The Good Shepherd - A reflection at Open Table #lgbtqia+ #comeasyouare
During lockdown our Open Table community has continued to gather on Zoom for worship and to keep in touch. On Sunday 3rd May, Warren Hartley, LGBTQIA+ Ministry Facilitator at St Bride’s, shared this reflection on Psalm 23 and John 10:1-10 .
Tonight’s Gospel reading is a challenging one. Over the centuries it has been literally interpreted as Christian exclusivism and even as anti-Semitic, that you must believe in Jesus or off you go to hell, do not pass go, do not collect £200. That was certainly the interpretation of the passage I was brought up with.
Yet, this passage still intrigues me especially this image of the ‘Good Shepherd’. In some Christian traditions, this Sunday is called ‘Shepherd Sunday’. My grandmother made me this little statue (pictured right), which is surprising considering her very Protestant beliefs, though Psalm 23 was her favourite. I’ve always treasured it and without quite knowing why I find the image of Jesus as the good shepherd comforting. Preparing this little reflection though has given me some insight.
John’s Gospel is different from other three - it contains some of these great ‘I am statements’ missing from the other Gospels. It was also written after the destruction of the temple and sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70AD. So what would the audience hearing these stories understand of what Jesus was trying to say? The author of the Gospel even says ‘Jesus used this figure of speech… but they did not understand what he was saying to them’.
I don’t know about you but I find the metaphor of being a sheep rather unflattering. We think of sheep as smelly and stupid, yet to a 1st century peasant living below the poverty line, they were singularly precious. A source of milk and cheese, wool for your clothing and occasionally meat. Sheep are also prone to being hunted by carnivores, and your less scrupulous neighbours or overlords, and thus were highly protected and prized. What might this story mean to us in the 21st Century?
Firstly, may I suggest we notice that the sheep pen isn’t the destination of the sheep. The sheep are already in the pen, and Jesus talks about being both the gate and the shepherd who will lead the sheep out. This echoes multiple, almost identical Hebrew Scripture metaphors, e.g. Micah 2: ‘I will set them together like sheep in a fold, like a flock in its pasture. It will resound with people. With a leader to break open the path and go before them, they will break out and pass through the door, going out by it.’ Similarly, the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah and Zechariah all speak of ‘various would-be shepherds who scattered the sheep and did not feed them’.
Secondly Jesus uses strong words to describe those trying to break in. He calls them ‘thieves and robbers’. The Greek word for thief is kleptes, from which we get our word ‘kleptomaniac’.) The word for ‘robber’ is lestes which refers to what, today, we would call ‘terrorists’ (‘Revolutionary guerrillas’ says Wes Howard-Brook; ‘guerrilla warriors’ says Ray Brown.). The combination of ‘thieves and robbers’ suggests economic exploitation coupled with violence.
Thirdly, Jesus both identifies with and hangs out with the sheep. He isn’t aloof from, locked away in a palace. He talks about being the gate, sitting down in the mud between the stones of the sheepfold to become the gate and knowing the sheep and he knows them. Jesus is among his people, with his people, one of his people. A marked difference between how we think of leaders, even today.
This significantly changes how we might approach this story. This isn’t so much about coming in through the narrow gate and being saved from the fires of hell, but instead, about liberation from the enclosures and structures which hold us in, and into which ‘thieves and robbers’ break in. Jesus is yet again challenging the economic and political structures of his day and as ever not pulling his punches. He is calling the temple officials he’s speaking to ‘thieves’ and their Roman overlords ‘robbers’. No wonder he pissed them off so much!
This story gives us yet another metaphor or parable about what the Kingdom of God is like. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus preached the coming of the Kingdom of God, and in this story he sets himself against the powers and principalities of his day so that, instead of wanting to exploit , he wants to see the people liberated and living abundantly, as Psalm 23 describes. Instead of penning us in and taking from us, the Kingdom of God is about abundance, or as St Paul says, ‘the kingdom of God is justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit’ (Romans 14:17).