SERMON FOR GOOD SHEPHERD SUNDAY, APRIL 25, 2020.      TEXT: JOHN 10:11-18
     The only shepherds I know are of the canine variety. Here is one man’s description of the dog who served as his guardian. “Most of what I know about shepherding I learned from Sprocket. He was a German Shepherd and part of my family for about eight years, spanning my time as a doctoral student and then as a new professor learning the ropes. He spent incalculable hours watching me read and write into the night. In return, I got to observe a master at work. A consummate shepherd, Sprocket usually wouldn’t eat his food when someone put it in his bowl each evening. Instead he would wait, sometimes for hours and not before the children were in bed, until he knew he could take his attention off of everything else for a few minutes and be alone with his dinner. There was never any doubt that Sprocket was with us, for us, watching us, protecting us. Every person who stood up and moved to a different room, every squirrel that passed by the glass door, every creak in the building—he investigated. I don’t think there’s a substitute for the feeling of security that comes from knowing you’re the object of someone’s constant care and concern. If he couldn’t protect me from all harm, it wouldn’t have been for lack of trying.” 
     Parents who own herding dogs of one breed or another appreciate their help. They don’t let playing children and their assorted friends out of their sight. They go after the ones who tend to stray and nudge them back into the fold where they belong. These dogs know who they are responsible for. Watching over their charges, remaining vigilant and keeping them safe is not just what they do. It’s who they are. It is the very nature of the breed. Even if you have no firsthand experience of human shepherds, seeing them mirrored in these canine counterparts helps you understand the Bible’s use of this image to portray God. 
     “The Lord is my shepherd,” watching over me, protecting me, in death as in life, proclaims the psalmist. In Ezekiel the Lord God promises his people, “As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness” (34:12). The prophet Isaiah assures us that God “will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep” (Isaiah 40:11). Jesus himself speaks of God in similar terms in one of his parables: “If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone stray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost” (Matthew 18:12-14) These are the hallmarks of a good shepherd: he attends to those who are weak and vulnerable; he does not give up on the wayward ones. The shepherd uses his rod to defend the flock from predators and his staff to keep them from wandering. In the midst of real danger, even in the face of death, they can trust him to be faithful.
     Twice in today’s Gospel Jesus asserts, “I am the good shepherd.” It is one of the distinctive “I AM” sayings in John. Remember how Moses challenged God to reveal his name, and God answered, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). Now Jesus responds with his own “I am,” applying to himself the image of the shepherd used to portray God in the Scriptures. His hearers would have grasped that right away. This reassuring image would have ruffled some feathers when Jesus laid claim to it. 
     His discussion of shepherds, hired hands and wolves is part of a controversy with the religious authorities; the contrasts are deliberately pointed. Jesus has just healed a man born blind (chapter 9). Because he did this on the sabbath, some of them conclude that Jesus is not from God, while others believe his power to heal proves that he is. Jesus’ critics question the man no longer blind; they interrogate his parents and then go after the son a second time. “We know that this man is a sinner,” they insist (John 9:24). And the man boldly replies, “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (John 9:32-33). The enraged Pharisees drive him out. The poor man, having spent years estranged from his community because of his blindness, is now in some sense thrust back into darkness. And Jesus once again makes him see. “Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him” (John 9:35-38). The good shepherd cares for his flock; he seeks out those who have wandered off or been driven away; he heals and restores them. He calls others and brings them into the fold, and they, like the blind man, listen to his voice.  
     Jesus then takes the shepherd’s commitment further. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” For protection shepherds in the ancient world penned their flocks at night in stone enclosures that had an opening on one side just big enough for the shepherd to lie across.  Any enemy would first have to deal with their protector, who is ready to give his life to keep his sheep safe. “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again,” says Jesus. “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” And that is what he did.
     Hired hands who skip out when the going gets rough, wolves who devour without a second thought — we know who has filled those roles in our lives; we know when we ourselves have played those parts. But to the Good Shepherd we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand, cherished forevermore. “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” Amen.