The Best of the Worst

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

John 10:11-21; Isaiah 43:1-7

March 15, 2015 • Portage First UMC

In our backyard, growing up in the big town of Sedalia, Indiana, were several paths. Our yard was not large, but our dog was. We had a collie, beautiful dog named Princess, and several times a day, she would make the trip from the back patio to the back fence to be able, I guess, to look over at the neighbors’ homes and see what was going on. Princess wore a path from the patio to the fence because she took the exact same route every day, several times a day. And, of course, with two boys in the house, we put that path to good use ourselves, making much of it the line from home plate to first base in our makeshift baseball/kickball field. We wore out paths around our diamond, too, though not as deeply as Princess did. The yard took many years to recover from the dog and the boys and our paths.

In many places where we go, we find well-worn paths, routes that lead us to the familiar. We even do it metaphorically when we choose the same place to sit in church every week. How many of you do that, you sit in the same general place week after week and you’re a bit disconcerted when someone takes your place? It’s always fun for me, when we have combined services, to watch people try to figure out where to sit when someone else is in their spot! In my last appointment, we had a dear elderly couple who, every Sunday, would come into church and argue over which pew was theirs. They couldn’t worship until they were in their well-worn seats.

You see, we like the familiar, the known. When I go to Starbucks in the morning, I have my seat, my place where I hang out and I don’t like it when someone else is sitting there. When we go to restaurants, I always chuckle at Cathy because she will look at the menu, from start to finish, and then order the same thing she always orders. She has one familiar dish at most every place we eat. We even all develop certain places we enjoy eating, or being, or events we love attending, movies we love watching. We have favorite shows we’ll watch over and over again because they’re familiar. You may be able to repeat every single line in the movie, and yet there’s a comfort in the familiarity. Familiarity breeds security. Well-worn paths give us a sense that all is well, that we’re protected and safe in a world that often does not feel all that safe. And that’s partly why the church year exists, why we go through seasons like Advent and Christmas and Lent and Easter each and every year. Those seasons are well-worn paths in our life that are familiar, comfortable and comforting. No matter how many times we’ve heard the stories, there is still something powerful in reliving, rehearing and re-walking this path. For me, that’s especially true of Lent; it is a well-worn path that takes me in my mind and heart to other well-worn paths outside of and around Jerusalem. Lent brings an odd sense of security to my heart and life.

I think it’s in that same sense that we also love this third “I Am” statement of Jesus. As you probably remember by now, we are taking this Lenten season and walking through these curious statements Jesus made in the Gospel of John, statements describing himself. We began by looking at Jesus’ claim to be “The God We Can Know,” and in the last couple of weeks, we’ve talked about his claim to be the bread of life and the light of the world. But this week’s “I Am” statement is one we’ve maybe heard the most. Maybe you remember seeing it in a stained-glass window at a childhood church, or you remember language about Jesus being a shepherd from one of the first funerals you attended. In the midst of continuing controversy with the religious leaders, Jesus makes a statement that uses what was, for the Jews, a well-worn path: “I am the good shepherd” (10:11). This statement is also tied to another “I Am” statement, “I am the gate” (10:7), and though our small groups and study book will consider these two statements together, we’re going to look at them separately, coming back to the “gate” statement on Maundy Thursday. Today, I want us to focus on the image of Jesus as shepherd, as we ask the same questions we’ve asked these last few weeks. (You can probably say them with me by now!) What did the crowd hear when Jesus said this? What did Jesus mean? And what does it mean for us?

So, John says, this takes place in the midst of the ongoing dispute or argument with a group called the Pharisees. You may remember that the Pharisees were only one group within the larger faith of Judaism, but in the first century they were a growing and powerful group whose focus was on the law, following the law to the letter. I’ve said it before—Jesus never argues with their theology. In terms of what they believe about God, the Pharisees and Jesus probably have more in common than they have to argue about. What gets Jesus upset with them is the ways they fail to live out what they believe. In fact, Jesus told the people, in Matthew’s Gospel, to do what the Pharisees told them to do, but to not do what the Pharisees do. “They do not practice what they preach,” he says (Matthew 23:1-3). This teaching, then, he directs to the Pharisees, calling them “thieves and robbers” who are trying to steal God’s sheep. And then he says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (10:11).

