The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Preached by Dean Robert Neske at Saint Mark’s Pro-Cathedral, Hastings, April 13, 2008

Long before the coming of Christ God seems to have developed a fondness for shepherds and called them to positions of leadership within the people of Israel. We know that Moses was watching his father-law’s sheep when God called to him from out of the burning bush; that David had been watching his father’s sheep just before he was anointed to be King by Samuel. At least two of the Minor Prophets, Amos and Micah tell us they were shepherds, while both Ezekiel and Malachi use shepherd imagery in their prophecy to the people.

God is clearly able to relate to someone who has to care for and about stupid, willful, stubborn creatures with an absolute gift for getting themselves hopelessly lost or in trouble; which if the truth be told, is something God does with great regularity. God must see shepherding as good training for dealing with the people of God. Yet what seems to defy the understanding of those critical of the Christian Faith is why the image of Jesus the shepherd speaks so powerfully to a society that with every passing day is further removed from its agrarian past.

It may well be that we have come to live in a wholly urbanized society which seeks to embrace every new strand of ever-changing technology, yet at the same time, when we find ourselves in times of danger, when we are in trouble, or stand in the presence of our dead, the words we want to hear begin: “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want…” Not surprisingly the shepherd has the face of Jesus Christ.

While our Gospel reflects on Jesus as the shepherd, it also would have us focus on another aspect of the shepherd relationship, which is, being part of the sheepfold: “Jesus said, "Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.”

In Jesus’ day, the sheepfold, or pen was located at one end of the village or town, and there was a gate and a gate-keeper to guard the animals overnight. While the Evangelist was using the every day reality that was shepherding in First Century Palestine, the early Church Fathers heard and saw in the image of the sheepfold, the Church itself, for which Christ is himself the shepherd. But who they wondered is the gatekeeper?

Scholars and preachers have wrestles with the figure of the gatekeeper literally for centuries. St John Chrysostom was of a mind that the gatekeeper was Moses, while some of his contemporaries thought it was John the Baptist and there are some modern scholars who also believe the image of the gatekeeper refers to the Baptizer. It doesn’t really matter all that much because the point is that the gatekeeper (whether the Law personified by Moses or the prophets, personified by John opens the gates for the true shepherd: “and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

The emphasis is on the fact that the sheep know the shepherd’s voice. This is true; sheep are able to make distinctions between human voices and will not respond to a strange voice. The evangelists point is that neither should we; as the flock we need to listen for the true voice of the shepherd, because he is both the true shepherd and the gate or door itself.

The other significant element is that the sheep follow. For John the Evangelist the use of the word ‘follow’ means to have faith in the one you are following. One of the small but important things we need to keep in mind is that faith in and of itself requires a response; it requires action, we are to act on our faith.

“I am the gate for the sheep… Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” 

Jesus is the gate or door, this too is a telling point in the text; for a gate or door is meant to be not only the means for entrance into the fold, but an obstacle as well; and Jesus is both, the way into the fold of God’s Church and the great obstacle; because he makes demands of us; following Christ demands change in our outlook – the way we see the world and our place in it. Jesus also demands the submission of our will to His will, and our purpose to His purpose.

Yet he remains the gate, the door, and the way to salvation, the way for the flock, and the way for the individual believer to come into the community of faith which is the fold, the Church. Yet not only does Jesus come to his flock to lead them to ‘find pasture’ which is an ancient metaphor for God’s providence, but our Lord’s desire is that we have ‘abundant life.’

This is what sets Jesus apart from all who have come before, whether prophets, sages or Pharisees; for he is not offering a ‘way of life’ or a philosophy he is offering himself and as John tells us at the beginning of his Gospel: “in him was life and his life was the life to come.”

This is what sets Jesus apart, that he is the one who will lead us to the God who always leads us to green pastures and who is able to restore our souls, that we might then live righteous and Godly lives for his glory.

Jesus the Good shepherd, the true shepherd is the one whose voice we need to listen to and for he will speak to us and lead us to God that we might have life. Life in this world and the world to come.