The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
Good morning, on what is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. The 23rd Psalm is one of our most beloved and certainly best-known Psalms. I don’t know about you, but eons ago as part of a Sunday School assignment, my class memorized it when we were just children. And we can see why it is so well known and so cherished. It offers us a vision of tranquility and comfort, of guidance and obedience, of assurance, of protection, and of love.
But what would this psalm have sounded like to the people who heard it in ancient times? We don’t encounter sheep on a daily basis today, and there may be some of us who’ve never even see a real live sheep in person. But during Jesus’ earthly lifetime, people came in daily contact with the nearby presence of sheep. In Jesus’ day, most folks knew all about sheep and the shepherds who tended them.
As we think about sheep and shepherds, especially within the context of our faith, we modern day Christians deal with all those paintings and stained-glass windows depicting our Lord, carrying a wee lamb in His arms, or, occasionally these days, a more rugged image of Jesus with a larger sheep thrown over His shoulder. For the most part, in a religious context we think “sheep” and it’s mostly little black or white lambs. We think “shepherd” and Jesus immediately comes to mind. These are our points of reference.
But for the Hebrew people of ancient times, the references to shepherds and sheep went way back in the Bible, and appeared long before Jesus ever said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”.
Those who heard Him speak these words were far better acquainted with the Hebrew Bible than we are today. In his 23rd Psalm, King David sang a song of a good shepherd, a song with origins far back in Hebrew history, a song that today paints for us that glorious pastoral picture we know and love. But this isn’t what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel – not this shepherd, not the one in the 23rd Psalm.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus is basing what He says on another Bible reference, one with which we may not be well acquainted. He is making a comparison – between the good shepherd, and a bad one.
Jesus was fully steeped in Biblical knowledge, and He knew that Ezekiel describes just what a “bad shepherd” looks like. Ezekiel speaks for God as he tells such shepherds that they have been feeding themselves and not the sheep. 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Woe, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock? … You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. And those who heard Ezekiel knew that the shepherds to whom he referred were the rulers of Israel. Jesus absolutely knew this scripture, and so did His listeners.
In today’s reading Jesus does not use the term “bad shepherds”. He doesn’t need to. Everyone knows what the opposite of good is, and His listeners would have certainly made the connection between the Good Shepherd and the bad ones.
Having identified Himself as the Good Shepherd, Jesus speaks first of the “hired hand”, the bad shepherd, then elaborates further on His own identity. “And I lay down my life for the sheep… For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 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. I have received this command from my Father.”
This is something we learn only here in John’s Gospel. We know that Jesus was raised from the dead. But – think about it. If we are asked about the resurrection, we realize we have always accepted that God raised Jesus. Right? Yet here in John, Jesus tells us that it is not God the Father who will raise Him, but that He, Jesus, will raise Himself from the dead. He will lay down His life and raise Himself up in obedience to His Father’s command. The power to do so, and the choice, belong to Jesus.
Why this clarification? Because John’s Gospel wants to make it clear that Jesus is God incarnate, not just a great prophet, but God in human form. You know that wonderful saying, “Jesus died to show us He was human. He rose from the dead to show us He is God.”
God the Father gives Jesus two commandments, to lay down His life and raise Himself from the dead, and God also tell Jesus what to speak, what to say to His followers - and Jesus obeys.
Jesus obeys the Father’s commands, and then turns to His followers, to us, and gives us two commandments. Love one another as I have loved you. And He tells us to cherish His words as the very words of God. If we wish to remain within the fold, to continue in His love, then as Jesus has obeyed His Father, we are to obey Jesus. We are to be good servants, faithful, and diligent. We are to hear the words from the lips of our Good Shepherd, our God, and obey them – but this is far from easy. Think about it.
This past week, as I’m sure you all know, there was a jury selection going on in New York, and it seemed to take quite a long time. What made it so difficult to choose the members of the jury, was that so many people who might have become jurors already had a personal opinion of the defendant and of the situation for which the defendant was to be tried. What was being looked at in each candidate was their ability to be impartial, to see all people as equals. Impartiality isn’t that easy.
What Jesus is looking for in us is our ability to set aside our very own, dear to us, personal opinions, and do what has He has commanded us to do – love unconditionally. We are to love not just people like us, people we understand, people we like. We are to love without prejudice, without judgement, a love based not on our notions and inclinations, but on Jesus example and with His help.
Like our Lord, we have a choice. In obedience to His Father’s command, He chose to lay down His life and pick it up again for us. In telling us He was doing so, He erased any question as to His divinity, and made it clear that to be His sheep we need to obey Him.
We have two choices. We can choose to make our own judgments, based on our own personal opinions, which are sometimes terribly flawed, to do what we think is “right”, but often isn’t, to be bad shepherds, because that makes us feel powerful and in control. Or, we can choose to be obedient to the Good Shepherd, and live the life of service and of love that He has set before us
As John says in his epistle, Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action …And this is [Jesus’] commandment, that we should … love one another, just as He has commanded us. All who obey His commandments abide in Him, and He abides in them.
Let us pray:
Lord God, help us to serve others with a joyful heart; never keeping score; always giving; never expecting to receive. Help us to give of ourselves, of our talents and of our goods, of our time and of our energy, to give of our hearts and souls. You have been so gracious to us, always loving, always forgiving, always restoring. Help us to serve others, with gentleness, compassion, and tenderness, never diminishing the worth of another, choosing to extend mercy to all, as You have repeatedly shown mercy to us. All this we ask in Jesus Name. Amen.