The Good Shepherd

John 10:1-10

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber. But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice. But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.” Although Jesus used this figure of speech, they did not realize what he was trying to tell them.

So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came [before me] are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.

Discussion Questions:

1. Who are the people in your life who have acted as a shepherd by pointing you toward the Gatekeeper, Jesus? Are there people in your life who may need shepherding from you?
2. Where are you seeing invitations to “lay your life down” for others at this season of your life?
3. What is your understanding of the “abundance of life” Jesus is speaking of and how are you growing in His understanding of life more abundantly?
4. How do you understand Jesus’ words “Whoever enters through me will be saved”? What does it look like for you to consciously “enter through Jesus” during your lifetime?

Biblical Context

John 10:1-10
Dr Margaret Nutting Ralph PHD

John is writing his Gospel at the end of the century. In John’s community those Jews who believe in Jesus’ divinity are being expelled from the synagogue by those Jews who do not believe. This is a very serious problem for those expelled because they are no longer exempt from participating in emperor worship. If a Christian Jew, expelled the synagogue, refused to participate in emperor worship, that person was subject to persecution, even death.

It is important to keep this social setting in mind as we read today’s Gospel because otherwise we might misunderstand John’s animosity toward “the Jews.” Readers throughout the centuries who have failed to remember this context have sometimes used the Gospel to support anti-Semitism. When John pictures “the Jews” as Jesus’ adversaries and when John pictures Jesus saying harsh things about them, the phrase the Jews does not refer to all Jews, even all Jews of John’s time. Jesus, the apostles, the author of John’s Gospel, and much of John’s Christian audience were all Jews. We will discuss further exactly which Jews John is talking about after we look at the passage.

In the context of John’s Gospel, the story we read today comes immediately after the story of Jesus healing the man born blind. In that story John has reminded us about his contemporary Jews being expelled from the synagogue by saying: “[the blind man’s] parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone acknowledged him as the Messiah, he would be expelled from the synagogue” (John 9:22-23). Jews were not being expelled from the synagogue because of their belief in Jesus during Jesus’ public ministry, but when John was writing his Gospel. By making this statement John is conflating the times of the two stories. John is teaching that what Jesus says to the Jewish leaders in the story, the risen Christ is saying to the Jewish leaders of John’s own time.

After Jesus healed the man born blind, neither Jesus nor the man born blind were accepted by the Jewish leaders. These leaders called the man in to explain how he could now see, they refused to believe what he said, and then they threw him out (John 9). Jesus corrected the leaders for their treatment of this man. As we read today’s Gospel we are reading part of what Jesus says when he corrects them.

In today’s passage Jesus presents himself as both the good shepherd and the gate for the sheep. John is teaching his audience that Jesus is God and is the only way to the Father. Jesus says, “I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved” This statement, like other “I AM” statements in John’s Gospel, is an allusion to the story of Moses and the burning bush when God reveals God’s name as “I AM.” Jesus is claiming his own union with the Father and stating that he is the only source of salvation. He is also accusing those Jewish leaders who do not recognize him as being “thieves and robbers.” Rather than caring for the flock, they are harming the flock.

The words that John has placed on Jesus’ lips are directed at the Jewish leaders of his own day who are “throwing out” their fellow Jews who believe in Jesus’ divinity. Instead of caring for the flock they are endangering the lives of the flock. Instead of recognizing Jesus’ role in their salvation they are rejecting him. Jesus did not come to “throw out” but to care for the sheep. Jesus came “so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

Love Without Reserve

Reflection
By Father Michael K. Marsh

“The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” I wonder what you hear in that. What does it mean? Who is it about?

The obvious answers are that it’s about Jesus and his death on the cross. I don’t disagree. I think those answers are correct but I also think they are too small, too literal, too easy.

What if you and I are to be good shepherds too? What if laying down life is really about love and how we are to love? Isn’t that what we heard in today’s epistle (1 John 3:16-24)? “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”

I wonder where that kind of love is in your life today, what it asks of you, what it offers you. Is it in your marriage, parenting, friendships? At work? Is it the lens through which you see the world and the daily struggles of people? Is it at the heart of your conversations, actions, decisions? If it is, what does it look like? How are you experiencing it? And if it’s not, why not? What would your need to change to love that way?

A friend of mine often asks, “Why does love have such a hard time in the world today?” Maybe that’s not so much a question to be answered as one to be turned back on ourselves and pondered. Maybe it’s about laying down life. Maybe it’s about the distinction between a hired hand kind of love and a good shepherd kind of love. The hired hand is in it for himself or herself but the good shepherd is in it for the other.

Today’s readings John are asking us to rethink what it means to love and how to love. They are moving love way beyond whispered sweet nothings, chocolates and flowers, attraction and compatibility, feelings and desires.

For the good shepherd love is a choice, not a feeling. Love is an action, not a state of being. Love is about the truth we do, not what we say. Love is God’s way of dying and taking up life again.

Authentic love cannot exist apart from the lover laying down her or his life for the beloved. And that’s about more than the lover’s physical death. It’s about the way we give away a part of ourselves knowing we can never get it back again, hoping it will be forever buried in the life and heart of another, and trusting that somehow something new will be brought to life.

Think about the times you were at your best as a spouse, a parent, a friend, a human being. Isn’t that what was going on? You were giving away yourself and that’s all you wanted to do – to just pour yourself into the life of the other for the benefit and well-being of the other.

So, let me ask you a few questions. Who is that has loved you so deeply and fully that you knew he or she would die for you? And who is that you have loved so deeply and fully that you would die for her or him? And what was that love like? What did it offer you and what did it ask of you? What did you have to lay down and what did you take up?

Whatever your answers might be you are describing a good shepherd kind of love. I don’t know who those people are for you or what that love looked like, but I’m betting it changed both of your lives. I’m betting your lives and world were enlarged. I’m betting you both felt the Divine touch your lives. I’m betting you felt connected to something bigger than and beyond yourself. I’m betting it was one of those times when you said, “This is how I want life to always be for me and for others.” And I’m betting it was some of the most difficult work you’ve ever done.

That’s how I want to live and love. Don’t you? That’s what I want in my marriage, my parenting, my friendships, my priesthood with you. I want to risk it all for love.

That’s also how I want my life to be for the migrants coming to our southern border and for the fifty-three lives lost on the Indonesian submarine. Because if I can’t in some way lay down my life for them, I won’t lay it down for you, my friends, my kids, or my wife. “How,” today’s epistle asks, “does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?”

This good shepherd kind of love is all or nothing. It’s everyone or it’s no one. It’s a cosmic kind of love that is always bigger than we know and broader than we are often willing to risk.

It is the offertory of our lives. We bring all that we are and all that we have to this moment, this relationship, this person, this need, this injustice, this tragedy, this world, and hold nothing in reserve. Nothing in reserve.

Selections from Breaking Open the Lectionary: Lectionary Readings in Their Biblical Context for RCIA, Faith Sharing Groups, and Lectors—Cycle A, by Margaret Nutting Ralph, Copyright © 2007 by Margaret Nutting Ralph. Paulist Press, Inc., New York/Mahwah, NJ. Reprinted by permission of Paulist Press, Inc. www.paulistpress.com.

Reflection from Interrupting the Silence by Fr. Michael K. Marsh www.interruptingthesilence.com

Used by permission