The Shepherd and the Lamb - John 10.11-18

            The word of God for today we find in John’s gospel, the 10^th chapter, speaking – as we are today – of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd.  I love Immanuel as a church name.  But I was baptized in Good Shepherd Lutheran, and that’s an awfully good one too. For me, I can’t imagine a picture of Jesus richer, more expressive, moving, lovely, comforting.  And that’s our text for today, The Good Shepherd.

            The chapter begins with a parable about shepherding.  Let’s read it, for context:

“I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. ² The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. ³ The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴ When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵ But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”

The Jews were sheep-tending people, and the reality Jesus describes in the parable was utterly familiar to them.  So when John comments at the parable’s end, Jesus used this figure of speech, but they did not understand what he was telling them, the problem was not any miscomprehension, but rather, OK, so what’s your point?

            Jesus goes on, making his point by putting himself into the parable.  We pick it up at verse 11

¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. ¹³ The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

¹⁴ “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶ I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. ¹⁷ The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

            This chapter is a good reminder of the down side of having prominent chapter numbers and section headings.  They’re helpful, in some ways, but they’re at best artificial barriers and can be misleading.  Here for example, who has eyes sharp enough, on casual reading, to catch the absence of quotations marks to end chapter nine?  It’s not a typo.  The fact is, in beginning chapter 10, we’re breaking in on a scene and a conversation already in progress.

            Jesus had healed a blind beggar.  The guy was a fixture in the neighborhood, having been blind from birth, and his healing created a sensation – as you could imagine.  And the sensation, plus the fact that Jesus healed him on the Sabbath day, aroused the ire of the local synagogue leaders.  They seek out the man who’d been healed, and they grill him, in hopes of silencing his testimony.  They tell him, This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.  But the man has a nice grasp on basics, and he hangs in there.  He replies, We know that God does not listen to sinners.  He listens to the godly man who does his will . . If this man were not from God he could do nothing.  He refused to disown Jesus, and as a result, he found himself disowned.  First disowned by his parents, and then thrown out of the synagogue.  Which in that day meant being excluded spiritually from the community of faith and also excluded materially from the social welfare system, for which the synagogue was the administrative body.  So, goodbye fellowship, goodbye pension check, because he wouldn’t deny Jesus.

³⁵ Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

³⁶ “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”

³⁷ Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”

³⁸ Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

³⁹ Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

⁴⁰ Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”

⁴¹ Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

That’s the audience for the parable of the shepherd: someone chased out of the fold of Israel for loyalty to Jesus – surrounded by those who’d chased him out. 

In the parable Jesus contrasts the true shepherd, who cares for the sheep, with the imposter, whose concern is only for himself, and whose interest in the sheep is purely selfish and exploitive.  Culminating in that beloved verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Which introduces our text.

¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. ¹³ The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

Superficially, I suppose you’d consider the hired man some improvement over the thief.  But when you think of it, maybe not much.  They’re both in it for themselves, for what they can get out of it, whether mutton or money.  And one way or another, when there are sacrifices to be made, it’s the sheep who’ll be making them.  The sheep will live or die for them.  The Good Shepherd, on the other hand, lives and dies for his sheep.

¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

If you didn’t have the words that follow I suppose you could misunderstand that – supposing that the shepherd is a casualty in the war against the wolf.  That would be a lovely, moving image, the shepherd’s getting killed trying to defend the sheep.  But it would be no great comfort to the sheep, knowing that their defender has been devoured.  But verse 17:

I lay down my life—only to take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord

The image isn’t that of a battle casualty, but rather a willing sacrificial victim.  (Reminding of the verse in Isaiah 53, speaking of the Messiah.  Verse 6:

⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.  . . .

Then verse 10: “The Lord makes his life a guilt offering.”)

Jesus continues:

¹⁴ “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.

The Church of the Good Shepherd sounds wonderful.  It sounds less good: the church of the wayward, defenseless, stupid sheep.  But that’s the other side of the coin, and it’s equally true.  They can’t protect themselves, and they’re prone to wander away from the protection provided.  And Jesus says, that’s us – you and me.  But the good news is, the shepherd knows all that, and knowing it - knowing what sheep are like - he makes provision.  He makes the safety and health of each one of the flock his responsibility.  If the image of the shepherd means anything, it means that our welfare as sheep is ultimately in our Shepherd’s hands.  It depends on him, not on us.  As is the case with sheep, we’re defended, not defenders.  We’re sought after, we don’t go out seeking.  The Shepherd knows us, knows our besetting sins and weaknesses.  He notices when one wanders off.  And makes provision.

