15 May 2011
St. John 10: 1 - 9

The Gospel of John is different from the other three gospels. It has drawn upon unique sources, and most scholars agree that it was written later than the so-called Synoptics. For example, John has some parables and allegories that are unique to his gospel. Today’s gospel lesson is an example.

What we have here in Chapter 10 is an ordinary sheepfold, wherein sheep are confined for the night and for safety. There is a gate, and a gatekeeper for the sheepfold, in which the sheep are enclosed. We find intruders climbing the walls to steal the sheep. The gatekeeper recognizes the shepherd, and so opens the gate for him. And the sheep know the shepherd’s voice as he calls them by name. And the shepherd leads his sheep safely out to pasture, and the thieves who would climb the wall are thwarted.

There are in this passage both parable and allegory. Parable is a picture or story from which a moral can be drawn. An allegory, on the other hand, describes one thing under the guise of another: the robbers in this story represent the Pharisees, the professional religious establishment of Israel at the time. The gatekeeper would not open the gate for the Pharisees because -- John wants you to know -- they have rejected Jesus and they are not the ones who can name the sheep and lead them in and out and find good pasture. The two are intertwined in this story with the good guy roles being played by the shepherd and the gatekeeper, and the bad guy roles being played by the robbers. They have to climb the walls to get at the sheep, because the gatekeeper won’t let them in.

Close examination of this passage might be confusing. Is Jesus the shepherd? Of course he is. But he is also the gatekeeper….

And later in this passage, he is the door. Many scholars have tried to rewrite this passage in order for it to proceed smoothly. They have been unsuccessful. We must simply assume that the writer took material current in the church of his time (early Second Century A.D.) to contrast the roles of Jesus and the religious establishment -- the robbers --in the intertwining of parable and allegory.

Jesus is the good shepherd, his sheep know his voice, he calls them by name. And in the verses following our lesson for today, he is the door as well as the shepherd, and the gatekeeper. When I went to the scholars whose profession it is to explain the Scriptures, I was troubled. How can Jesus be all the shepherd, the door, the gatekeeper, and the one who knows the sheep by name and whose voice is recognized by his sheep?

Well, in John, he can! He can play all those roles in this combination of parable and allegory. And John clearly identifies the robbers, the ones who have to climb the walls of the sheepfold, and whose voices the sheep do not recognize as the Pharisees, the professional religious leaders of his time. We know this because this story follows right on the Pharisees casting out a blind man at the end of Chapter 9. In John’s original work there is no break between Chapter 9 and Chapter 10. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, brings the blind man into the true fold, and then we go directly to Chapter 10 and the sheepfold.

The main point of this material is that Jesus knows his sheep, as his Father knows him, and his sheep know his voice. And he calls them by name. Verse 7: “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” The theme of the Good Shepherd who calls his sheep by name is not a way to decide who Jesus’ sheep really are --as some earnest Christians would have us believe. We are all lost sheep, we are all found by the Good Shepherd, and he knows us all by name.

Now the Good Shepherd is commonly found in the Old Testament as well, in Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Micah. John’s story is meant to describe Jesus’ activity as the Shepherd of Israel. Remember Luke’s lost sheep? The good shepherd abandons the flock of ninety-nine to look for the lost one. This is a variation on the Good Shepherd story.

How often religious people expect God to be less concerned about past sinners than they themselves are about trivial possessions! John shows that our bourgeois values -as represented by the Pharisees- are stood on their head and God’s most precious commodity is humanity. “My sheep know my voice and I call them by name, and they will go in and out and find pasture.”

Reading John, we realize that the cult of religious respectability must give way to the celebration of joy over God’s delight in reclaiming the refuse, the loss, of humanity. Who are the lost? Look about us. We are the lost. That’s why the Good Shepherd can say, “My sheep know my voice. And I call them by name.” All of Jesus’ sheep have names, and God’s first love is humanity. It is His most precious possession, represented here by the sheep. Each one of us has a name. Jesus calls us by name, even though we think we are lost, or we think someone else is lost.

You may have noticed that Know-nothingism is back in American life. What is Know-nothingism? We in this Republic have experienced it many times before: hysterical fear of those different from us; single -issue politics; jingoism; extreme nationalism; anti-immigrants; and government as the enemy.

The single issue that Know-nothingism has grasped in our time is Government debt, debt, debt. And lurking just below the surface is the old erroneous call for America to return to its allegedly Christian roots.

There are today, in the US House of Representatives, several bills pending that would reclaim America as “Christian Nation”. This effort is reminiscent of the 1830’s or 1890’s when similar false theologies motivated our political process. This is the secret of much of the polarization that characterizes much of our current politics. Once again, all we have to do is look to our second President for the demolition of the myth that America is a “Christian Nation”. You will remember that is the late eighteenth century the Barbary Coast pirates captured some American seaman, and refused to return them because they would not deal with a “Christian Nation.” Thomas Jefferson wrote that You are mistaken. America is a secular Republic, not a Christian nation, where all manner of faiths are welcomed, and even good citizens of no faith at all.

In our faith tradition, Jesus knows all our names, and we don’t get to declare that we are not Jesus’ sheep, nor that anyone else is or is not Jesus’ sheep. All are called by name, to go in and out, to go out and find good pasture. In the immortal words of Martin Luther, at the Eucharist we are all through love changed into one another.

Amen.