I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep… I am the Good Shepherd; and know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knowth me and I know the Father.
To grasp what Jesus is saying here, we have to consciously and intentionally pay attention to the context of this narrative. If we are not attentive to the context, if don’t do a close reading, we easily fall into the fallacy of disneyfying our Lord’s claim to be the Good Shepherd. To “disneyfy,” is to transform something in the real world, like a lion in a jungle, into entertainment — carefully controlled and safe, bourgeois entertainment for the whole family. This is what I am saying: disneyfication has totally burrow into and gouged out the really real from American life. Disneyfication has become the effortless and painless interpretation of life where all you have to do is to wish upon a star and all your dreams will come true. And that denial of the really real is a result of our forgetfulness. I’ve told this story before but it illustrates the point: I will always remember an 8:00 a.m. undergraduate class in literature (which by the way ought to be against the law), when we came upon a poem that referred to man being swallowed up by a great fish. The professor stopped, looked up at the class with a smile. “What do you think the poet is referencing,” he asked? A sure and confident voice rose up somewhere from that body of half awake freshmen and in all seriousness declared, “That would be Pinocchio.” I am not making that up and I am not making fun of that person. Maybe she was having one on us. Who knows? And I have to admit that as a matter of fact, Pinocchio does get swallowed up by a whale. But you well know what the professor was expecting. Listen to me, this is my point — we live in a world that is adrift in forgetfulness and inattentiveness, and that is a fearful and pathetic state of being.
My point is that we must consciously, intentionally, bring ourselves to attentiveness when we are trying to understand Jesus. Now we want to understand what it means for Jesus to be the Good Shepherd. Be careful. Blue-birds did not suddenly light upon Jesus’ shoulder. Flowers did not burst into blossom, fruit did not spring from fig trees as he walked by. In fact, one time, he cursed a fig tree for not bearing fruit and it withered from the root up. That comes much closer to what is going on when Jesus declares, “I am the Good Shepherd.” And you will soon see why, but first of all we must pay attention to the context and that means we have to go back to Chapter 9.
Here’s what happens in Chapter 9: Jesus was walking in the Temple with some of his disciples when they came upon a man who was born blind. “Who sinned and brought this upon him,” they asked. “Nobody did, not his parents and not the man,” Jesus said. “But now I am going to show you the glory of God.” Jesus bent down and spat on the ground, made mud and then rubbed it on the man’s eyes. “Now, wash your face,” he said to the blind man. The blind man washed his face and suddenly he could see for the first time in his life. He went home and told everyone that the man called Jesus made mud and put it on his eyes and told him to wash his face and, when he did, he could see. His neighbors took him back to the Temple to see the Pharisees. (Some neighbors!) The Pharisees put him and his parents through three hostile interrogations. They asked the same questions over and over again. They made it clear that they would excommunicate people who followed Jesus.
“Who is he,” the Pharisees said?
“All I know is that people call him ‘Jesus,’” the healed man said.
“Where is he from,” asked the Pharisees?
“I don’t know where he is from,” said the healed man.
His parents were afraid of the Pharisees, but he wasn’t. When push came to shove they were picking on the wrong man — he could see for the first time in his life and they are treating him like a criminal! The Temple rulers are going to have to do better than that to intimidate this man. Then he gets cocky and he began mocking the Pharisees:
“Why are you asking so many questions? Why weren’t you listening the first time? Why don’t you know where he is from, you’re big shots who run this place? Oh, I get it — you want to be his disciples too, don’t you!” That was it. They threw him out of the Temple.
When Jesus heard he had been excommunicated, he went looking for him and when he found him he revealed his true identity to the man and the man worshiped him. Jesus said, loud enough for all to hear:
This is why I have come: to give sight to those who are blind, and to reveal the blindness of those who think they see.
Some Pharisees were standing close by and said to Jesus: “Surely you don’t think we are blind?” Jesus said, “You’d be better off if you were blind!”
And then, with this mixed crowd of disciples and Pharisees hanging around the Temple, Jesus began to teach using a parable about bandits, strangers, sheep, and shepherds. But none of them understood because they didn’t want to understand. Finally Jesus interpreted his parable for them:
I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep… I am the Good Shepherd; and know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knowth me and I know the Father.
Jesus’ revelation that he is the Good Shepherd stands between the healing of the blind man and the Feast of Dedication. Thanks to good biblical scholarship, we know the lectionary for the Sabbaths leading up to Feast of Dedication, in Jesus’ day, focused on the theme of sheep and shepherds, and that would have brought to the Jewish mind the greatest prophetical reading about shepherds and sheep in Ezekiel 34. Sometime this week you ought to read over Ezekiel 34. This is the way it begins:
And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying: Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God…Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! Ye eat fat, and ye clothe yourself with wool…but you feed not the flock! Have you healed the sick, have you bound up the broken, have you brought back those driven away, have yet sought the lost? (No!) Behold, I am against the shepherd.
