John 10: 1-10

Click here to view the sermon, Sheep.

This Sunday is the fourth Sunday of the Easter season, what’s often referred to as “good shepherd” Sunday. That’s because the readings for the day pair the beloved 23rd psalm that opens, “the Lord is my shepherd,” with a reading from the tenth chapter of John’s gospel where Jesus draws out an extended analogy for himself using the language of sheepfolds, sheep and shepherds.

It’s not surprising that we find abundant references to sheep and shepherds throughout scripture. Nomadic herdsmen and their flocks have long populated the ancient lands of Mediterranean. When thinking about God and then Jesus, they are naturally portrayed as a good shepherd, one in whose care the sheep find abundance, stillness, and protection- even the kind of protection that lays down its own life for the sheep. It’s comforting to think of God in this way, I suppose. Maybe that same comfort is why the image of shepherd gets extended to Ministers of the Word and Sacrament who serve local churches as ‘pastors.’ The congregations that they serve are then referred to as the ‘flock,’ or ‘fold.’ If I’m being honest, that’s not my favorite way of talking about myself, or church.

For one thing, pastors don’t need any help nurturing their own God complex. If the Lord is my shepherd,

well- I’m clearly not the Lord. That job is taken. But far more disconcerting is the implication that y’all are somehow sheep. I don’t know anyone who wants to be thought of as a sheep. Sheep are mindless, smelly, untidy animals who exist only to be fleeced or slaughtered. How have we persisted with this image?

Barbara Brown Taylor writes about sharing this same concern, until she learned from a friend who actually grew up on a sheep farm that sheep are not, in fact, dumb. As is too frequently the case, sheep have been maligned by the poor opinion of cattle ranchers, who say such things about sheep simply because they do not act like cows.

Side note: how often does this pattern get repeated in the world? One group of people looks down on another group of people, questioning their intelligence, their level of sophistication, their work habits, their overall deficiency, when what they’re most upset about is how the sheer fact of difference might call into question their own identity and values.

Anyway, cows, notes Taylor, are herded from behind by hooting cowboys with cracking whips. That doesn’t really work with sheep. Sheep need to be led. You push cows, but you lead sheep- and they will not go somewhere unless someone else goes first, to show them that everything is alright. That makes me think about the Lord’s Prayer.

It’s a series of petitions. But perhaps the most important right now comes toward the end, “lead us.” The more people I talk with, the more news and commentary I listen to about this pandemic that has shut our country down and put tens of millions of people out of work, the more it becomes clear that we are in uncharted territory. We can model and strategize rates of infection and contact tracing, but the truth is that no one knows what things will look like a year from now. That’s always been the case, really. It’s just more obvious now.

A friend of mine talks about the experience of living in Scotland. He and his family would watch the nightly weather report and the forecast for the coming days, which was invariably wrong. They learned, he told me, not to rely on such predictions but to be prepared to adapt to the conditions as they came. As a pastor that means that, at heart, I am one more sheep in need of God to take the lead.

The trouble with analogies like the one Jesus plays out is that we can get too caught up in trying to follow their literal progression. Am I a sheep, or a shepherd? It’s not like Jesus is all too clear about it himself. He starts out talking about the sheepfold, and those that would enter by a way other than the gate. He doesn’t have very nice things to say about that. Then he says that the shepherd enters by the gate- which the gatekeeper opens- how the sheep hear his voice and he calls them out by name. Then he talks about a stranger. At a certain point, you can see the faces of the crowd trying to follow what he’s saying. They start out nodding, but then it starts to break down as their expressions go blank. If we’re the sheep in this scenario, who are all the other people: the gatekeeper, the shepherd, the stranger? The writer even acknowledges that Jesus is using a figure of speech, but it starts to get confusing. So, he tries again, “Okay, I’m the gate for the sheep,” he says. But few verses later he goes on to say, “I am the good shepherd.” Which is it, Jesus? Are you the gate or the shepherd?  It’s enough to make a person feel as muddled as… well, as muddled as a sheep.

