Easter 4A – George Yandell
Growing up in Knoxville, my parents had Church friends outside of town on Watts Bar Lake. We’d often visit Glenn and Charlie West on their small farm and fish off their dock. They had a cow or two, some chickens, two sheep and a goat. The goat’s name was ‘Stupid.’ My brother and I loved looking through the fence at Stupid as he ate odd things and roamed around. Charlie said we couldn’t go into the fenced area without him because Stupid sometimes ran up and butted interlopers.
How many of you have known any sheep up close and personal? Any goats? The first congregation I served solo was as vicar of St. James the Less in Madison TN. In a mission council meeting, the Sr. Warden said to me after my first year, “George, you came here expecting to be a shepherd to the sheep, but you now realize you’ve got a lot of goats.” Of course I thought of Stupid.
When John’s gospel recounts the parable of the good shepherd, John uses an interesting image. In the reading today, Jesus says, “I am the gate for the sheep.” And then we hear him say just after this passage, “I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and they know me. I lay down my life for the sheep.” These are interesting metaphors, and the last completely unprecedented in our Bible. No shepherd of Israel before Jesus is known to have given his life for his sheep. And no prophet ever claimed, “I am a sheep-gate.”
John’s gospel portrays Jesus as the shepherd who saves, sustains, and redeems the life of all who will come into his sheepfold. The sheepfold enclosed sheep from the hazards of weather, beasts and robbers. It was sometimes used jointly by a number of shepherds for a number of different flocks, and supervised by a single attendant through the night, each shepherd then calling forth again his own flock in the morning. (Interpreters’ Dictionary of the Bible, p. 316)
What did this imply for the early Church? What did it mean for them to be sheep, in the sheepfold with lots of others, protected and called forth by Jesus, going in and out through the gate which was Jesus himself? Of course they’d have thought of Psalm 23 – “The Lord is my shepherd – he makes me lie down in green pastures, he revives my soul.”
And what did those early followers of Jesus do in response to shepherd Jesus giving his life for them? Listen to what the Acts of the Apostles says about the Jesus fellowship in Jerusalem in the years after Jesus’ death and resurrection:
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”
Those followers shared their possessions so everyone would have enough. They spread goodwill among all the people. Those who lived new resurrection life with James, the brother of Jesus, were called the Poor Ones. Their care of sick and destitute people in and around Jerusalem gained the respect of many who had dismissed Jesus. It sounds like through the resurrection, the sheep of Jesus became the shepherds, doesn’t it? Is this story so radical we dismiss it, or can we use it as a model for following Jesus today?
One writer calls Jesus ‘the generous shepherd’. [The Christian Century, April 2023 edition, p. 29] Jenna Smith says in the verses preceding today’s passage, those Pharisees who encountered the man whom Jesus healed from blindness asked the question, “How do we know this man Jesus is from God?” “At the end of the day, Jesus’ answer is very simple: trust my caring and generous acts. He demonstrates this time and time again in his ministry.” His first followers followed suit as they lived into a tradition of communal generous shepherding.” So it was for those earliest followers of Jesus, so it is with us today. Sheep or goats, we’re in it as shepherds who live the resurrection life Jesus opened for us.