Sermon Audio
The Lord Is My Shepherd
St. John 10:1-21
Last fall, Marjorie and I moseyed over to Bayfield for the annual running of the sheep. It’s certainly not as celebrated and probably not as thrilling as the running of the bulls in Pamplona.
Still, it’s a remarkable spectacle – something like “Rawhide” mystically transported to County Limerick -- in which herders move thousands of sheep from summer pasture through the streets of Bayfield and on down to the lower winter slopes.
These herders, some mounted and some on foot, drive the sheep from behind. Sheep, you might have heard, are not known for wisdom. I don’t think moving them is as difficult as herding cats . . . but I can’t be sure.
They try to create new paths and they run off at right angles and the herders must constantly chase them down and re-direct them.
This is not the manner of Near Eastern shepherds, whether 2,000 years ago or today. They lead their sheep from the front, calling out to them to follow. Grass is sparse in this arid country and men and herds range far and wide in search of forage, together for days and weeks on end.
Wolves and bears pose a constant menace, and two-legged predators pounce from the dark as well. The shepherd goes out front to ensure, as best he can, that the path ahead is safe.
An observer tells of seeing one herder lead his flock to a stream. They balked at crossing. The man considered the matter and then scooped up a lamb and carried it across the ford and deposited it on the other side.
At this, the lamb’s mother plunged in and crossed and then the rest followed.
In this region, owners raise sheep primarily for their wool rather than their meat. A shepherd may spend years with an animal. Travelers in the region report that shepherds do indeed give names to their sheep, names like “Long Ears” or “White Nose” or “Black Face.” Now they can call out to them as individuals.
And this is the way of the Lord, who calls His elect sheep by name. He does not coerce His sheep . . . though He could; He enters into covenant with them. Will you not adore His holy name?
(Read text)
The most likely thing is that we have in view a large sheepfold, or pen, in which several families of a village keep their sheep. The fellow hired to watch the sheep is, depending on your translation, the “doorkeeper” or “gatekeeper” or “watchman.”
The last is probably best. His job is to keep vigil and protect the sheep, especially in the dark of night.
Anyone who has spent any time around sheep can undoubtedly close his eyes and recapture the sights and sounds and especially the smells of the sheepfold. You could; I would, however, advise against it.
It’s an intimate setting, in an odd sort of way. Everyone – man or beast – knows everyone else. A thief is unfamiliar and will not approach by way of the gate. He will breach the perimeter somewhere else and remove sheep by force.
A shepherd, on the other hand, will enter by the gate. Both the watchman and this shepherd’s sheep will know him, even in the dark, by his voice. In the Near East, it is the custom for multiple shepherds to stand at various points around the enclosure, each hailing his sheep with his particular call.
An Englishman visiting the region provided this account: “Sometimes he talks to them in a loud sing-song voice, unlike anything I have ever heard in my life . . . It was uncanny because there was nothing human about it. The words were animal sounds arranged in a kind of order.”
The intermingled sheep manage somehow to sort themselves out so that each harkens to the voice of his shepherd.
His sheep will follow him willingly, even gladly. And in this case before us today, the shepherd stands at the gate of the sheepfold that is Israel and calls his own by name.
It cannot have escaped St. John’s quick quill that countless sheep and attending shepherds roam through the pages of the Old Testament, as numerous as idolaters: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1).
The Jews of old had a lovely legend that spoke of how God chose Moses as leader of His people: “When Moses was feeding the sheep of his father-in-law in the wilderness, a young lamb ran away. Moses followed it until it reached a ravine, where it found a spring to drink from.
“When Moses got up to it he said, ‘I did not know you ran away because you were thirsty. Now you must be weary.’ He took the lamb on his shoulders and carried it back.
“Then God said, ‘Because you have shown pity in leading back one of a flock belonging to a man, you shall lead my flock Israel.’”
Perhaps the most noteworthy pasture in the Scriptures is Ezekiel 34, where Yahweh lambastes “the shepherds of Israel,” the nation’s leaders, for slaughtering the most handsome sheep and dressing themselves in wool while failing utterly in the care of the flock their Lord has assigned them.
For what they willfully failed to see, what many shepherds of our own day refuse to acknowledge as well, is that all the sheep of the fold belong to the Lord. The shepherd who plunders the sheep for his own gain rather than preserving them for their true Owner is no better than a robber.
The Lord’s judgment on shepherds such as these is a terrible thing to contemplate.
