May 15, 2011
Acts 2: 14,36-41 + Psalm 23 + 1 Peter 2: 20-25 + John 10: 1-10
I must admit to all of you that this chapter ten of John’s Gospel is a challenge for me. Not so because it is theologically complex, but rather because the images are such a challenge. The challenge comes from several sources, art, history, our present culture, changing times, and probably from each of our own unique life experienes. As a result of all these things and more, it is very difficult to get anything significant and profound out of this text unless you really work through it. It’s like trying to get ice cream when it’s been piled high with whiped cream, nuts and sprinkles. You know there’s something down there that can make a difference, but getting through the fluff on top gets discouraging.
Any of us can imagine countless paintings of shepherds sitting or standing in a beautiful green field with a light breeze blowing over the grass, and twenty or thirty fluffy white sheep listllessly grazing with contentment. Or that tall handsome man standing straight and perfectly groomed with a pretty white lamb draped over his shoulders. Ask anyone to recite a pslam: there are more than 150 of them, and they will start with “The Lord is my Shepherd” and go no further. Personally as a pastor, I have never identified with “Little Bo Peep” but that silly rhyme only adds to the difficulty of getting down to what is going on Chapter Ten. Having had the opportunity to observe sheep and their behavior, I have never been too comfortable with the suggestion that I should act like or feel like one. Sheep are not even in the upper half of intelligence in the animal kingdom.
While in study with these verses this week, one scholar pointed out that there are two very different reasons for having sheep and therefore two very different ways for tending them. One reason to have sheep is to have food. The flock is going to be killed and eaten. The shepherd in this context is not likely to have much of a relationship with the sheep. That would be too hard. Killing and consuming your pet would never work. That kind of shepherd pushes the sheep around, works from behind to herd them. The other reason for having sheep is for wool; and so keeping them alive and producing that wool for as long as possible is the whole idea. In this case, the shepherd is different and the relationship is important so that the sheep are comfortable in human hands. This kind of shepherd does not push or herd. This kind of shepherd leads from up front. This kind of shepherd goes first, both to show the sheep that there is nothing to fear, and make certain that there is no danger ahead.
There’s a wonderful little story about a shepherd who must lead the flock across a stream, and the flock gets the edge of the water and will not proceed no matter how the shepherd pushes and prods. Suddenly the Shepherd gets an the idea of picking up a very young lamb. He carries it across the stream, puts it down on the shore as it begins to bleat and cry. The mother hears her lamb and heads into the stream with the others behind.
Now hang on to that image for a moment and then think of it again throughout this week. There is another place in the John’s Gospel where Jesus declares himself to be the Good Shepherd. This is not it. This Gospel is not about Shepherds, it is about a gate.
In the night, in the fields, the sheep were brought into an area that could protect them. Low walls, perhaps some branble branches to keep out preditors. The gate was the shepherd himself. He could lie down across the entrance so that anything coming in or going out would have to pass over and awaken him. This is image Jesus assumes for himself in this passage of John’s Gospel. “I am the gate”. I am the passageway that protects those within and prohibits danger without. To open the gate of paradise, he lays down his life and takes it up again so that we may enter.
The whole image of gateway, of openings, doors and windows is powerful in the Gospels. Think for a minute of paradise as a garden closed because of sin, and remember how often Jesus opens things up in his life from closed up hearts and minds to closed up tombs like the one in Bethany. Think of how he struggled with the leaders of his time who only wanted to close doors and exlude the sick, the lame, the unclean, and how he wanted to open up everything to those outside. Remember how he passed though the door of a closed up room in Jerusalem after his death. Think of his side, opened on a cross to pour out blood and water.
If any painter ever really wanted to give us a look in reality at a real Shepherd, the figure would not be all cleaned up and apealing. He would be haggered, torn, bruised, sratched, dirty, and sweaty – all from doing dangerous battle with thieves and wolves, from lying on the ground and climbing around in the rocks. The best look at a real shepherd hangs above us on the wall of this church.
Now with that sense of opennes let the shepherd image settle in. This shepherd leads and passes on ahead of us through the gate of death so that we might follow through the same gate now opened for us into the saftey, joy, and life of the garden pasture where all is good, all is holy, and all is complete. This is the mystery John puts before us that we might stand back in awe and in wonder at what God’s plan has accomplished in Jesus Christ. In just a few moments, we will offer the ultimate prayer of thanksgiving in the very spirit of John’s image. We shall offer our thanks and give God glory THOUGH HIM, WITH HIM, and IN HIM. For the one who is the Gate, the who has opened the way to life, still goes before us, so that we might follow him without fear from death to life, from slavery to freedom, from danger to safety, from darkness to light.
In this place we are in the sheepfold. In this place we eat in safety. To this place the door is wide open to the sinner and the saved and together we shall say and sing amen as we pray and approach the Father Through Him With Him and In Him. Say AMEN!