Jesus is the good shepherd. Hopefully we all know that. Those of us who went to Sunday school learnt this in the first lesson often accompanied by a picture of a rather anaemic looking Jesus with flowing locks, cuddling a snowy white lamb who had clearly never done a day’s manual labour in their life! Is that right?...
imaging Christ the shepherd
The very first pictures of Christ in Western art showed Jesus not on the cross but as the good shepherd, with the lamb draped around his neck. It is an image that has been deeply important throughout Christian history, and if you do a Google search of images of the Good Shepherd you will find that there are more than four million of them available on the Internet! It is of course not an image exclusive to Christ, but an image used provocatively by Jesus in his conversation with his opponents the Pharisees. In many places in the Hebrew Scriptures God’s loving care for his people is compared to the love a shepherd for his sheep. This is not surprising as there were many sheep and shepherds in ancient Israel. So quite apart from the familiar Psalm 23, it was used by the prophet Isaiah to depict the loving relationship of God with humankind. Ezekiel on the other hand used the image to denounce the false shepherds, the corrupt leaders of his day, and this informs Jesus own use of the image.
He does not stand on a beautiful hill, with a sheep at his feet saying that he is the good shepherd as we see him in many a Sunday school picture. Rather he stands in the midst of his enemies and effectively tells them that firstly they are a group of thieves and bandits, and secondly, he is the good shepherd ie he is God - small wonder that they accused him of blasphemy and really did not like him very much!
re-imagining the 'good shepherd' among us
But what use is this picture of God in Jesus as a ‘good shepherd’ to us in twenty-first century Australia? The feel-good nostalgia evoked by the twenty-third psalm – verdant pastures, cool water and even security in death and hard places – can only take us so far. I didn’t see too many sheep wandering through Balmain this morning. I have known some shepherds – perhaps you have too. Who knows a shepherd? – what are they like? The shepherds I knew were all hardy women in the north-east of England. They rounded up their sheep on a tractor with dogs descended from the wolves! None of this knowing them all by name and leading them business. They were pretty adept at rescuing the lambs born in a snowstorm, but totally unsentimental about killing the ones that weren’t going to make it. Most of us who live in the city don’t think about shepherds at all except in church! So, what aspects of this metaphor can give us insight into the nature of God and how God relates to us?
undesirables and outcasts
Firstly, we need to rethink our idea of shepherd, more along the lines of ‘undesirable”. Shepherds in Jesus day were not highly regarded. for one thing they spent a lot of time alone, out in the wilds, doing unclean things that made them unable to participate in the due rites of synagogue and temple. So, while there is not as strong a contradiction in terms between ‘good’ and ‘shepherd’ as Jesus created between ‘good’ and ‘Samaritan’, something of the same idea is being expressed.
As I’ve said, in the Hebrew scriptures, there were other associations, and especially with the so-called ‘shepherd king’ David, but in many contexts, shepherds were despised and viewed as outcasts. So, God in Jesus can be seen as a ‘good’ outcast – an outcast for other outcasts indeed. This brings us to the early church context in which the writer of John’s gospel chose this metaphor. For the first Christians were themselves outcasts. Following the destruction of the temple in AD70, Christians were expelled from Jewish synagogues and no longer able to participate in the ceremonies and customs that shaped every aspect of daily life. To be a Jewish Christian at that time was to be set adrift from family, friends, work relationships. It was to be cut off from all that was familiar, nurturing and known. It was to have your beliefs ridiculed and very personhood excluded. Some of us who have left different religious groupings for whatever reason may recognise this dynamic and the pain it involves.
leading out
However, to understand the metaphor more deeply, we must look back to the text that precedes the passage we heard today, where Jesus describes the shepherd as calling their sheep by name and ‘leading them out’. Leading them out of where? we may ask. Leading them out of the sheepfold. Because the sheepfold was a safe, walled structure, used to protect the sheep in bad weather or at night. It was not where the sheep were supposed to be most of the time – that way starvation lies. Life – abundant life as Jesus promises – involves leaving the sheepfold and venturing out to find pasture in the wilderness.