What does the Lord say through Ezekiel? “Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require My flock at their hand; I will cause them to cease feeding the sheep, and the shepherds shall feed themselves no more; for I will deliver My flock from their mouths, that they may no longer be food for them. . .
“I will seek out my sheep . . . I will bring them out from the peoples . . . I will feed them on the mountains of Israel . . . I myself will tend My sheep . . . I will bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick . . . but I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment” (Ezekiel 34:10-16).
Ezekiel prophesied during the Babylonian exile. Zechariah came along after it, when God’s chastened people, restored to their land of promise, were rushing back to their reckless, rebellious ways.
Yahweh declared through Zechariah that the sword would smite the unfaithful shepherds, clearing the way for the Good Shepherd who would gather the scattered remnant and tend and nurture them according to the wishes of the Father’s great heart.
Scattering was the language of disaster, gathering of the coming age of salvation.
God’s justice is that of the good shepherd, who safeguards his sheep and destroys those who attack them.
Ezekiel goes on to reveal that God’s servant David is the Lord’s appointed shepherd and that he will be the mediator of a new covenant, a “covenant of peace” and “an everlasting covenant.” As matters proceed, we see new life quickening the fallen in the valley of dry bones.
Always in view is God as the owner of the sheep, the Master of David the shepherd. As a young shepherd – in the literal sense of the word -- David slew a lion and a bear in defense of his flock. It is David’s greater Son, Jesus of Nazareth, who will emerge as the prepotent Good Shepherd
John has already echoed Ezekiel’s themes of cleansing water and transforming spirit. Now he shows us this son of David, Jesus, as the incarnate Word, both God and God’s ambassador.
And now – I know you’ve been waiting for it – we have another misunderstanding. Jesus is using an illustration, but “they did not understand the things which He spoke to them.”
We know these sheep, you and I. We ache for them . . . we pray for them. Even after all the sheep that romp through the Old Testament, even after the rich sheep metaphors of the synoptic gospels that precede John, they fail to locate the Good Shepherd.
They wander astray, bleating plaintively, drowning out the voice of the Good Shepherd. Because they do not listen, someone drives them from behind, ever onward toward the precipice over which they will plunge to their destruction.
But now the metaphor spins and Jesus becomes the door, the only access to the safety of the fold and to the rich forage of the pasture. Those thieves and robbers who came before – false messiahs – tried to beguile the Lord’s sheep, but His sheep paid them no heed; they did not know those voices.
Jesus is the way – the only way – of entry to the kingdom of God. In chapter 14(:6) we will hear Him say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.”
Now – voila! – He is the shepherd again, the “good shepherd” who “gives his life for his sheep.” He will protect and defend them not with a sword but with a cross. His way is not the way of the world. His sheep must be rescued from the death grip of their sins.
Surely whoever coined the term “counter-intuitive” had the Scriptures in mind. We enter into the grand inversion. Servants should sacrifice for their lord but our Lord sacrifices for us. The king should feast on the food his servants produce but our King becomes the food that sustains us.
The life of the shepherd should be of infinitively greater value than the life of one stinking sheep. This is the thinking of the hired hand. The shepherd loves his sheep, the hireling is working for a wage. At the first sign of danger he will hot-foot it away.
John Calvin wrote, “This passage should make us deeply ashamed. First, because we are so unused to the voice of our Shepherd that hardly anyone listens to it without indifference. And then because we are so slow and lazy to follow him.
“I am speaking of the good, or at least the passable, for most of those who claim to be Christ’s disciples openly rebel against him.” So wrote Calvin.
The Scriptures turn the value system of man on its head. How do you know they’re true? Because they speak thoughts higher than yours, more daring than yours, more profound than yours. If you ponder them, if you immerse yourself in them, you will discern that they must be true because no human could have conceived them.
As more than one commentator has observed, “It would take a Jesus to invent a Jesus.”
The Scriptures emanate from a source without and beyond and above. You cannot give birth to these ideas. Nor can I. Nor can the great philosophers and theologians. But with diligent study and fervent prayer and the direction of the Holy Spirit you can begin to apprehend them.
The natural world is the distortion, disfigured by sin. The spiritual world is the reality, configured to the divine. Up is down and down is up . . . until we begin to think as God thinks. Only then do we cast away our worldly attitudes and opinions and shout, “Yes, Lord! I was blind but now I see.”
The Good Shepherd will die that a sinful, spiritually scrawny sheep like me might live. The Master of the universe will cast His physical being onto the fire like another crooked log to generate the light that illuminates the truth for one bedraggled sinner.
