Easter 4 2009 

Every forth Sunday of Easter we have Good Shepherd Sunday. Everybody loves the23rd psalm but that is not where Jesus is pulling his reference. Instead Jesus is using as his Old Testament text for his sermon Ezekiel 34, in which the kings of Israel are criticized for being false shepherds. A key feature is the urban rather than rural setting of what Jesus is speaking about. He is talking about the sheep gate in the city of Jerusalem, the gate through which the sacrificial lambs entered the temple complex.

This Good Shepherd lesson is the continuation and end to the story in John 9 about the man born blind.

"Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?" Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains. 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". (John 9:40-10:2)

There is no change in the setting or audience, the Good Shepherd is another bomb dropped on the Pharisees world view. Jesus shows the Pharisees who think that they can see, that God is ending the sacrificial system that brought order to their society.

The gatekeeper in verse 3 counts the sheep and pays the shepherd for the sheep that will feed the fires of sacrifice. But the good shepherd does not leave the sheep at the gate. Jesus, the good shepherd walks right through the gate ahead of the sheep right into the temple courtyard to be slaughtered. Jesus lays down his life as the lamb of God, as God sacrifices his son to a sinful human religious system.

The religious leaders of Jesus' day were a total waste, they were blind and their sin of inaccurate judgment, the judgment that took Jesus to the cross was shown to be false by the resurrection. The sheep gate was a one way trip. The lesson tells us that the good shepherd is a two way gate, which allows the sheep to move freely between shelter and pasture and back again.

God gives this gift of freedom to his people. Suddenly all the differences between sheep, sacrificial victims and the sheep disappear. The good shepherd, himself a victim, and then leads the sheep out of the sheepfold. The people and the leaders of Jerusalem judged Jesus as guilty and put him on a cross. God judged our judging on the cross by raising Jesus and he told us to stop!

No lesson in the New Testament scares me more than this, in terms of my being a Pastor, the very word pastor comes from this text as Jesus presents himself as the good shepherd. Is the church the good shepherd or are we the hirelings and thieves? I am more concerned every year that when the world looks at us they do not see sheep who are following a Good Shepherd. People see our church not as a place where they can seek shelter and sustenance but rather as a place of power and greed. Pastors are viewed as vain ambitious people who want bigger paychecks, larger congregations and better buildings.

We are really ever more playing from behind. Today's lesson reminds us that all we have is Jesus, but happily that is all we need. A proper focus on the Lord will save us and make the church faithful to its calling to be Christ to the world.

As Jesus shepherds us he asks us to take up his cross and follow him. This means being shepherds to each other, reflecting the shepherding of Jesus to each other in all that we do.

The good news of freedom in Jesus Christ, the freedom of being able to go in and out and in again through our Good Shepherd, draws us into a new and different set of relationships with each other. The difference is that we no longer relate as rivals but as children in the same family with Jesus' Father as our Father too. This will flow naturally as a response to the new life into which we are drawn by Jesus.

Together with the good shepherd clearly supporting us, we can be the friends of sinners, we can dine with tax collectors and prostitutes, we can be kind to these outcasts and critical of our bishops, governors and all those who know all about binding and nothing about loosing. Making others look bad so that we may look comparatively good has to stop. Only when it stops will we stop being hirelings and thieves ourselves and move into Good Shepherd mode. Thinking about the world in terms of "we and they" is just more of the idolatrous monster that crucified our Lord.

This morning the gate that swings both ways is here before us as we come to the Lord's Supper. Jesus goes out into us. As we hear the voice of the good shepherd calling us by name, we are led out to be little shepherds to our world. We enter by the door that is our Lord. In baptism we entered into Jesus' death and we became part of the fold. That is why we can now hear his voice. Those who have died in baptism can recognize the voice of God, who calls us into being and love us. The other voices are no longer followed because we know the voice of Jesus and follow only him.

We can go in and we can go out and as we do, we become shepherds ourselves. Jesus who went before us went before us not to be apart from us, but to be himself in each one of us. Now each one of us called by our names can recognize Jesus and as we follow we can be shepherds to those who recognized the Lord in us.