Now sometimes as churches, I think we get this entirely wrong. We have spent centuries building sheepfolds – some of them really, really beautiful; soaring cathedrals, grand parish churches and even humbler places like this lovely chapel here at Balmain. We have concentrated on trying to bring people IN to what we believed, rightly or wrongly, to be a sanctuary. Sometimes we have defended not just the physical walls of those sanctuaries, but also and especially the invisible walls of doctrine, morals and liturgy with our lives, as the blood of various kinds of martyr to particular flavours of Christianity bear witness. But life, abundance, good pasture is to be found not INSIDE, but OUT. Jesus, the good outcast, seeks to cast us OUT, to wander and graze and be nourished – and indeed encounter other ‘sheep’.
For indeed this is the other aspect of John’s picture of God as a good, outcast shepherd that may assist us today. For they have Jesus declare ‘I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also.’ In John’s time this was probably a reference to the Gentile Christians, being integrated with those of Judean background in the early decades. However, for us, it speaks of a God who is not very interested in our humanly constructed religious groupings. It speaks of a God more interested in our unity as human beings, and our capacity to thrive better, together. So I want to pose three questions that I’ll unpack a little and then perhaps invite you to consider for a few moments with a neighbour or two.
questions for reflection
Do we recognise ourself as an outcast among outcasts, as Jesus was? Or better, as one cast out – or more gently put, invited out - of the imprisoning sheepfolds of human invention, into the extraordinary possibilities of life and spirituality in our cosmos?
For in this metaphor we are sheep, looking for something to eat. For far too long, Christian churches have tried to constrain their adherents to a narrow band of approved ‘fodder’. Interestingly as an example of this, when in the seventeenth century the English Puritan Francis Rous authored the famous setting of the twenty-third psalm familiar to many of us as a hymn sung to the tune Crimond ( and there’s a whole other story about who wrote that tune, and how a female composer’s work was appropriated by a guy!). When Francis Rous produced that translation, as part of a new psalter, his work was subject to the scrutiny of the so called Long Parliament, under Oliver Cromwell. They deliberated the exactitude of the translation for – SIX YEARS! And altered most of it, leaving something like 10% of Rous’s original. this illustrates what happens when religious people lose the plot, and become obsessed with purity of language and doctrine, at the expense of spiritual nourishment. Far too much attention has been given by those in power in religious spaces to answering the question ‘what will Jones swallow’? (I am a Jones so I can say that!) and far too little attention to hearing Jones say, ‘I am Jones and I want to know what there is to eat’.
So, secondly, are we ready to leave the security of the sheepfold and discover what else there may be to eat?
Sometimes things happen in our lives, such as sickness or disaster, struggles with our identity or relationships, that force us to ask this question. Other times we can simply push ourselves to open our eyes and ears to the breadth of possibilities. This is likely to mean opening ourselves to different ways of thinking about God, different understandings of how to play and pray with Scripture, and perhaps running the risk of ‘getting it wrong’. Because of course we will ‘get it wrong’ – but the glorious reality that God does not mind too much about that – so long as our intention is to seek a better understanding, and to love with our being – God is just going to smile – and hopefully come get us out of a snowdrift if we get stuck.
And finally, are we open to what others from different ‘folds’ may be wanting to contribute and how we might encounter them?
This may take us into conversations with other faiths, with other kinds of Christians, with those of no faith, and with many who are different from us. It requires, honesty, integrity, and a willingness to encounter rejection and even hostility. Beyond the safe stone walls of our own fold, we are vulnerable. But in that vulnerability, we are enabled to encounter the richness of humanity and their understandings of divinity. We soon find there is so much that we have in common than the things that can be weaponised to divide us.
