“My sheep hear my voice… John 10: 27-30
The gospel-reading for this Fourth Sunday of Easter is the conclusion of John’s fairly long treatment of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Depictions of Jesus, the Shepherd, which we have all seen in churches and kindergarten and lower-primary-school classrooms present a Jesus who is immaculately attired and neatly groomed, without even a hair out of place. There is nothing about his demeanour that even suggests the ruggedness of shepherd life.
Poets and musical composers across the centuries have given us presentations of country life and its associated activities as though they offered an idyllic existence. In relatively recent times, Beethoven (1770-1827), gave us his Pastoral Symphony (No. 6), which evoked some of the serenity of life close to nature. About seven decades before the time of Christ, the Roman poet Virgil wrote a collection of poems often called the Bucolics. He offered a graphic description of some of the darker side of country life in the Roman Republic when the political world was in upheaval, with landowners usurping others’ property and destroying their farms, devastating their flocks and burning their crops.
As we try to absorb John’s writing about Jesus, the Good Shepherd, it is important, I suggest, that we take into account the context in which Jesus had been going about his ministry to the people of his day. While he had been reaching out to the poor, the needy, the sick and the lame, he was unrelenting in the manner in which he challenged the authoritarian practices and values of the religious elite who regarded themselves as superior to the people for whom they were meant to care.
In today’s gospel-reading, we hear how his description of himself as the Good Shepherd and of the ministry entrusted to him by his Father had upset the religious authorities. It was that statement that pushed them to demand that he reveal his true identity. In the verses immediately following today’s gospel-reading, the elders gathered around Jesus asked: “How much longer are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ (the Messiah), tell us plainly.” (John 10: 25)
Through his engagements with the religious leaders, Jesus had been asking them to see if they could imagine that God might be asking them to set aside their rigid way of exercising their responsibilities and imagine that God might be inviting them to embrace a different way of doing things. And is that challenge not equally relevant to us and our current Church leaders? If we believe that God’s word is alive and active in our world and that Jesus is God’s Word who calls us to conversion, it follows that conversion of heart requires change and letting go of some of the “certainties” to which we have been inclined to cling. The late Pope Francis reminded us of that in his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (Rome, 24/11/2013), when he wrote:
“God’s word is unpredictable in its power. The Gospel speaks of a seed which, once sown, grows by itself, even as the farmer sleeps (Mk 4:26-29). The Church has to accept this unruly freedom of the word, which accomplishes what it wills in ways that surpass our calculations and ways of thinking.” (#22) Some years later, at a time when the American bishops were trying to respond to a clear loss of credibility of the Catholic Church in the United States, Pope Francis wrote to them, stating: “At times of great confusion and uncertainty, we need to be attentive and discerning, to free our hearts of compromises and false certainties, to hear what the Lord asks of us in the mission he has given us. Many actions can be helpful, good and necessary, and may even seem correct, but not all of them have the ‘flavour of the Gospel’. To put it colloquially, we have to be careful that ‘the cure does not become worse than the disease.’ And this requires of us wisdom, prayer, much listening and fraternal communion.” (Letter Sent by The Holy Father to the Bishops of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 01/01/2019 #6) Later in the same letter, urging the Bishops individually and communally to respond to her advice, Pope Francis quoted Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “Yes, I have many human faults and failures… But God bends down and uses us, you and me, to be God’s love and compassion in the world; God bears our sins, our troubles and our faults. God depends on us to love the world and to show how much God loves it. If we are too concerned with ourselves, we will have no time left for others.” (cited in Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate 19/03/2018)
All of this is simply to point out that when Jesus asserted: “I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” (John 10: 14-15), he was inviting all who are intent on knowing him to discover him by walking in his footsteps rather than by searching to acquire some intellectual knowledge of him. We all come to know and love others by walking beside them. Coming to know Jesus, the good shepherd will happen only through being present to him and closely associating with him.
We also need to remember that at no stage did Jesus promise us or anyone else everlasting earthly life. He came and lived and died among humanity so that we might have eternal life. We belong to him, and with him, we belong to God.
That Jesus described himself as the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep and protects them from thieves and brigands (see John 10: 9-12) revealed his concern that the “sheep” who followed him risked persecution and rejection. He sensed that they would be treated no differently from the way in which he was treated by people in leadership who saw to it that he was condemned and handed over to the Romans to be crucified. That kind of treatment was exactly what was meted out to Paul and Barnabas, as Luke attested in today’s first reading from Acts. Having told the Jews in Antioch that, by rejecting Jesus and his teaching, they were effectively rejecting God’s offer of eternal life, they were accused of blasphemy – the very same accusation that was levelled at Jesus (see John 10:33).
This reading from Acts also confirms that for a local community to accept Jesus and his teaching would not only undermine the security and comfort of its leaders but would also destabilise the prevailing social structure. It was for those reasons that the Jewish religious leaders of Antioch persuaded the wealthy members of their community to expel Paul and Barnabas. That was a blessing in disguise for it gave Paul and Barnabas opportunity to proclaim their message to open-minded gentiles.
Today’s second reading from the Apocalypse also confirms that those who accept Jesus will also know persecution; they will be “washed in the blood of the lamb”. Taken together, all three readings take us full circle and back to the prologue of John’s Gospel where we are given a synopsis of Jesus’ life and mission: “The Word was the true light that enlightens all people…He was in the world that had its being through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him. But to all who did accept him he gave power to become children of God…” (John 1: 9-12)
The world in which Jesus, the good shepherd lived out his vocation was probably closer to the world Virgil described in his Bucolics than to anything else. And being shepherds in the style of Jesus and being open to be embraced as his sheep is more complicated than we have previously imagined. Now, that’s something on which we can all reflect.