When you found out that today was “Good
Shepherd Sunday,” or when you heard the opening lines of today’s Gospel: “I am the Good Shepherd”… how did it make you feel? Calm? Warm? Peaceful? Loved? That’s how it has made me feel in the past
too. When I sat down to begin preparing this homily, the first thing I did was google
“Good Shepherd.” Yeah, I know, real
pious research right? Anyway, there were
over 4 million images of the Good Shepherd that popped up! No, I didn’t count
them, or even look at most of them—it’s just what the Google counter thingy
said, and so, being a man of faith, I believed.
J Painting after painting of this soft image of
Jesus, in a long robe, immaculate beard, standing in the middle of a beautiful
field or atop a rolling hill, shepherd’s crook in one hand, cute little lamb in
the other, surrounded by adoring sheep, with just the hint of a loving smile on
His face. You all know what I’m talking about. There are literally thousands –
if not millions – of pictures like that; what we might call the “Religious
Education” image of Jesus. And this
story of Jesus the Good Shepherd is perhaps the most influential Gospel passage
of them all in creating that image. But, whether we’re reading the Bible, or a post on someone’s facebook page,
there is something we must remember:
context matters. I submit to you
that, if we come away from this Gospel passage with that “warm and fuzzy”
feeling, we, like the Pharisees to whom Jesus was speaking, have missed the
boat. The Gospel we heard today is not
about a meek and mild Jesus. And it
should not conjure up feelings of peacefulness in our minds. The truth is, the setting for this Gospel
reading is far from sentimental. It is
set in the context of confrontation with authority; it isn’t on a quiet
hillside, all peaceful and calm, with Jesus standing in the middle of an
adoring crowd of disciples and children. No. Jesus is speaking to the
Pharisees, the religious leaders who were always trying to trick him and bring
about His downfall. In this passage Jesus speaks of wolves coming to snatch the
sheep and devour them. He speaks of cowardly hired hands running away to save
themselves. He contrasts those shepherds with the Good
Shepherd, who knows and loves his sheep, and who is willing to
die a violent death in order to save them. Jesus is exposing the Pharisees for who they
really are—which is anything but good shepherds. And so, the Jesus in today’s Gospel is less
like the “peace be with you Jesus” that we’ve heard about the past two Sundays
and more like the “driving the money-changers out of the Temple Jesus.” Those of you who are my age remember when
Chevy Chase did the news on Saturday Night Live, and he’d start off by
saying: “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re
not.” Here, Jesus is saying to the
Pharisees: I’m the Good Shepherd, and
you’re not.” Allow me to explain...
There are a couple of aspects of the
message Jesus is trying to get across that are especially confrontational and
scandalous to the Pharisees. First, he
is using an image from Scripture to undermine their authority as religious
leaders of the people of Israel. The Pharisees saw themselves as the spiritual
guides, and protectors, of the Israelites. But here is Jesus calling himself THE
Good Shepherd who will protect God’s flock.
Well, it wouldn’t have taken a particularly clever Pharisee to recognize
that Jesus was drawing an allusion here to Ezekiel, Chapter 34, where God spoke
through the prophet and warned: Son of
man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them:
“This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only
take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat
the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals,
but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or
healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays
or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally.”
Jesus is making a very clear and direct point
here: the Pharisees are the shepherds who have neglected and abused the flock
of Israel. On the other hand, He is the Good
Shepherd, who will love the flock--unconditionally, and sacrificially.
This was a slap in the face of the Pharisees; a direct and pointed criticism of
those to whom Jesus was speaking.
Chapter 9 of John’s Gospel ended with Jesus calling out the Pharisees
for their opinions concerning the man born blind—and of Jesus’ healing of
him. That chapter ends with Jesus
calling them sinners, and then in the verses that precede ours today in Chapter
10 he goes right into the metaphor of the sheep and the shepherd, calling the
Pharisees thieves and robbers. Even
after this, John says that they still didn’t
realize what Jesus was trying to say to them.
Next, and perhaps even more scandalous in the
eyes of the Pharisees, Jesus makes a claim that they would have seen as
blasphemous. Throughout the Old Testament, God often referred to Himself as the
Shepherd of Israel, and to the people
of Israel as His sheep. And now here
comes Jesus, saying to the Pharisees that He
is the Good Shepherd of Israel—in other words: God. It is this claim that ultimately leads to His
scourging and crucifixion at the insistence of these same Pharisees. So, despite the paintings and the “Religious
Ed.” images we have grown up with, this is not the “warm and fuzzy” Jesus in
today’s Gospel. Rather, it is a harsh
and confrontational Jesus; a Jesus with a radical claim, and an image ultimately
of death and destruction. Jesus the Good
Shepherd in today’s Gospel is not a
calming image at all, but rather, one meant
to be disturbing and irritating to His audience--the self-proclaimed
protectors of the people of Israel. It
reminds me of when He challenged the authority of the crowd that was going to
stone the adulterous woman, when he said:
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” It just makes you want to proudly nod your
head and say: “You go Jesus!”
Now, lest you go away all depressed because
I burst your Religious Ed. image of Jesus, let’s stop a second. My mom used to tell me to always look on the
bright side. In the midst of this image
of an antagonistic Jesus, is an image of the beautiful relationship that exists
between Jesus the Good Shepherd and his sheep. A shepherd who loves his flock enough to willingly
lay down his life for them, and a flock which has spent so much time with the
shepherd, and walked so closely with him, that each sheep immediately knows his
voice and trusts him enough to obey him implicitly and do exactly what he says.
And the Shepherd? Well, He can be that good, that
loving, that sacrificial,
because He knows what it is to be a sheep. The relationship that Jesus the Good
Shepherd has with His flock is a mirror of the relationship that Jesus has with
His own Father. Just as we are the sheep
to the Good Shepherd Jesus, He is a sheep to his Heavenly Father. With God the Father as THE Good Shepherd,
Jesus truly is “the Lamb of God.”
And so our Good Shepherd instructs us – his
sheep – to do no more than what He himself did while he lived here on earth: listen
to His Father’s voice and do what He asks of us; stay close to Him, and enjoy
His unconditional love and mercy. And,
last but certainly not least, spread His good news to the whole world.
Today is World Day of Prayer for
Vocations. We all know the crisis we are
facing with regard to the lack of both ordained priests and men studying to
become priests. For at least today, let’s
join with our brothers and sisters all over the world and pray for vocations—I
mean really pray. After all, we owe these men our very lives—our
eternal lives; for without them,
there is no Eucharist, no Reconciliation, no representative of Jesus here with
us on this earth. And we need many more priests
to keep the Church alive and prospering until Jesus comes again. So please, everyone, join me now in praying
for vocations. Our Father…Hail
Mary…Glory be…