Maybe you’ve noticed, but when Jesus talks in John’s gospel, people may listen, but they don’t always understand him. There is Nicodemus, the religious insider who was trying to get a handle on what all the signs and miracles Jesus was performing might mean. There was the Samaritan woman at the well, an outsider who couldn’t figure out what Jesus was talking about when he offered her living water. The crowds that wanted to crown him king didn’t know what to make of his declaration, “I am the bread of life,” and the talk of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Let’s face it; sometimes it’s not all that easy to understand what Jesus is saying.  And that might be a good thing.

Like the parables that we hear in the other three accounts of the Jesus story, the things that Jesus says in John confound us sometimes. They don’t always fit into tidy allegorical boxes. That’s not really how they work. I mean, where exactly is Jesus in this allegory? First he’s the gate, then he’s the shepherd; which just might be the point. All sorts of people wanted, and continue to want, Jesus to fit their particular agenda. The Pharisees wanted him to tow their party line when it came to a very strict observance of biblical authority. The zealots saw him as a champion and potential revolutionary in their struggle for justice against the occupying army of Rome. The folks out in the desert following John the Baptist wanted him to take up where John left off and continue to call the people to their ascetic idea of holiness. All of them saw Jesus as their potential Messiah.

But for all the things that Jesus says about himself: I am the bread of life, the light of the world

the gate, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way, the true vine- for all that, he does not say the one thing that they are all waiting for him to say. He does not say, “I am the Christ.” Everyone had a pretty good idea of who they thought the Christ was supposed to be. Who they thought the Christ as supposed to be was someone who supported their way of looking at the world.  Jesus knew that as soon as he claimed that title for himself, people would have stopped seeing him and would have seen instead the projection that they imagined for that role.

These days we call him the Christ, but we still have a way of wanting him to fit into our worldview. We look for the ways and the places that his words will reinforce the things we already think, or feel, or know. Perhaps the reason Jesus continues to confound us is that he simply refuses to be the Christ of any one particular agenda, the one who will destroy any and all opposition. We seem to forget who we are in the picture Jesus paints in this tenth chapter of John. We’re the sheep, who have come to think that we’re supposed to be the gatekeepers.

“Are you pre-trib, or post-trib,” someone asked me once.

“Huh?” I responded.

“When the rapture comes,” this person explained.

“Uh, I- uh- I don’t believe in the rapture.”

That was all it took. I could see myself being left behind in their eyes.

Pick a controversy; pick a position of social or theological debate: abortion, homosexuality, school prayer, the Ten Commandments, atonement, the role of women, resurrection. These are things about which Christians of good faith don’t always agree. They read their bibles. They go to church. They pray, and they come to different conclusions about how such issues ought to be addressed by the church and in the world today. Some have become afraid to talk about what they think because they fear that the second they express an opinion, they will be branded as, “one of them.” You know, they all think alike. They’re why this country is such a mess, you know. There’s just no talking to people like that. It could be a neighbor, a good friend, or a beloved family member, but as soon as that brand has been affixed, the person goes away and the label takes their place.

It’s almost as though we think that the gate to the sheepfold belongs to us, and we have to protect it from thieves and bandits. But the truth is that we become the thieves and bandits when we divide the body of Christ using the person of Christ to advance personal agendas and social ideologies that reinforce our own fears and prejudice. Don’t we have to take a stand on the issues? People need to know where we stand, don’t they?

Listen again to the words of Jesus, “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me…will come in and go out and find pasture…I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

If we’re so busy taking our stand, trying to be the gatekeepers, we may neglect entirely why the gate is there is the first place. It is there for coming in and going out and finding pasture. If we’re so busy stating or defending our position, we may have trouble hearing the voice of the one who knows us by name, the only shepherd we can trust to lead us in uncertain times, and the gate through whom we have life and life abundant.

The one we call the risen Christ.

Alleluia, amen.