This is a love that you and I cannot penetrate. We can only stand in awe. We have become so enslaved to the self that commitment to another on this scale confounds us. Yet if we can set aside for a moment our morbid fascination with the self we can get a glimpse into that inverted world in which God serves man.
The essence of our conundrum is that our sin-soaked minds cannot imagine an order in which the greater abandons rank and privilege and abases himself for the good of the lesser: The Good Shepherd lays down His life for His sheep.
We are peeking into the mind of the divine . . . setting down one tentative foot and testing the turf of the kingdom of God. He who made us loves us so much that He would enter the creation and pay the penalty for our rebellion against His eternal order. He is not like us. In this difference is our hope . . . and, I pray, our inspiration.
In the natural world, human understanding follows the “Star Wars” motif: Power prevails. Darth Vader wins if he can bring more force to bear than the righteous can withstand. But who are the righteous?
Those who trust in a nebulous force of goodness floating out there somewhere. They will overcome in the end if they can believe resolutely enough in what they will never truly know.
Our trust resides in one all-powerful, all-loving man who embodies all that is good and just and true. He is good enough to satisfy the law’s requirement of a perfect sacrifice. He is just enough to judge according to the Father’s will. He is true enough to set us free from the falsehood of a fallen world.
The sword of the Good Shepherd is not a magical laser but the very truth of God. For truth abides not in the creation but in Him who created.
Truth abides not in a grand library or a storied university but in a humble Shepherd on a faraway hillside who will abandon His life to preserve the life of a sheep. Our salvation means more to Him than His preservation.
Truth does not exalt itself; it gives itself. Truth watches over the flock and adores the flock not for any merit in the sheep but for the very fact that He made them. This is our worth, that God Almighty saw fit to fashion us from the dust of the ground and breathe life into us. That He condescended to die to save us.
Jesus is a Shepherd who knows what it’s like to be a sheep. Is He not the Lamb of God who will die on the cross even as the Passover lambs are sacrificed in the temple? He is man and God, sheep and shepherd, victim and conqueror, servant and King. He is far above us and He is with us and in us as we are with Him and in Him.
Hosanna to the Good Shepherd. Amen.
St. John 10:1-21
Last fall, Marjorie and I moseyed over to Bayfield for the annual running of the sheep. It’s certainly not as celebrated and probably not as thrilling as the running of the bulls in Pamplona.
Still, it’s a remarkable spectacle – something like “Rawhide” mystically transported to County Limerick -- in which herders move thousands of sheep from summer pasture through the streets of Bayfield and on down to the lower winter slopes.
These herders, some mounted and some on foot, drive the sheep from behind. Sheep, you might have heard, are not known for wisdom. I don’t think moving them is as difficult as herding cats . . . but I can’t be sure.
They try to create new paths and they run off at right angles and the herders must constantly chase them down and re-direct them.
This is not the manner of Near Eastern shepherds, whether 2,000 years ago or today. They lead their sheep from the front, calling out to them to follow. Grass is sparse in this arid country and men and herds range far and wide in search of forage, together for days and weeks on end.
Wolves and bears pose a constant menace, and two-legged predators pounce from the dark as well. The shepherd goes out front to ensure, as best he can, that the path ahead is safe.
An observer tells of seeing one herder lead his flock to a stream. They balked at crossing. The man considered the matter and then scooped up a lamb and carried it across the ford and deposited it on the other side.
At this, the lamb’s mother plunged in and crossed and then the rest followed.
In this region, owners raise sheep primarily for their wool rather than their meat. A shepherd may spend years with an animal. Travelers in the region report that shepherds do indeed give names to their sheep, names like “Long Ears” or “White Nose” or “Black Face.” Now they can call out to them as individuals.
And this is the way of the Lord, who calls His elect sheep by name. He does not coerce His sheep . . . though He could; He enters into covenant with them. Will you not adore His holy name?
(Read text)
The most likely thing is that we have in view a large sheepfold, or pen, in which several families of a village keep their sheep. The fellow hired to watch the sheep is, depending on your translation, the “doorkeeper” or “gatekeeper” or “watchman.”
The last is probably best. His job is to keep vigil and protect the sheep, especially in the dark of night.
Anyone who has spent any time around sheep can undoubtedly close his eyes and recapture the sights and sounds and especially the smells of the sheepfold. You could; I would, however, advise against it.