(Therefore) As a shepherd seeketh out his flock…I will seek out my sheep…I will feed my flock…I will seek the lost…I will bring again that which was driven away…they shall lie down in a good fold and in a fat pasture… I shall be their shepherd.
These folk, hanging around Jesus, are waiting for the Feast of Dedication, and they have just witnessed the Pharisees cast out of the Temple, a man, blind from birth, whom Jesus healed. If the Pharisees were the Teachers of Israel, they would have been his loving shepherds. I want to suggest that Jesus has taken this opportunity to, first of all, do the deeds of the true Shepherd of Israel. He healed one of his sheep and then he seized the opportunity to declare to everyone around that he is the Good Shepherd.
The word translated “good” is “kalos” which means beautiful in the sense of the ideal, the model of perfection. It is the same word used to describe the “good wine” at the Wedding of Cana. The wine that came last. Jesus himself is the Good Shepherd, the Beautiful Shepherd who has at last come to his sheep. God has saved the best for last. The last is superior to all that has come before. And now by his own explanation we know why he is the Good Shepherd:
I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep…
Jesus is the opposite of those who claim to be the “shepherds of Israel.” The Pharisees, standing in the crowd, are the hirelings who runs away from the sheep. They are phonies. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who will give his life for the sheep. The hirelings sacrifice nothing. When Jesus declares that he is the Good Shepherd, he fulfills the prophecy of Ezekiel 34 right in front of them. No more shepherds are coming, and no better shepherd is possible. Through Ezekiel, God promised that he will rescue his flock and here he is, God Almighty, doing just that.
I myself shall shepherd my sheep…
The matter of Jesus’ divine identity reaches the tipping point right after this, when Pharisees began to heckle him:
“Don’t keep us in suspense. If you are the Messiah, say so!”
Jesus responded:
I told you, but you do not believe!You are not my sheep! My sheep hear my voice. And they follow me. I give them eternal life… No one will snatch them from me. No one will snatch them from my Father. I and my Father are One
Then the Jews picked up stones to stone him but they failed because Jesus simply walked away.
I am the Good Shepherd; and know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knowth me and I know the Father.
The second mark of the Good Shepherd is the intimacy between the Good Shepherd and the sheep. This is new. This intimacy, this communion, is the deepest longing of the human heart. To be known for who and what we are and to be loved anyway. That is the way we begin worship:
Alrighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid…
When the blind man realized he was nothing to the Pharisees, and then he gained his vision a second time. His first healing was to receive his carnal sight, while his second healing was to receive his spiritual sight. He says in so many words: “You don’t treat people you love that way! These Pharisees, these shepherds of Israel, don’t love anyone. But the man they call “Jesus,” for whatever reason – he loves me. Why would he treat me like I matter to him?”
My sheep hear my voice. And they follow me…
Pharisees believed this man born blind had actually sinned in the womb and his blindness was God’s punishment. He was trash in their eyes. At the end of the account of his healing the Pharisees declare, “you were born steeped in sin and you lecture us?” But Jesus loved him. Back in John 6 Jesus said:
All that the Father has given me will come to me; him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out!
The Good Shepherd loves his sheep. They know his voice. The voice of a stranger they will not follow. This “knowing” and “being known” has to do with our real participation in God’s life. Our supernatural participation in Jesus through the grace of baptism enables us to know and to love Jesus and his Father — to know they love us and to love God as we ought.
I know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knowth me and I know the Father.
The Son of God became the Son of Man, that the Children of Man might become Children of God. This is the work of the Incarnation. The Word of the Father became one of us so that we may become the siblings of Christ. The Good Shepherd sacrificed himself for his love for his Father and his love for his Church. Jesus is not the Lion King — Jesus is the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
One last word about the Epistle. Note that Peter is determined that we understand that our participation in Jesus is not a fairy tale about getting what we want. Participation in Jesus is participation in his suffering. Now, by the grace of Christ, we may learn to imitate Christ our God and empty ourselves, pour ourselves out for others. He loves you and he loves the ones you love and he loves the ones you hate. And through his Incarnation and his death and through the sacraments that flow from the Cross, he made it possible for us to become partakers of the Divine nature, which you know is to become partakers of Jesus’ suffering. He has emptied himself for love of his Father and for you. Now you are called to empty yourself for love of him and of others.