know you’re not out there on the hillside, but do you think you have the right to keep them out there?

For centuries moral theologians have been trying to help people find ways to share one another’s lot without doing one another in; to have varying opportunities without denying the need of all to find their own destiny. Right now, in this country and in this metropolitan city we’re doing a pretty bad job of it. We’re acting as if we were not in this together, and it shows.

But the Scripture is very clear: The shepherd shares the lot of the sheep.

2. The shepherd was killed because someone was killing sheep.

Jesus was killed because he got in the way of the killing machine of the Roman Empire and the Jewish state. What happened to Jesus was not unusual in the Roman Empire or the Jewish state. It was what would happen to anyone who pushed the authorities to show their hand fully. He didn’t quit. He pushed and pushed until it happened. He did this because he knew that there were sheepkillers about, and that the sheep who weren’t being killed were being kept in terror and subjection by the threat of punishment.

Don’t tell me you’re not afraid of the powers in this city and this state and this nation: of certain people who have economic power over you, or who can hurt you in one way or another. You may not live in constant fear, but you steer clear of places which could be dangerous.

Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you’ve never been threatened by a sheepkiller.

But let me tell you, there are a lot of people who have. People who say they don’t want to challenge something in church, or in their neighborhood, or in their job because of what they are afraid will happen.

Okay, maybe you’re not afraid. But if we’re not afraid, then why aren’t things different in Richmond, or in Virginia, or in the world today?

How can the distress of so many continue so unabated? If you don’t know how or why the dead bodies are there, count the dead bodies – the people in prison, the unemployed, the children who seem to have no future. Or count the corporate powers, the polluters, the food-adulterers, the tax-evaders.

There’s death out there. The shepherd wasn’t just killed by accident. He wasn’t just killed because of some bizarre theological theory about substitutionary atonement. He was killed because someone was killing sheep.

3. Most sheep don’t have a clue about what the shepherd has to do.

The average American spends 50 minutes a day commuting back and forth to work, five-and-one-half hours watching television, an hour using the internet on a computer, an hour and seven minutes on a smartphone, and two hours and forty-six minutes listening to a radio. Accounting for the fact that commuting time probably overlaps with radio listening, the average time spent by the average American with television, internet on computer, smartphone, and radio is more than ten hours each a day, grazing electronic grass on the electronic American hillside. That is more than 60% of the time that the average American is awake.

What do you think the shepherd is doing while the sheep are electronically grazing?

It’s hard to be a Messiah when the television is blaring, or the smartphone is texting. Most sheep don’t have a clue about what the shepherd has to do. But if lives are to be made right, if the world is to be made right, if the kingdom of heaven is to come, if people are to awaken out of their slumber and see the wolves that are in the middle of the increasingly scattered flock, then the shepherd has to be active, and the spirit of the shepherd has to be upsetting people.

The shepherd upsets people. Are we too far gone to be upset? Every day, every year, that something is not done it gets worse. The inequality gets worse, the prison population gets worse, the unemployment gets worse, the racism gets worse, the absence of public transportation gets worse, the segregation of schools gets worse, the disintegration gets worse. There is no path to sanity except a path that costs something not only for the shepherd but for any sheep who are willing to be a part of it.

Unhappiness, guilt, fear, shame, and denial are the guaranteed fruits of indifference. Most sheep don’t have a clue about what the shepherd has to do. The shepherd shares the lot of the sheep. The shepherd was killed because someone was killing sheep. Most sheep don’t have a clue about what the shepherd has to do.

4. God commanded this.

That is, God commanded that the Good Shepherd would share the lot of the sheep and be killed because someone was killing sheep. Most sheep don’t have a clue about what the shepherd has to do.

Look around you. If you don’t see a dead or wounded sheep on the road, come back and tell me.   And if you do, tell me how he or she got that way. Are there wolves? Or are the wolves just preying more and more in the wild and desolate spaces we create by minding our own business, trying to avoid one another, and treating the development of a healthy community as optional.

Jesus is very direct in this passage we read from John’s Gospel. He is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. He has, to quote, “received this command from (his) Father.” In other words, God doesn’t want his sheep to live like this, and God personally, by sending his own boy, is trying to make a difference in this world – to call it to account. He wants to bring all these sheep together. Good economy, good relationships, good jobs, good communities, good schools, good sharing of resources. Why is this so hard to see?

BUT: The world doesn’t get right by itself. It takes effort and costs lives.

AND: Not one sheep is left outside God’s intention. He knows they are lost. He’s sent his son out on the hillside for good.

The only reason Jesus can say all of this is because he knows life is stronger than death – that there is a new day coming – that there will be one flock, one shepherd. He knows that this is our Heavenly Father’s purpose in creation.

AMEN.

The Rev. B. P. Campbell
Richmond Hill
Richmond, Virginia