It’s an intimate setting, in an odd sort of way. Everyone – man or beast – knows everyone else. A thief is unfamiliar and will not approach by way of the gate. He will breach the perimeter somewhere else and remove sheep by force.
A shepherd, on the other hand, will enter by the gate. Both the watchman and this shepherd’s sheep will know him, even in the dark, by his voice. In the Near East, it is the custom for multiple shepherds to stand at various points around the enclosure, each hailing his sheep with his particular call.
An Englishman visiting the region provided this account: “Sometimes he talks to them in a loud sing-song voice, unlike anything I have ever heard in my life . . . It was uncanny because there was nothing human about it. The words were animal sounds arranged in a kind of order.”
The intermingled sheep manage somehow to sort themselves out so that each harkens to the voice of his shepherd.
His sheep will follow him willingly, even gladly. And in this case before us today, the shepherd stands at the gate of the sheepfold that is Israel and calls his own by name.
It cannot have escaped St. John’s quick quill that countless sheep and attending shepherds roam through the pages of the Old Testament, as numerous as idolaters: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1).
The Jews of old had a lovely legend that spoke of how God chose Moses as leader of His people: “When Moses was feeding the sheep of his father-in-law in the wilderness, a young lamb ran away. Moses followed it until it reached a ravine, where it found a spring to drink from.
“When Moses got up to it he said, ‘I did not know you ran away because you were thirsty. Now you must be weary.’ He took the lamb on his shoulders and carried it back.
“Then God said, ‘Because you have shown pity in leading back one of a flock belonging to a man, you shall lead my flock Israel.’”
Perhaps the most noteworthy pasture in the Scriptures is Ezekiel 34, where Yahweh lambastes “the shepherds of Israel,” the nation’s leaders, for slaughtering the most handsome sheep and dressing themselves in wool while failing utterly in the care of the flock their Lord has assigned them.
For what they willfully failed to see, what many shepherds of our own day refuse to acknowledge as well, is that all the sheep of the fold belong to the Lord. The shepherd who plunders the sheep for his own gain rather than preserving them for their true Owner is no better than a robber.
The Lord’s judgment on shepherds such as these is a terrible thing to contemplate.
What does the Lord say through Ezekiel? “Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require My flock at their hand; I will cause them to cease feeding the sheep, and the shepherds shall feed themselves no more; for I will deliver My flock from their mouths, that they may no longer be food for them. . .
“I will seek out my sheep . . . I will bring them out from the peoples . . . I will feed them on the mountains of Israel . . . I myself will tend My sheep . . . I will bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick . . . but I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment” (Ezekiel 34:10-16).
Ezekiel prophesied during the Babylonian exile. Zechariah came along after it, when God’s chastened people, restored to their land of promise, were rushing back to their reckless, rebellious ways.
Yahweh declared through Zechariah that the sword would smite the unfaithful shepherds, clearing the way for the Good Shepherd who would gather the scattered remnant and tend and nurture them according to the wishes of the Father’s great heart.
Scattering was the language of disaster, gathering of the coming age of salvation.
God’s justice is that of the good shepherd, who safeguards his sheep and destroys those who attack them.
Ezekiel goes on to reveal that God’s servant David is the Lord’s appointed shepherd and that he will be the mediator of a new covenant, a “covenant of peace” and “an everlasting covenant.” As matters proceed, we see new life quickening the fallen in the valley of dry bones.
Always in view is God as the owner of the sheep, the Master of David the shepherd. As a young shepherd – in the literal sense of the word -- David slew a lion and a bear in defense of his flock. It is David’s greater Son, Jesus of Nazareth, who will emerge as the prepotent Good Shepherd
John has already echoed Ezekiel’s themes of cleansing water and transforming spirit. Now he shows us this son of David, Jesus, as the incarnate Word, both God and God’s ambassador.
And now – I know you’ve been waiting for it – we have another misunderstanding. Jesus is using an illustration, but “they did not understand the things which He spoke to them.”
We know these sheep, you and I. We ache for them . . . we pray for them. Even after all the sheep that romp through the Old Testament, even after the rich sheep metaphors of the synoptic gospels that precede John, they fail to locate the Good Shepherd.
They wander astray, bleating plaintively, drowning out the voice of the Good Shepherd. Because they do not listen, someone drives them from behind, ever onward toward the precipice over which they will plunge to their destruction.