The Shepherd knows the sheep, and – says Jesus – the sheep know the Shepherd.  Notice, it’s not by manhandling the sheep that the shepherd manages them.  The power is in the voice.  He calls them, and they come because they recognize his voice.  A stranger they flee from, because they don’t recognize the voice.  The scene that introduces our text makes a wonderful illustration.  The synagogue officialdom, the Pharisees, were the recognized experts, the official teachers, the theologians – with the power of excommunication to back up their word.  These experts tell the blind man: Give glory to God, we know that this man is a sinner.

²⁹ We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”

³⁰ The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. ³¹ We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will.

The man’s not fooled.

Jesus continues.

His sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵ But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”

Letting fall the shepherding image for a moment and getting back to the real world, what is this voice that can call and lead God’s people, the voice that they recognize and the imposter can’t duplicate?  Recall that colorful story from the book of Ezekiel – about the bones.  In a vision, Ezekiel looks out over a field littered with dry bones.  And God asks the prophet, Can these bones live?  Ezekiel shrugs.  Then God tells him, Speak my Word to these bones.  He did, and the bones lived.  Likewise, it’s through his Word that God calls, and comforts, and directs his people.  And there’s power there, in the Word.  Jesus says, they’ll recognize the Master’s voice.  They’ll recognize the real thing, and they’ll spot the phony.

Jesus goes on:

¹⁶ I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen.

The Old Testament prophets had foreseen the Messiah as God’s Shepherd.  Ezekiel chapter 34: “I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd.”

Tend whom, precisely?  Well, the children of Israel, of course. 

And indeed, the Son of David did come to shepherd God’s people, the Jews.  But that wasn’t all.  He once sat down beside a Samaritan well, and shocked a local Samaritan lady by asking her for a drink.  You’re a Jew, I’m a Samaritan woman - this isn’t done.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

Jesus left town two days later, with the Samaritans saying, We’ve heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.  

¹⁶ I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.

A glance down into the next section tells us that this was wintertime.  By springtime of that year, the Good Shepherd – in the flesh – would be out of the picture, having indeed given his life for the sheep and taken it up again and ascended on high.  So when, and how, were these other sheep – those not of his sheep pen – to hear his voice and be brought in under his care?  Jesus was leaving.

Well, the apostle Paul, the one most responsible in those early days for getting the message out beyond the perimeters of Israel, said it to the Corinthians: “We are Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.”  The voice of the Shepherd is heard through his ambassadors.  The likes of us, in other words.  The Shepherd’s voice has been entrusted to us.  And we have Jesus’ promise, that when that voice is heard, other sheep will listen, and they’ll join God’s flock under his Shepherd’s care.

That, you could say, puts us in the position of being - in some sense, at least - both sheep and shepherd.  Both a part of the problem and a part of the solution.  Indeed, the apostle Peter speaks of the church leadership as being sort of under-shepherds, under the Chief Shepherd.  And here the reality goes way beyond the parable.  Because sheep – of the wooly variety – do not become under-shepherds.  Not so Jesus’ sheep.  Jesus took one, for example, in the person of wayward, headstrong, foot-in-the-mouth Simon the fisherman, and made him into Peter the Rock, a fisher of men, and a shepherd of the early church. 

A shepherd, but at the same time still very much a sheep – needing to listen to the Chief Shepherd’s voice, needing the guidance of his rod and staff, and sometimes wandering off and getting into trouble like the youngest, dumbest lamb.

But returning to our passage, this today really isn’t about us – it’s about him, the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for our sake.  A good way to close this off, and getting some good use out of our pew Bibles, let’s add our voices to a praise service.  This in Revelation 5, beginning reading in v. 9.   Title it Worthy is the Lamb.

And they sang a new song:

“You are worthy to take the scroll

and to open its seals,

because you were slain,

and with your blood you purchased men for God

from every tribe and language and people and nation.

¹⁰ You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,

and they will reign on the earth.”

¹¹ Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. ¹² In a loud voice they sang:

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength

and honor and glory and praise!”

¹³ Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing:

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb

be praise and honor and glory and power,

for ever and ever!”

Amen!