CHRIST AS GOOD SHEPHERD
Psalm 23; I John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
4th Sunday of Easter, April 21, 2024
Rev. Dr. Ritva H. Williams
On this fourth Sunday of Easter we move away from stories of Christ’s resurrection to reflecting on who the Risen Christ is for us. Today we meet Jesus as the “Good Shepherd.”
In the world of Jesus, “good” shepherd would have been a jarring turn of phrase.
Jesus’ ancestors entered human history as semi-nomadic herders of sheep and goats. Like all humans they drew on images from their daily lives to describe metaphorically abstract ideas and indescribable beings. In the First Testament, God frequently is described as a shepherd. Moses is called the shepherd of Israel (Isaiah 63:10). David was a real-life shepherd who became a king. The long anticipated Messiah would shepherd God’s people.
Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Greek gods, kings, and heroes were also originally presented as shepherds, reflecting the centrality of sheep herding in the ancient near east. Over time, these societies evolved and new forms of agriculture emerged. Cultivating grain, grapes and olives, promoted the growth of villages, towns and cities that increasingly pushed sheep herding to the margins.
By the time of Jesus, shepherds had become a despised occupational group, lumped together with donkey and camel drivers, tanners and butchers. All were stinky, dirty jobs. The job of minding sheep was often given to the youngest son or daughter, or another person deemed unfit for real farm work. Settled farmers viewed shepherds with suspicion, accusing them of grazing their flocks in their fields. So for Jesus to call himself a “shepherd” was to align himself with people of ill-repute at the bottom of the social ladder. For people at the top of the ladder, a “good” shepherd received with as irony, satire, or simply an oxymoron.
In religious art Jesus the Good Shepherd is robed in spotless white robe, surrounded by snowy white fluffy lambs, lush green vegetation, and golden skies. Real life looked quite different as we can see from these photos of middle eastern shepherds.
Personally, I prefer to imagine the Good Shepherd more like these two images. On the left, Kelly Latimore’s icon of a dark-skinned Jesus the Good Shepherd is realistic. He cradles a creamy colored lamb with a brown head and neck. Did you know that Middle Eastern sheep come in at least 12 color combinations, ranging from pure white to pure black with ten white, brown, gray and black in between. There is something to learned from the diversity found in the natural world. On the right, Paul Oman’s crucified and resurrected Christ carries a lamb into a gathering of rainbow colored sheep all drinking from the same stream, as the HolySpirit dove hovers above. This is a more idyllic, heavenly image.
We meet Jesus this morning in the midst of defending his healing of a blind beggar on the Sabbath day. He accuses the powerful aristocratic religious and political leaders of behaving like hired hands, abandoning the helpless and vulnerable at the first sign of trouble. Earlier in the chapter he calls them thieves and bandits (10:1, 8). As an alternative to these unreliable leaders, Jesus presents himself as the “Good” Shepherd, intentionally messing with the way people, then and now, judge and rank each other.
When Jesus walked the earth, shepherds were among the marginalized of society. Yet a thousand years earlier the shepherd boy who grew up to become King David composed the beautiful song of faith and trust in God that we know as Psalm 23. Tending his sheep in the arid landscape of ancient Israel, David the shepherd experienced the Lord as his own personal shepherd providing nourishment, rest and restoration, ensuring he didn’t lose his way, accompanying and comforting him through the darkest, scariest places and times, lifting him up in the presence of hostile neighbors; filling his cup to overflowing with goodness and mercy.
In our gospel lesson, Jesus claims the role of shepherd for himself and expands it: I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (10:11) in order to take it up again (10:17). This is an obvious reference to his crucifixion and resurrection. One of the central claims of this gospel is that God loves the world so much, God gave God’s Son in order to save it, heal it, and make it whole through Jesus (John 3:16-17). This claim is echoed by Elder John in our first reading, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16). Jesus lays down his life to show us and all of creation how much God loves us; therefore, “we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” As Elder John explains, we lay down our lives in love for one another by using our worldly resources — our time, energy, talents, skills, gifts, and goods — to help neighbors in need (1 John 3:17).
While a “good” shepherd may have seemed like an oxymoron to some people in Jesus’ first audience, it points to a deep truth about Jesus and about us. The Greek word translated as “good” can also be translated as “noble” referring to a person’s character. To be noble is to act with honor and integrity, grace and generosity, compassion and good will to promote the common good and care of neighbors in needs. In the person of the Risen Christ, the divine and the human, the highest and the lowest are integrated as completely as the ingredients in the bread we share at this table.
Christ the Good Shepherd reveals something important about everyone who has ever suffered because they are female in a male dominated society, black or brown in a white racist culture, LGBTQIA2+ in a society that recognizes only two genders and one sexual orientation, labeled disabled or impaired in a world run by people who can see and hear, walk and talk, run and jump, and whose brains function “normally” (whatever that means), and folks who are ignored because they’re too young or too old. Gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, impairment, abnormality, and age do not determine a person’s character. Good is a completely appropriate adjective to describe you because Good and very good are embedded in your soul by the God who created you in God’s very own image.Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own and my own know me” (10:14). The Risen Christ knows you and loves you, calls you by name, leads you out, and goes ahead of you into the world to find life-giving nourishment for your mind, spirit, and soul (10:3-5, 9-10). The good news is that the Risen Christ — our Good Shepherd — will never lock us up in closets, but liberates and empowers us to lovingly lay down our lives for each other (10:16).Let me close with this prayer by Pastor John van de Laar (sacredrise.com)We thank You, God, for a love so strong:that You would fashion a universe, place within it a world, and give life to creatures so that You could have someone to love; that You would confront the worst that people can do, and conquer it without drawing any blood but Your own; that You would breathe Your Spirit into what You made, allowing human hands to share in building your life and purpose in the world; that You would live in all whom You create, inspiring love in our hearts, so that when we take the time to look we find you in each other and share the love we have found in You. Amen.
