One Flock
A Reading from John’s Gospel:
“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold; I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.
“So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Homily:
Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
A good shepherd smells like the sheep.
He dwells among them, braves the wilderness with them, spends nights out in the open to guide, defend, and rescue them. He has a crook, with which to disentangle them from snares. And he has a rod to defend them from predators—sometimes a sling too, which in biblical times could be every bit as deadly as a bow and arrow, with unlimited ammunition to boot.
Moses was a shepherd after he was a prince. David was a shepherd before he was a king. Even God Himself is a described as a shepherd in some of our favorite psalms. It’s actually an image of monarchy, of kingship, in the Ancient Near East. Even those rulers who would never deign to shepherd a flock by night liked to imagine themselves in propaganda as the guardians and guides of their peoples.
So when Jesus calls Himself the Good Shepherd, He’s drawing on ancient biblical and Middle Eastern imagery. He’s presenting Himself as a king—but as a humble one, a servant-ruler, who lays down His life for the flock. As Joshua of old led God’s people out from the wilderness into the Promised Land, so now Jesus, the new Joshua, the new Yeshua, leads His people into salvation. His sheep hear His voice, and know Him, and follow Him.
The Word of God is its own authority; it works with a life all its own. That Word is Jesus, who here describes Himself both as the Shepherd of the flock and as the gate by which the sheep go out: out into life, out from slavery into liberation. And He knows that this will cost Him His life, that we will demand blood for our salvation. We like to think of ourselves as the sheep in this parable, but we’re the wolves as well, aren’t we? We demand the Crucifixion of the only Son of God.
Yet He lays His life down willingly, He says. He freely accepts this path in love. He submits to our injustice, our violence, our cruelty. He submits to the worst humankind has to offer: the lash, the thorns, the nails, the spear. He takes all of that within Himself, within His flesh—and there drowns it in the ocean of His love. He fills up hell to bursting with the life and blood of God. He knew what we would do to Him, and He still came down anyway.
The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. Even when we don’t deserve it. Even when we act like wolves.
Some think that this verse early in the passage—“To him the gatekeeper opens; the sheep hear his voice, and He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out”—that this refers to what we’ve come to call the Harrowing of Hell. That is, that Jesus here is prophesying, or that John here is alluding, to Jesus’ descent into Hades, to the land of the dead; there to raise to life all the generations that lived before Him, back to the beginning of humanity, to Adam and Eve in the Garden.
And some would say, “Well, we can’t take Adam and Eve as literal individuals. They represent the whole of humankind.” In which case, the story works even better. In raising up Adam and Eve from the dead, Jesus Christ raises us all. Indeed, this is the preëminent image of Easter, of the Resurrection, in the Eastern Church: not Christ bursting forth from the tomb, which is never directly described in the Gospels, but Christ descending into hell to rescue Adam and Eve.
Everyone else at the gate of death was a thief, a wolf, or a robber. Hercules couldn’t breach it in his strength. Orpheus failed to conquer it with his art. But to Christ and Christ alone do the gates of Hades shatter. He Himself is the Way out of hell and the open gate of life. He Himself is the life, the eternal life of God, poured out for the world from His Cross. Nothing can keep the sheep from the Shepherd. Not even death. Not even hell.
And then there’s that fascinating line: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice.” What does He mean by that? Is it simply a reference to other Christian communities, or perhaps to Gentiles and Jews alike who shall one day be Christ-followers, walkers of His Way? Or is it even bigger than that?
You know, in John’s Gospel Jesus famously says, “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No-one comes to the Father except through me.” And we often take this to mean that no-one who is not explicitly Christian in life can possibly come to God. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, St Cyrpian wrote: “Outside the Church can no-one be saved.” But there is a way to turn that around, to treat it as a tautology. Outside the Church can no-one be saved? Well, then, anyone who is saved must actually be part of the Church, part of God’s people, the Body of Christ.
The fact that no-one can come to God except through Christ—Christ, who is the Logos of God, the Word of God, the Son of God—does not negate the understanding that Jesus Christ is the Savior of all of humankind. “Everyone who loves,” writes John, the same John who’s been writing down all of this, “is born of God and knows God.” That’s one heck of a blanket statement.
If Jesus saves Adam and Eve, then He saves everyone who’s ever lived. “For as in Adam all die,” writes St Paul, “so in Christ will all be made alive.” And there is no shortage of biblical passages proclaiming that at the End of the Age every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Every one.
It may be they know Him even now, yet by another name. And this is not some new or heretical teaching. There have always been “anonymous Christians.” The Prophets proclaim that Cyrus the Great served God without knowing who He was. St Paul preached that the pagan altar of Athens, dedicated “to an unknown God,” was for the very same God whom he knew in Jesus Christ the Risen Lord The third-century Syriac Revelation of the Magi goes so far as to proclaim that “the Word of God, present everywhere in forms, is present in the flesh at Bethlehem.”
Note that: the Word of God, present everywhere in forms. Of course Christ is everywhere, for Jesus Christ is God.
The Word of God called all of Creation into being at the beginning. The Word of God called all of the dead up to life at the Resurrection. And someday this same Word of God will be proclaimed from one end of the cosmos to the other, and every knee shall bow to Him and every tongue confess. Because there’s one more thing that Jesus clearly teaches about being a good shepherd, and that is simply this: the true Good Shepherd never abandons even one of His lost and little lambs.
“I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd … I have received this command from my Father.”
In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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