So, I invite you now in small groups to ponder any one of these questions and listen for the prompting of our ‘good shepherd’ who calls us out to a greater adventure in faith. In whose name, Amen.
by Penny Jones, for Balmain Uniting Church, Sunday 21 April 2024
The very first pictures of Christ in Western art showed Jesus not on the cross but as the good shepherd, with the lamb draped around his neck. It is an image that has been deeply important throughout Christian history, and if you do a Google search of images of the Good Shepherd you will find that there are more than four million of them available on the Internet! It is of course not an image exclusive to Christ, but an image used provocatively by Jesus in his conversation with his opponents the Pharisees. In many places in the Hebrew Scriptures God’s loving care for his people is compared to the love a shepherd for his sheep. This is not surprising as there were many sheep and shepherds in ancient Israel. So quite apart from the familiar Psalm 23, it was used by the prophet Isaiah to depict the loving relationship of God with humankind. Ezekiel on the other hand used the image to denounce the false shepherds, the corrupt leaders of his day, and this informs Jesus own use of the image.
He does not stand on a beautiful hill, with a sheep at his feet saying that he is the good shepherd as we see him in many a Sunday school picture. Rather he stands in the midst of his enemies and effectively tells them that firstly they are a group of thieves and bandits, and secondly, he is the good shepherd ie he is God - small wonder that they accused him of blasphemy and really did not like him very much!
re-imagining the 'good shepherd' among us
But what use is this picture of God in Jesus as a ‘good shepherd’ to us in twenty-first century Australia? The feel-good nostalgia evoked by the twenty-third psalm – verdant pastures, cool water and even security in death and hard places – can only take us so far. I didn’t see too many sheep wandering through Balmain this morning. I have known some shepherds – perhaps you have too. Who knows a shepherd? – what are they like? The shepherds I knew were all hardy women in the north-east of England. They rounded up their sheep on a tractor with dogs descended from the wolves! None of this knowing them all by name and leading them business. They were pretty adept at rescuing the lambs born in a snowstorm, but totally unsentimental about killing the ones that weren’t going to make it. Most of us who live in the city don’t think about shepherds at all except in church! So, what aspects of this metaphor can give us insight into the nature of God and how God relates to us?
undesirables and outcasts
Firstly, we need to rethink our idea of shepherd, more along the lines of ‘undesirable”. Shepherds in Jesus day were not highly regarded. for one thing they spent a lot of time alone, out in the wilds, doing unclean things that made them unable to participate in the due rites of synagogue and temple. So, while there is not as strong a contradiction in terms between ‘good’ and ‘shepherd’ as Jesus created between ‘good’ and ‘Samaritan’, something of the same idea is being expressed.
As I’ve said, in the Hebrew scriptures, there were other associations, and especially with the so-called ‘shepherd king’ David, but in many contexts, shepherds were despised and viewed as outcasts. So, God in Jesus can be seen as a ‘good’ outcast – an outcast for other outcasts indeed. This brings us to the early church context in which the writer of John’s gospel chose this metaphor. For the first Christians were themselves outcasts. Following the destruction of the temple in AD70, Christians were expelled from Jewish synagogues and no longer able to participate in the ceremonies and customs that shaped every aspect of daily life. To be a Jewish Christian at that time was to be set adrift from family, friends, work relationships. It was to be cut off from all that was familiar, nurturing and known. It was to have your beliefs ridiculed and very personhood excluded. Some of us who have left different religious groupings for whatever reason may recognise this dynamic and the pain it involves.
leading out
However, to understand the metaphor more deeply, we must look back to the text that precedes the passage we heard today, where Jesus describes the shepherd as calling their sheep by name and ‘leading them out’. Leading them out of where? we may ask. Leading them out of the sheepfold. Because the sheepfold was a safe, walled structure, used to protect the sheep in bad weather or at night. It was not where the sheep were supposed to be most of the time – that way starvation lies. Life – abundant life as Jesus promises – involves leaving the sheepfold and venturing out to find pasture in the wilderness.