That word, “shepherd,” is a loaded one. When we think of shepherds, we usually picture quiet, pastoral scenes—sheep grazing quietly while a shepherd with a wooden crook stands nearby. And there are images like that in the Old Testament. Moses is described as a shepherd, tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro during his forty years of exile in the wilderness (Exodus 3:1), and David, the greatest king Israel ever knew, was a shepherd when he was a boy (1 Samuel 16:11). In fact, he was called in from tending the sheep so that the prophet Samuel could tell him he’d been chosen to be king. And David, in turn, called God a shepherd. His famous psalm, Psalm 23, continues to be favorite of so many people and has been read at nearly every funeral I’ve ever done or been to: “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing” (Psalm 23:1). Jeremiah talks about God gathering his people as a flock (23:3) and Ezekiel talks about God tending his people as sheep. Listen to these comforting words: “As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered” (34:12). There’s all this powerful and positive imagery from the Old Testament around shepherds (cf. Tenney, “The Gospel of John,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 9, pg. 109).

But by the first century, shepherds were not well-thought-of. They were on, if not the lowest, then one of the lowest rungs of society. Some would say they were “the worst” of society. The rabbis had declared that they were not able to testify in court; their witness was unreliable (Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 48). Even more than that, their occupation, working with animals all the time, kept them continually unclean and prohibited them from participating in worship. It would be like us stopping each person on the way in to worship here, asking what they do for a living, and sending away people who had particular professions. Because of their job, a job that was, by the way, prevalent in Judea, they weren’t allowed to worship (Keener, Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, pg. 194). And in general, despite all of those pastoral and beautiful images from the Scriptures, people didn’t like shepherds much. Some of that may have been the fact that shepherds were poor, generally didn’t own land of their own, and so they grazed their sheep on everyone else’s land. They were squatters, of a sort. I suppose they took their sheep one place and when they were run off of that land, they just took them somewhere else. In many people’s minds, shepherds were the worst of society. And Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.” Did they even know what to make of a “good” shepherd? Many of them might think of David, but he had lived a long time ago. The wouldn’t label as “good” the shepherds they knew. Could there even be such a thing as a “best of the worst”? Jesus says there is, and he’s it.

So what did he mean by that statement? Well, to get at that, we need to see how he pictures it. He is contrasting himself here with a hireling, and since he’s talking to the Pharisees, we can pretty much assume he’s equating the Pharisees with the hireling. Here’s what he says: there are two kinds of folks who tend sheep. Hired hands are just that. They look at shepherding as a job, a paycheck. And then a predator, a wolf comes along and attacks the flock. What does the hireling do? He heads for the hills. They’re just stupid sheep, after all; no use risking your life for a paycheck. So says the hireling—because he’s not a true shepherd. He’s not a good shepherd. He doesn’t care for the sheep. But Jesus says a true shepherd is one for whom shepherding is not a job; it’s a life. A true shepherd was born to the job and began tending sheep almost as soon as he could walk. The sheep are his friends and companions, and he doesn’t even think twice of defending the flock when the wolves attack. In fact, as Jesus says, “the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (10:11; cf. Barclay, The Gospel of John, Volume 2, pg. 61). The difference, really, is not so much about action but attitude. The hireling may do the job but he won’t endanger his life for the sheep. The shepherd, the good shepherd, will do absolutely anything to care for the sheep (cf. Tenner 109). Jesus, then, is one who will do absolutely anything for those under his care, for his family, including taking a fate that was meant for them. After all, he says, that is the very definition of love: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). Jesus will do that; the Pharisees (the hirelings) will not.

Jesus also speaks of a welcome that comes by him being the good shepherd. We are welcomed into his flock. As I mentioned, the term “shepherd” was used for both God and of God’s servants. In other words, Jesus is, in some sense, telling us he is fully divine and fully human (Rawle, “The Good and Not So Simple Shepherd,” http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/5857/the-good-and-not-so-simple-shepherd). He is God made flesh, something John has been reminding us all along. And then Jesus says, in this passage, “The Father knows me and I know the Father” (10:15). Later on in this chapter, he will go on to tell the religious leaders, “I and the Father are one” (10:30). Only that kind of shepherd could truly welcome all into his flock. Jesus says, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also…there shall be one flock and one shepherd” (10:16). A lot of people argue about who the “other sheep” are, and most of the arguments today seem to ignore the context in which Jesus is speaking. Again, who is he talking to? Jews, the chosen people, the Pharisees in particular who believed they had an “in” with God just because of their ethnic background. But Jesus has a much larger mission in mind, one that includes you and me, the Gentiles. He’s already reached out to several Gentiles in the book of John—most notably the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. The “other sheep” Jesus has in mind are you and me, and he intends to welcome even those of us who are not part of the first flock. He will be our shepherd as well. All that’s required of us is that we listen to his voice and follow him, trusting him and doing as he commands (cf. Tenney 109). 

