The life-giving Shepherd
Our local farmers are dairy and arable farmers, so it’s not unusual to see a cow as you travel round this area. You have to go a bit further into Wales to see sheep – but then there are plenty to choose from. In a country with a human population of just over 3 million, we have some 9 million sheep.
Having lived just below the cattle grids on Halkyn mountain, I know what it’s like to have sheep wandering freely around. They seem to enjoy a lot of freedom on our mountains and hillsides and don’t seem to need a lot of care – although I’m sure that farmers might tell me otherwise! It must be particularly tough rounding them all up when it’s time for shearing, dipping or lambing. But, with all due respect to our Welsh farmers, I think it must have been a lot tougher being a shepherd in Palestine at the time of Jesus. Apart from the harsher conditions, the rocky hillsides and the cold nights, the shepherds had to protect their flocks from wild animals, such as jackals and hyenas. In order to protect them at night, the shepherd would round up his sheep and lead them into a sheepfold, with low walls and an opening. At night, the shepherd would lie down in this gap, becoming the gate for the sheep.
In this lovely reading from John’s gospel, Jesus seems to improvise on the theme of the shepherd. There’s a powerful picture here of the sheep who respond to the shepherd’s voice – and distrust the voice of the stranger. Jesus challenges the Pharisees, the religious leaders who were leading the people in the wrong direction – he suggests that they are like thieves, sheep stealers. Given that they thought they were the ones God had chosen, the leaders of the people, this was quite a blow. But Jesus’s words are also an invitation – to those who heard him, to those who read these words, to each one of us – an invitation to listen to his voice, and to follow him.
We need to learn to recognise the voices of those we can trust – not least in the current crisis. Somehow we need to hold a balance, recognising that every one of our leaders is human, vulnerable, bound to make mistakes. None of us are perfect. But we also need to trust the advice we are given, obey those who in authority – and pray for those who carry great responsibilities. This can be a hard balance to strike.
For us as Christians, it must start by listening to Jesus, getting to know his voice, reading the Bible and asking God to show us clearly what He is saying. It may sound glib at times, but there can be no better and no more relevant question than, What would Jesus do?
Once again, in this Easter season, we hear the reassurance that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, knows our names – and calls us by those names even as he calls us to follow him. “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” – it’s a great picture. So, listen, and hear him call your name.
Thieves, say Jesus, come to steal and kill and destroy. They are in this life for themselves, you could say, for what they can get out of it. But the one who lies down like the gate for the sheep, he cares for others – so much so, that he rescues them from danger and brings them home. The good shepherd, says Jesus in the next verse after our reading, “lays down his life for the sheep”.
We are very aware at the moment of those who are risking their lives for us as we face the challenges of the pandemic. As we follow the example of the good shepherd, we may be called upon to make sacrifices, to give up our own comforts so that others might enjoy a better quality of life; we have all, indeed, been asked to make sacrifices, to limit our contact with others, in order to save the lives of others. Hard as it is to hear of the rising death toll from covid-19, we know it would have been much worse if we had not listened to the advice we had been given and sacrificed some of our freedom.
Jesus gave up his power as the Son of God, limited himself by coming and living as one of us, and accepted the ultimate sacrifice seen in his death on the cross. This is what we have remembered again at Easter, even as we have lived through these difficult days. But in our reading he also says that he has come to bring life – which he demonstrated in the resurrection that we now celebrate. And not just life – that isn’t saying enough about the gift of God – but life in all its fullness.
Jesus did not come to confine us, to tie us down with rules, to restrict us or to condemn us. Jesus came to set us free! Just as he burst from the tomb, on the first Easter Day, so his life bursts out in us in creativity, care, freedom, love, joy and peace even in the midst of anxiety. Jesus doesn’t just want us to be alive – he wants us to be fully alive!
As we accept our current limitations, but dream of the days after lockdown, perhaps we can start to dream of how fully alive Jesus wants his church to be in the future. Perhaps we can open ourselves up again, as we approach Pentecost, to the work of the Holy Spirit. This fullness of life is a gift. Will we accept it?