But now the metaphor spins and Jesus becomes the door, the only access to the safety of the fold and to the rich forage of the pasture. Those thieves and robbers who came before – false messiahs – tried to beguile the Lord’s sheep, but His sheep paid them no heed; they did not know those voices.
Jesus is the way – the only way – of entry to the kingdom of God. In chapter 14(:6) we will hear Him say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.”
Now – voila! – He is the shepherd again, the “good shepherd” who “gives his life for his sheep.” He will protect and defend them not with a sword but with a cross. His way is not the way of the world. His sheep must be rescued from the death grip of their sins.
Surely whoever coined the term “counter-intuitive” had the Scriptures in mind. We enter into the grand inversion. Servants should sacrifice for their lord but our Lord sacrifices for us. The king should feast on the food his servants produce but our King becomes the food that sustains us.
The life of the shepherd should be of infinitively greater value than the life of one stinking sheep. This is the thinking of the hired hand. The shepherd loves his sheep, the hireling is working for a wage. At the first sign of danger he will hot-foot it away.
John Calvin wrote, “This passage should make us deeply ashamed. First, because we are so unused to the voice of our Shepherd that hardly anyone listens to it without indifference. And then because we are so slow and lazy to follow him.
“I am speaking of the good, or at least the passable, for most of those who claim to be Christ’s disciples openly rebel against him.” So wrote Calvin.
The Scriptures turn the value system of man on its head. How do you know they’re true? Because they speak thoughts higher than yours, more daring than yours, more profound than yours. If you ponder them, if you immerse yourself in them, you will discern that they must be true because no human could have conceived them.
As more than one commentator has observed, “It would take a Jesus to invent a Jesus.”
The Scriptures emanate from a source without and beyond and above. You cannot give birth to these ideas. Nor can I. Nor can the great philosophers and theologians. But with diligent study and fervent prayer and the direction of the Holy Spirit you can begin to apprehend them.
The natural world is the distortion, disfigured by sin. The spiritual world is the reality, configured to the divine. Up is down and down is up . . . until we begin to think as God thinks. Only then do we cast away our worldly attitudes and opinions and shout, “Yes, Lord! I was blind but now I see.”
The Good Shepherd will die that a sinful, spiritually scrawny sheep like me might live. The Master of the universe will cast His physical being onto the fire like another crooked log to generate the light that illuminates the truth for one bedraggled sinner.
This is a love that you and I cannot penetrate. We can only stand in awe. We have become so enslaved to the self that commitment to another on this scale confounds us. Yet if we can set aside for a moment our morbid fascination with the self we can get a glimpse into that inverted world in which God serves man.
The essence of our conundrum is that our sin-soaked minds cannot imagine an order in which the greater abandons rank and privilege and abases himself for the good of the lesser: The Good Shepherd lays down His life for His sheep.
We are peeking into the mind of the divine . . . setting down one tentative foot and testing the turf of the kingdom of God. He who made us loves us so much that He would enter the creation and pay the penalty for our rebellion against His eternal order. He is not like us. In this difference is our hope . . . and, I pray, our inspiration.
In the natural world, human understanding follows the “Star Wars” motif: Power prevails. Darth Vader wins if he can bring more force to bear than the righteous can withstand. But who are the righteous?
Those who trust in a nebulous force of goodness floating out there somewhere. They will overcome in the end if they can believe resolutely enough in what they will never truly know.
Our trust resides in one all-powerful, all-loving man who embodies all that is good and just and true. He is good enough to satisfy the law’s requirement of a perfect sacrifice. He is just enough to judge according to the Father’s will. He is true enough to set us free from the falsehood of a fallen world.
The sword of the Good Shepherd is not a magical laser but the very truth of God. For truth abides not in the creation but in Him who created.
Truth abides not in a grand library or a storied university but in a humble Shepherd on a faraway hillside who will abandon His life to preserve the life of a sheep. Our salvation means more to Him than His preservation.
Truth does not exalt itself; it gives itself. Truth watches over the flock and adores the flock not for any merit in the sheep but for the very fact that He made them. This is our worth, that God Almighty saw fit to fashion us from the dust of the ground and breathe life into us. That He condescended to die to save us.
Jesus is a Shepherd who knows what it’s like to be a sheep. Is He not the Lamb of God who will die on the cross even as the Passover lambs are sacrificed in the temple? He is man and God, sheep and shepherd, victim and conqueror, servant and King. He is far above us and He is with us and in us as we are with Him and in Him.
Hosanna to the Good Shepherd. Amen.