And that leads us directly to the third thing Jesus is saying when he calls himself the “Good Shepherd.” He knows us by name. Good shepherds not only knew how many sheep they had, how large their flock was, but they knew each sheep by name. When Jesus says, “I know my sheep and my sheep know me” (10:14), it’s not just about recognizing the other person or the animal. The word “know” there has the sense of trust, intimacy (Tenney 109). You’re not just a number to God. A baby born today is not human number seven billion and some. The good shepherd knows the name of all of his sheep; he knows them that well. In the Old Testament, there’s this beautiful picture in the book of Isaiah, where God is speaking to his people in the midst of a difficult time, and he wants to reassure them, to give them hope. He says this: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine” (43:1). To the Good Shepherd, you are not, “Hey, You!” You are [names]. He calls you by name.

And all of that is what makes him good, in contrast to the hireling. The word “good” there might be better translated as “beautiful” or “lovely.” There are other words in the Greek language that can be translated as “good.” The word here specifically refers to attractiveness, kindness, graciousness. We’re not talking about physical attractiveness; rather, the word has the sense of someone whom you want to be around, someone that in some sense draws you to himself, fills in a part you didn’t know was missing. In other words, when this shepherd calls, people want to come. They hear their name being called and they want to respond. The Good Shepherd calls us by name, and we want to respond…and that makes me wonder what it is that’s getting in the way today that causes people to not hear him call and not draw near to him. What is it that blocks the world’s hearing of his call today? Perhaps it’s us (cf. Barclay 63; Wright, John for Everyone, Part One, pg. 154).

So if we’re to live out the message of the good shepherd in a way that draws others to him, how do we do that? What does Jesus’ claim to be the “Good Shepherd” mean for us today? If the shepherd first of all provides protection or salvation for the sheep, then does Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, do that for us? Well, yes, absolutely. That was what he came to do, to give his life to save the world from sin. John famously put it this way earlier in his Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). I learned that, and maybe you did too, when I was very young. And that’s a vital verse, but so is the next one, and a whole lot fewer people know it. John goes on to say, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17). If you watch the behavior of many Christians today, you’d think that verse wasn’t in the Bible. More people know what Christians are against than what we’re for. In fact, Christian researcher Thom Rainer says that’s one of the top five reasons why the church is more ineffective today in reaching people than perhaps we’ve ever been. We forget that Jesus is a good shepherd who has come to save his people, not condemn them. We’re more likely to condemn. That person isn’t acting in the right way. Oh, did you hear about so-and-so? I saw their car parked outside a bar; obviously they’re inside getting drunk. And on it goes. We too easily condemn while the Good Shepherd comes to save, to rescue, to protect his sheep from evil. There is no one for whom Christ did not die. There is no one whom he wouldn’t seek out. The Good Shepherd comes to save, and we can respond to that shepherd by offering salvation and grace and hope to people rather than condemnation. Do you know whose job it is to judge? It’s God’s, not ours. Our calling is to invite people into the flock, to introduce them to the good shepherd who can save.

And that leads into the second aspect of Jesus as the good shepherd, that he welcomes people. So should we. So must we. You see, we don’t get to decide who is welcome, who belongs in the body of Christ and who doesn’t. The Spirit calls people, the Spirit enables people to respond, and the Good Shepherd welcomes them. But sometimes we get in the way. One of the values we have at this church is radical hospitality; in fact, for many years, I’ve said that if we don’t get that right, if we don’t warmly and adequately welcome people with the love of the Good Shepherd, then everything else we do is useless. When people walk through these doors, they ought to know that this is a place they will be welcomed and wanted.

