John 10:11-18
April 21
David A. Davis
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Jesus offers quite the word picture of the shepherd image here in chapter 10. I only read part of the chapter. Prior to v.11, Jesus describes the shepherd entering by the gate, the sheep knowing the shepherd’s voice and following the shepherd, sheep thieves and bandits who only come to steal and destroy. But Jesus tells that he, as the shepherd has come that “they may have life and have it abundantly.” (v.10) And as you heard, Jesus continues with the shepherd, the hired hand, the wolf, and the sheep. The shepherd laying down his life for the sheep. The shepherd knowing each one. One shepherd, one flock. You don’t really need a painting or an image. Jesus description of him as the great shepherd is sort of a piece of art itself. Jesus goes into parable-like detail similar to his description and explanation of the sower and the seed.
When it comes to the sheep, it’s not just Jesus it is the whole witness of scripture. You hear Jesus say “I am the good shepherd” and all these other tunes start to play. “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.” (Ps. 23) “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms.” (Isaiah 40) “I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.” (Jer. 23) “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, for they were harassed and helpless, like a sheep without a shepherd.” (Mt. 9) “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” (Luke 15) Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do God’s will.” (Heb. 13) “For the lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Rev. 7) Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd” and this incredible symphony of scripture starts to play.
If the purpose of Jesus’ use of an extended metaphor here is for the preacher to offer a sermon on “shepherd-ology” or “sheep-ology”, I can tell you I am not that preacher. I know someone who is, our own Nate Stucky, the Mennonite who grew up on a farm and leads the Farminary at Princeton Seminary. He’s that preacher, not me. One of my preaching mentors, Peter Gomes, once pointed out in a sermon that the Lord’s whole approach ought to make us think more about us as sheep and certainly not as shepherds. But even then, Gomes preached, “We have to remember the purpose of gathering sheep together was to protect them for a purpose, and that purpose was to fatten them up for the slaughter. Those sheep were gathered together because their purpose was to be sold and eaten, and that’s it.” Gomes concluded, “It’s not much fun being a sheep.” A metaphor has limits, he said, even a metaphor of Jesus.
Cathy and I were walking down the street in London on a summer day in 2016. I heard a voice say, “Davis, is that you?’ It was a Presbyterian pastor and colleague named John Galloway who served at the church in Wayne, PA for decades. He wrote a book on being a pastor. In that book, he said “I am not a shepherd. I am more like a rancher. I am better leading from the front, not the rear. My congregation calls associate pastors who are better shepherds than me” Apparently the metaphor had limits for him too.
I may not have a degree in “shepherd-ology” but I could preach a few sermons on John 10. The detail Jesus provides points in a profound way to his life, witness, and teaching. The shepherd laying down this life; his crucifixion. The wolf snatching and scattering the sheep; the threat of the world’s persecution of the church. One flock, one shepherd; that has to say something about the church. Laying down his life in other to take it up again; there’s resurrection. Laying down his life on his own accord; a reference to his self-emptying sacrificial love for the world.
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” Now there’s a longer conversation. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” In the context of John’s gospel, this conversation about the shepherd and the sheep happens after Jesus healed the man who had been blind since birth. The religious leaders and others in the crowd following Jesus didn’t believe the man had been blind. They grilled his parents. They interrogated him. The now-sighted man became frustrated and a bit lippy “One thing I do know, though I was blind, now I see.” They hated him all the more and drove him out. Jesus found the man. The man declared his belief. Jesus said “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” Then he launches into the shepherd and sheep metaphor.
So maybe the other sheep are just those who didn’t happen to be in that crowd of folks who were blind when it came to Jesus. But in a chapter so full of detail, a chapter where every detail packs a wallop of meaning, that seems a bit of a narrow take. It could be that Jesus reference to other sheep is reference to the Gentiles and a foreshadowing of the ministry of the twelve described by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” Is it Jesus alluding to a kind of Great Commission here. John’s version of the Great Commission in Matthew. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The Good Shepherd, the sheep, and Christ’s call to evangelism for the church.
Other sheep? Jesus sure seems to be referring to his work as a shepherd here not the twelve. “I must bring them also”. Yes, we are called to be the body of Christ, his hands and feet for another and for the world. But here in John bringing in the other sheep sure sounds primarily like the work of Christ himself. The work of the Good Shepherd. Here in the same gospel where Jesus says “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Other sheep? The Good Shepherd, the sheep, and the whole wide world. Perhaps in the vast mystery of God’s love made known to us in and through Jesus Christ, every child of God in the whole world is one of Christ’s sheep. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” Every beloved child of God.
When I hear Jesus say, “I am the Good Shepherd” something profound wells up very deep in the soul of my faith. I have had two spiritual directors in my ministry here at Nassau. One was Hugh Smith who served Covenant Presbyterian Church in Trenton his entire ministry. The other was Dave Prince, beloved husband of Nancy. Dave Prince remembered by so many here and at Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church. Both Dave and Hugh have gone on to glory now and I miss them both dearly. A spiritual director can be and do many things. It can also mean many different things to people seeking to talk to a spiritual director. For me, the purpose and the role it played in my faith became clear in something Hugh said to me the first time we sat down together. It was what I shared with Dave when we started our work together after Hugh died. Here’s what he said to me, “So tell me about the Dave of God today.”
It took me a while to learn the fullness of what he was asking. He was asking about my life as a child of God. Not the Dave who is father, now a grandfather, or a husband, or a pastor. He was asking me about how I was resting on the shoulders of my Savior. He was asking about nothing else and nothing other than my experience of the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. He was asking about my sense of belonging to the God who created me, the Savior who never stops searching for me, and the Spirit that marks be now and forever as a beloved child of God. He was asking about my life in God, the God who surely walks with me every time I head for the valley of the shadow of death, the God whose compassion cradles me when I am harassed and helpless, the God who will today, and tomorrow, and forever wipe away every tear from my.
Every time I had a conversation with Dave or Hugh, it was if they were asking me about my life as a sheep. They never used that language or I would have rolled my eyes, looked at my watch, and changed the subject. All this sheep and shepherd stuff can get kind of fluffy. But when of them asked me about the Dave of God, the beloved of God, it was the only hour in a month in my life when I had the privilege of thinking about, praying about, talking about nothing other than belonging to Christ Jesus and him alone. Thinking, praying and talking about my life as one of his sheep.
Peter Gomes is more poetic about it. We ought to live our lives, he concludes, right where the metaphor ends and the good news begins. “That we are gathered and guarded not for the slaughter …but for love and redemption. That is where we take leave of the metaphor and embrace this reality,….We love one another because we believe in Jesus and we believe in Jesus because he is the shepherd and guardian of our souls.”
Yes, when I hear Jesus saying “I am the Good Shepherd” something profound wells up very deep in the soul of my faith. And after almost 40 years of ministry, and as I get older, when hear Jesus saying “I am the Good Shepherd”, I find myself more and more pondering him being the Good Shepherd for the other sheep. For all the other sheep. Because this old world God so loves would look so different, be so different, if people could just see everyone else, everyone else, as a beloved child of God.