The Good Shepherd

On the night Jesus was born, the first visitors were shepherds, still smelling of sheep and hillside. Thirty years later, the baby they found would stand up in Jerusalem and say, I am a shepherd too. The good one.

Everyone in Jesus' world knew shepherds. On the hills around Bethlehem and Jerusalem, flocks grazed all year. At night several flocks might be kept together in a stone-walled fold, with one opening and a gatekeeper. In the morning each shepherd came and called, and his own sheep came out to him. Jesus has just healed the man born blind, and some of Israel's religious leaders have thrown the man out of the synagogue for following him. So Jesus tells a story about shepherds, and about leaders who do not care for the sheep.

Anyone who climbs into the sheepfold some other way, over the wall, Jesus says, is a thief and a robber. But the one who comes in by the door is the shepherd. The gatekeeper opens for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought them all out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow; they will run from him. His listeners do not understand. So Jesus explains.

I am the door of the sheep, he says. Anyone who comes in through me will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. But I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. Then he says it plainly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. A hired man, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and runs away, and the wolf scatters the flock. He does not really care. But the good shepherd stays.

I am the good shepherd, Jesus says again, and I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. Then he looks beyond the crowd in front of him. I have other sheep, he says, which are not of this fold. I must bring them too, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd. And no one takes my life from me, he says. I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it again.

Jesus' listeners knew the prophet Ezekiel. Centuries earlier, Ezekiel had condemned Israel's leaders as shepherds who fed themselves instead of the flock. Then God promised: I myself will search for my sheep and seek them out. And he promised to set over them one shepherd, his servant David. Bethlehem was David's town, and David had been a shepherd boy there.

The Good Shepherd. You'll find it in John chapter ten, verses one to eighteen. The baby the shepherds found in Bethlehem is the shepherd who knows every one of his sheep by name. So here is a question to carry with you. In all the noise around you, how can you learn to recognise the Good Shepherd's voice?