Now sometimes as churches, I think we get this entirely wrong. We have spent centuries building sheepfolds – some of them really, really beautiful; soaring cathedrals, grand parish churches and even humbler places like this lovely chapel here at Balmain. We have concentrated on trying to bring people IN to what we believed, rightly or wrongly, to be a sanctuary. Sometimes we have defended not just the physical walls of those sanctuaries, but also and especially the invisible walls of doctrine, morals and liturgy with our lives, as the blood of various kinds of martyr to particular flavours of Christianity bear witness. But life, abundance, good pasture is to be found not INSIDE, but OUT. Jesus, the good outcast, seeks to cast us OUT, to wander and graze and be nourished – and indeed encounter other ‘sheep’.
For indeed this is the other aspect of John’s picture of God as a good, outcast shepherd that may assist us today. For they have Jesus declare ‘I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also.’ In John’s time this was probably a reference to the Gentile Christians, being integrated with those of Judean background in the early decades. However, for us, it speaks of a God who is not very interested in our humanly constructed religious groupings. It speaks of a God more interested in our unity as human beings, and our capacity to thrive better, together. So I want to pose three questions that I’ll unpack a little and then perhaps invite you to consider for a few moments with a neighbour or two.
questions for reflection
Do we recognise ourself as an outcast among outcasts, as Jesus was? Or better, as one cast out – or more gently put, invited out - of the imprisoning sheepfolds of human invention, into the extraordinary possibilities of life and spirituality in our cosmos?
For in this metaphor we are sheep, looking for something to eat. For far too long, Christian churches have tried to constrain their adherents to a narrow band of approved ‘fodder’. Interestingly as an example of this, when in the seventeenth century the English Puritan Francis Rous authored the famous setting of the twenty-third psalm familiar to many of us as a hymn sung to the tune Crimond ( and there’s a whole other story about who wrote that tune, and how a female composer’s work was appropriated by a guy!). When Francis Rous produced that translation, as part of a new psalter, his work was subject to the scrutiny of the so called Long Parliament, under Oliver Cromwell. They deliberated the exactitude of the translation for – SIX YEARS! And altered most of it, leaving something like 10% of Rous’s original. this illustrates what happens when religious people lose the plot, and become obsessed with purity of language and doctrine, at the expense of spiritual nourishment. Far too much attention has been given by those in power in religious spaces to answering the question ‘what will Jones swallow’? (I am a Jones so I can say that!) and far too little attention to hearing Jones say, ‘I am Jones and I want to know what there is to eat’.
So, secondly, are we ready to leave the security of the sheepfold and discover what else there may be to eat?
Sometimes things happen in our lives, such as sickness or disaster, struggles with our identity or relationships, that force us to ask this question. Other times we can simply push ourselves to open our eyes and ears to the breadth of possibilities. This is likely to mean opening ourselves to different ways of thinking about God, different understandings of how to play and pray with Scripture, and perhaps running the risk of ‘getting it wrong’. Because of course we will ‘get it wrong’ – but the glorious reality that God does not mind too much about that – so long as our intention is to seek a better understanding, and to love with our being – God is just going to smile – and hopefully come get us out of a snowdrift if we get stuck.
And finally, are we open to what others from different ‘folds’ may be wanting to contribute and how we might encounter them?
This may take us into conversations with other faiths, with other kinds of Christians, with those of no faith, and with many who are different from us. It requires, honesty, integrity, and a willingness to encounter rejection and even hostility. Beyond the safe stone walls of our own fold, we are vulnerable. But in that vulnerability, we are enabled to encounter the richness of humanity and their understandings of divinity. We soon find there is so much that we have in common than the things that can be weaponised to divide us.
So, I invite you now in small groups to ponder any one of these questions and listen for the prompting of our ‘good shepherd’ who calls us out to a greater adventure in faith. In whose name, Amen.
by Penny Jones, for Balmain Uniting Church, Sunday 21 April 2024
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