4th Sunday of Easter
(Sunday 22nd April 2018)
The Shepherd knows His Sheep – (John 10:11-18)
Today’s Gospel from St. John is a great scripture passage about the Good Shepherd. We are in the Easter season so there is this beautiful context of understanding the Good Shepherd in the light of the Risen Lord as we read these readings today. Let us focus a bit more on the ‘sheep’ today.
Growing up at home on the farm, I was around sheep all of the time. There were many on our farm. I remember one horrible afternoon when I destroyed our barn because I was trying to get the sheep to go outside. As I tried ushering them out the huge double doors that were the main entrance to the barn, I thought that this huge gaping hole would be ideal for the sheep to run through. However, one particular sheep saw a tiny crack in a board on the side where some sunlight was shining through. And for whatever reason, he decides to try to run through that tiny hole in the wall instead of running through the big wide open doors. Unfortunately, the rest of the herd of sheep also decide to follow him. So in a matter of moments I literally watched the whole side wall of the barn get demolished. It was crazy. But here is the out-take for me – sheep are really stupid and I now know this from personal experience. So when I read in the scriptures that Jesus is comparing us to sheep, that was at first somewhat insulting to me! Am I really that dumb? But I think there is a beautiful understanding of realising that it is in that kind of stupidity that we are helpless. So instead of being insulted by the comparison, I find myself realising that I am a bit stupid. For example, all throughout my life I have made choices just like that herd of sheep in our barn when I have run one direction when the Lord is trying to bring me to another. It is almost as if I am trying to hurt myself and several of the other sheep as they are crashing through the wall where splinters and jagged edges of the boards are cutting them and a number of the sheep on the outside are bleeding, and have literally hurt themselves by the way that they tried to go. They got to the same place, but it definitely was not the easiest way and it was not the way that I was desiring for them to go.
When we read these verses today in the Gospel, what does Jesus say? “I know my own and my own know me”. We can go back even earlier into chapter 10 and there is a line in verse 3 that says “My sheep know my voice”. So what Jesus is saying is that they recognise His voice and they follow Him. The whole context of the Good Shepherd is that the Shepherd knows His sheep and the sheep know their shepherd. How does that happen? It happens by spending a lot of time together. There is another great line, again in John chapter 10 verse 3 where Jesus actually says that He knows His sheep by name. There is this great reality of having intimacy and relationship where you actually know the other by name. This is how Jesus desires to know us. But that actually requires us to spend time with Him. He is already desiring to spend time with us, He has already made Himself available to us, He is already with us at every moment. But there is a way that we need to stir up a capacity to be with Him, to let ourselves be known. It is one thing to spend time but it is a whole other thing to be able to let the guard down and to let Jesus know us. He already knows us better than we know ourselves but there is a reality where He invites us into this relationship, a relationship of disclosure. Are we going to let ourselves be known by the Shepherd? Are we going to trust the Shepherd? Are we going to follow His lead and let Him take us where He desires us to go?