Read John 10:1-10 This is the gospel reading for Good Shepherd Sunday, Easter 4.
“You’re meant to get it, to see it, to understand it.” What I’m touching on here is the statement from the reading that mentions people didn’t get what Jesus was saying when He was using an illustration from shepherding. This can be especially true elsewhere in John’s gospel. John, a simple fisherman, uses a simple vocabulary but in the gospel account that the Holy Spirit inspired him to write, John writes and records the things that Jesus said that are some of the most profound, some deep things, for example, about the interrelationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost that the other writers do not touch on. Or in John’s gospel you have the seven “I Am” statements, “the Light of the world,” “the Living Water,” or “the Good Shepherd” which, although we don’t hear it in our gospel reading for today, this week being Good Shepherd Sunday, yet the words of our text today that precede the “I am the Good Shepherd,” have plenty to say also about sheep, shepherds, sheep pens that help us understand some deeper points of comfort from this gospel.
At one point Jesus’ disciples come up to him and asked, “why are you talking in these stories (and here you could add illustrations)?” To which Jesus responded, “Well, the spiritual stuff about the kingdom has been given to you, but not to them, so I speak in parables, “because even though they see, they do not see; and even though they hear, they do not hear or understand.” Now there’s a couple of thoughts that may pop through your mind when you hear that. The first is, what if I don’t get it when I read it? Does that bring into question whether I’m meant to understand it or am I out of the believer-loop? The other is, “I thought God wants all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth,” why would God be unfair and speak in a way that keeps something from people?
Part of the answer to that we can see from what happens in John 9. In John 9 Jesus healed a man who had been born blind. You’ve probably seen the difference between people who lost their sight after they’d been able to see versus those who never saw, so that’s how they knew he’d been born blind. So Jesus heals him by putting mud on the man’s eyes and told him to go and wash them, which he did and came back seeing. Because Jesus had done this on the Sabbath, however, his enemies found fault with that.
Now, think that through for a second. Man heals man born blind and the reaction is not to be thrilled for a guy who could now see. It’s not, praise God for giving this kind of power to somebody, rather, it’s “you’re not following our rules, so you must be evil. You must be doing this by the devil’s power.” Their reaction came from them being opposed to Jesus already. Of course, God doesn’t want people to be punished in hell. Through the prophet Ezekiel God cries out to the people of that prophet’s time, ‘turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?!” So that’s why some things people didn’t understand, not so much because it was too deep for them but because they didn’t want to understand. In fact there’s one parable during Holy Week in which Jesus’ enemies got it quite clearly that He’d spoken it against them and they huddled together quickly afterwards, “Hey, we’ve really got to get rid of this guy!”
When Jesus here speaks of thieves and robbers, he’s referring to them, his enemies. So we shouldn’t balk at some of the things in the Bible and listen to the devilish whisperings of our reason that God is somehow being unfair. We’ll come back to that thought in a moment.
Instead, as Jesus speaks of the shepherd here and the sheep hearing and recognizing His voice, it’s what Jesus emphasized after the ‘why do you speak in parables?’ question: “But blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear. 17 Amen I tell you: Many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you are seeing, but they did not see it. They longed to hear what you are hearing, but they did not hear it,” (Mt 13:16-17). In other words, you are meant to get it and from further explanation in this section, you do.
When Jesus says here about the sheep pen and the door and the door-keeper, what he’s trying to emphasize is there’s one, right way for there to be a relationship between Jesus, the good shepherd and the sheep, and that door is the gospel and that doorkeeper is the Holy Spirit and it is only the Holy Spirit who gets our hearts to see the amazing undeserved love of God giving us something for nothing–the amazing undeserved love of God who the only way that He is/was unfair was unfair to Himself in the person of His Son. If you want to call God unfair, He’ll take it, but then know what you’re talking about when you do so. The only way He was ever unfair was to punish His Son for your sins so that He could prove to you that He’s a God of love. It’s like the healing of the blind man thing. Man heals man born blind is a good thing especially for the man born blind. God sends His Son to be punished unfairly is a good thing, not so much to Him but to you who should have been punished. You are blessed because the Holy Spirit has gotten you to get that, to see that and you should be on your knees thanking Him every morning you wake up that your Father loved you that much to be unfair to His Son for you.
But another comforting aspect about our God’s love is Jesus’ further explanation, His “I Am” statement here, that He’s the door. You can say the door is the gospel but the gospel is about Jesus. And it is here where we get an insight into His attitude toward this whole unfairness thing.
When it came to sheep pens, there were two kinds, the kind in Jesus’ first description and the kind in Jesus’ second description. The sheep pen in the first description was a city sheep pen. Multiple flocks altogether in a pen belonging to different shepherds. A real door or gate and probably a door warden who got paid by the various shepherds to watch that door. The sheep pen in the second description was a country sheep pen. Often just an area, maybe fully fenced, or maybe a partial fence set up next to a cliff to make an enclosure, but these country sheep pens often lacked an actual gate or door or doorkeeper. There was an entrance in the fenced area wide enough for an adult sheep to get through but no actual door. In those sheep pens, the shepherd would set himself up during the night in that space that was the entrance to that sheep pen. If a wolf, or thief, or robber would want to steal off one of the sheep, he obviously couldn’t lift an adult sheep up and over the fence, no, that enemy would have to take on the shepherd. To get to the sheep you’d have to go through him. That’s the attitude Jesus had when it came to serving in this unfair circumstance. He was willing. He wanted us to be kept safely in His flock and He, quite literally, was willing to lay down His life to make that so. It is that willingness, that commitment, that love that feeds our faith, that makes us willing to follow Him wherever He leads, because we know He’s there to protect us. That love feeds our soul and a person can never get enough hearing that message of “I love you.” That message proves to us that any earthly virus or any economic roller coaster or any spiritual enemy won’t snatch you out of the hand of the Good Shepherd, not on His watch.