“I am the good shepherd.” John 10
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Because Jesus uses this image of the good shepherd in
today’s Gospel, this Sunday is sometimes called “Good Shepherd Sunday”. For
at least sixteen centuries, the Church has read this Gospel lesson on this
particular day, and it is, of course, obviously appropriate for our
consideration of the implications of the Resurrection: we see Jesus as the
Divine Shepherd, Son of David, Shepherd-King of the New Israel, who leads
his flock through death to life.
It is an image with very immediate appeal to imagination
and sentiment, but it is also an immensely rich image, with profound lessons
for our own spiritual lives.
In the ninth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, there is the
story of Jesus’ healing, on the Sabbath day, of a man who had been born
blind. The remainder of chapter nine, and most of chapter ten, are occupied
with the Pharisees’ protest against this action, and Jesus’ explanation of
it. Our Gospel lesson, which comes from chapter ten, is part of that
explanation. “As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I
lay down my life for the sheep.”
What then, is the meaning of this image of the Good
Shepherd?
First of all, it is an image of the divine providence, a
symbol of the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-loving pastoral care of God, who
upholds all things by the word of his power, who rules and governs all
things, and moves them to their appointed end. He it is who enlightens our
spiritual blindness, and opens our deaf ears to hear his word. He it is who
heals the sickness of our heart. It is he who raises us from the death of
sin unto the life of righteousness. Nothing falls, even for an instant,
outside that providence: “Not a sparrow falleth without your heavenly
Father.” Nothing in all creation is outside that presence and care. “In
him we live, and move, and have our being.”
“O Lord, thou hast searched me out and known me,” cries
the Psalmist, “thou knowest my thoughts from afar – Thou art about my path
and about my bed, and art acquainted with all my ways. Whither shall I go
then from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I
climb up into heaven, thou art there: if I go down to hell, thou art there
also. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts
of the sea, even there shall my hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold
me.” (Ps. 139)
Men’s capacity for waywardness is great, and man’s
capacity for meanness, and stupidity, and sheer, downright wickedness is
horrifying; and yet, the providence of God is never for one instant
thwarted. From temporal evils, he brings immortal good; from death he
brings life. Certainly, in the world, we have tribulations manifold; but
for those who know Christ’s Resurrection, there is no longer such a thing as
hopeless tragedy. “All things work together for good to those who love
God.” The wolf, indeed, comes; but our good shepherd is no hireling, and he
does not flee. All things – however base, however miserable, however wicked
– all things work together for good to those who love God. Even our
nastiest sins, repented and forgiven, are occasions of more abundant
grace. As John Mason Neale’s hymn puts it:
The trials that beset you,
The sorrows ye endure,
The manifold temptations
That death alone can cure,
What are they but his jewels
Of right celestial worth?
What are they but the ladder
Set up to heaven on earth?
The first and fundamental lesson of Good Shepherd Sunday,
then, is simply this: We whose eyes have been opened to the light of
Christ’s Resurrection must learn to live in the sure confidence of God’s
providence – his good shepherding – which surrounds us and upholds us in
every instant, which brings good out of evil, and life out of death. That
lesson is, I think, the very basis and starting-point of Christian spiritual
life, and a lesson of the utmost relevance for every one of us. “The Lord
is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing.” That is the basic
principle. We have many substitutes for it, of course, many other grounds
of security and confidence, but they are really nothing but hirelings, and
when the wolf comes, they vanish pretty quickly.
The image of the Good Shepherd is a symbol of God’s
universal providence: but, on another level, it is also a symbol of
Christ’s governing of his Church, and therefore, we often refer to the
Church’s leaders as “pastors”, which simply means “shepherds”. On that
level, the image of sheep and shepherds is perhaps not so generally
agreeable an image nowadays, in an age of secular democracy, when it seems
that popular opinion ought to govern, and that vox populi is vox
Dei.
The Church is out of tune with the times; it is not, and
cannot become, a real democracy, so long as it claims to preach the Word of
God, which is not simply the consensus of popular opinion, and so long as it
practices sacraments and disciplines which are divinely ordained, and not
simply responses to popular demand. Try as it will to accommodate itself to
the intellectual and moral conventions of a secular age – and sometimes, it
seems to me, it tries pretty hard – it can never really be successful
without ceasing to be the Church. Perhaps it’s better to recognize from the
start that the Church is, has always been, and must always be, out of tune
with the age. It must be in the world, of course, and seek to make itself
intelligible to the world, and yet it must never be of the world, never at
home in the world. “Be not conformed to the present age,” says St. Paul,
“but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” If the Church seeks
worldly success and popularity, it seeks its own destruction.
This ambiguity of the Church – in the world, not of the
world – makes shepherding always a difficult occupation; and the
difficulties have perhaps never been more apparent than they are in our own
times. Pastors are ordained to preach the Word of God, to administer the
sacraments, and to care for souls committed to their charge. They must not
be purveyors of the conventional wisdom of this present age, nor reflectors
of current popular opinion. They are to be faithful stewards of the
mysteries of God; surely they dare not be hirelings who work for the daily
wages of popular acclaim.
One could, of course, speak at length of the problems and
perils of the Church in a secular society, and I’m sure there can be no one
here who hasn’t some sense of the tensions and curious mixture of sincerity
and folly which seem to accompany the current rather chaotic “up-dating” of
the Church. But behind all that, and through all that, we must never lose
sight of the basic message of Good Shepherd Sunday: Our blind eyes have
been opened to the light of Christ’s Resurrection; it is God’s good
providence which shepherds us, through life and death, and he will lead us
to the green pastures of eternal truth and goodness; of which we have a
foretaste in the sacred banquet he gives us here. And thus we pray, in the
words of an ancient Eucharistic hymn:
Very Bread, Good Shepherd, tend us
Jesu of Thy love befriend us
Thou refresh us, Thou defend us
Thine eternal goodness send us
In the land of life to see.
Thou who all things canst and knowest,
Who on earth such food bestowest.
Amen. +