Philip Yancey once told a story of a friend of his who worked with the down-and-out in Chicago. One day, this friend had a prostitute come to him, seeking food for her two-year-old daughter. She was crying, and confessed that she had even been renting out her daughter to men interested in unspeakable acts. She needed the money, she told him, to support her own drug habit. And that was probably the nicest part of her story; the man didn’t know what to say to this woman, so he just listened. At one point, he asked her if she had ever considered going to a church for help. He said, “I will never forget the look of pure astonishment that crossed her face. ‘Church!’ she cried. ‘Why would I ever go there? They’d just make me feel worse than I already do!’” Yancey commented, “Somehow we have created a community of respectability in the church…The down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer feel welcome” (Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, chapter 8). We’ve decided that we are the shepherds who can decide who’s welcome and who isn’t. We’ve created a church culture that says you have to get it all together before you come to Jesus, when exactly the opposite is true. Jesus the Good Shepherd welcomes us, welcomes all, even welcomes a thief on a cross beside him. How can we do any less than he does?

So perhaps for us that means doing some radical things to welcome others. Things like making a concerted effort to talk to people we do not know when we’re at church. Sitting by people who seem to be new or are alone in the sanctuary or in the fellowship hall after worship. I once had a man here lament that he didn’t even know the person sitting across the aisle from him; I didn’t realize the aisle was a barrier you couldn’t cross! Radical welcoming, radical hospitality might include those of us who are able parking in the back or, as the snow is melting, over at the new lot at Crossroads so that the closest spots are open in the front. Even recently, I had someone tell me they left because they couldn’t find a spot in the front lot. That’s not a welcoming shepherding spirit. Jesus the Good Shepherd welcomes all. In fact, in Matthew 25, he says the difference between those who inherit eternal life and those who don’t is not found in what they believe in their heads. The difference is seen in the way we live. When we invite the stranger in, we are living in a way that is consistent with the Good Shepherd, the one who welcomed the worst of the lot.

And he welcomes us and all because he knows our name. This is a truth we have to hold onto. In the midst of so many voices that tell us we don’t matter, we’re not loved, we’re insignificant, the Good Shepherd calls us by name. He loves us—you and me—as if we were the only one to love. Max Lucado put it this way: “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning. Whenever you want to talk, He'll listen. He can live anywhere in the universe, and He chose your heart” (http://www.eutychus.com/Webservant/if_god_had_a_refrigerator.htm). It’s the kind of love we have for our children, only more—eternally more. I remember when our kids were born, and that feeling of love that just overwhelms you. You didn’t even know this person before that moment. I mean, you had hopes and dreams and ideas and thoughts, but you hadn’t met them yet. And then suddenly there’s this new person, whom you already love beyond any logical explanation. And you start taking pictures and talking about them all the time and they hold a piece of your heart for the rest of your life. That’s the sort of relationship God wants with you. Jesus called his disciples “children,” not in any sort of condescending way, but to indicate the deep, deep love he had for them. He encouraged them to call God the Father, “Abba,” which basically means “Daddy.” And I love the picture at the beginning of the book of Job, where Satan and other angels are gathering in a sort of heavenly council, and God says to Satan, “Look at my son, Job. I’m so proud of him” (cf. Job 1:8). I think God does that with every one of us, and he whispers to us as only a Good Shepherd can, “I’m so proud of you. You’re mine. I know your name. I love you.” I believe that truth alone could change lives and hearts if we really, fully grabbed onto it and lived as if it were true.

But instead we spend so much of our time trying to prove ourselves to God, trying to do more and be more and study more and whatever more so that God will, we think, somehow approve of us, love us more. Let me put it in context: what could the sheep do that would make the true shepherd care for them more? Is there anything a sheep could do that would impress the shepherd and make him love the sheep more? Could the sheep, perhaps, eat a bigger tuft of grass? Could they drink better water, grow whiter fleece, stand a little taller? Or does the Good Shepherd care for the sheep just because they are? Does he know their name and love them because they belong to him? And doesn’t God, then, care for us in the same way? Is there anything we can do to make God love us more? Of course not. The things we do, the service we give, is not to make God love us more, but to demonstrate our love and our gratitude for all that God has done for us. Those things—feeding the hungry, caring for the stranger, helping the poor—those things are all about showing the world that God loves them, too. When we really believe and know that God loves us, calls us by name, we are then free to change the world.

It is a world that’s looking for security, for well-worn paths, the Good Shepherd comes to provide that, to lead us in familiar places and call us to green pastures where life can truly happen. David spoke more than he knew when he wrote those famous words in the twenty-third psalm, because not only was he describing the Father, he was also describing the Son who would come as the Good Shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,

I will fear no evil, for you are with me;

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me

In the presence of mine enemies.

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and love will follow me

All the days of my life,

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23:1-6).

Jesus is the Good Shepherd. His sheep know his voice and they follow him. And he knows them by name. Let’s pray.