“I am the sheepgate. All who came before me were thieves and marauders whom the sheep did not heed. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be safe…I have come that they may have life and have it in abundance.” John 10: 1-10
While the label “Good Shepherd Sunday” is customarily attached to the Fourth Sunday of Easter, today’s gospel-reading from John is a little confusing in that John has Jesus describing himself as both the shepherd and the sheepgate. It is clear that both Jesus and John were familiar with the fact that towns and villages of their day had entry gates as a way of protecting their residents from intruders. In addition, close to the entry gates were pens in which shepherds could enclose their sheep for a short time as they guided them to and from pastureland.
Worthy of note is the context in which today’s gospel-reading occurs. It comes immediately after an account (John 9: 1-41) of how some of the Pharisees had driven away a man whom Jesus had cured of his blindness and serves as a condemnation by Jesus of the failure by religious leaders to be true shepherds of the weak and vulnerable for whose care they had a special responsibility. By curing the blind man, Jesus opened the way for him to be readmitted to the community from which he had been excluded because of his disability. Thereby, Jesus became both the shepherd and the entrance gate for a defenceless man who had been neglected by irresponsible leaders. Those same leaders were present to hear Jesus describe them as brigands and robbers. That, no doubt, gave them more reason to set about ridding themselves of him. By referring to himself as the gateway to safety for his sheep and shepherd of those sheep whom he knew by name and who responded to his voice, doubly underlined that his mission was to care for all to whom God had sent him. That meant that he could assert with complete justification: “I have come that they (my Sheep) may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10: 10)
Those who, in our own time might well resonate with Jesus’ metaphor of himself as both shepherd and gateway to safety, are parents of toddlers learning to walk. The irrepressible urge that toddlers have to be on the move and explore their surroundings means that parents have to provide wrap-around protection in order to keep them safe. Shepherds of the time of Jesus and John had to sleep across the narrow entrances of sheep pens in order to protect their sheep from wolves and rustlers. Parents of toddlers are often called to provide their very bodies as wrap-around protection for their little ones, lest they venture into harm’s way.
The conclusion of today’s gospel-reading asks us just how ready, willing and able we are to accept from Jesus the abundant life he offers us. The logical response to accepting that abundant life is to treasure it and share it selflessly with everyone with whom we live, work and recreate.
The gospel-readings of the Easter season remind us that Jesus, the Good Shepherd continues to reach out to us in multiple guises and situations in much the same way as the Risen Christ encountered his confused and lost disciples. Mary Magdalen met him in the softly spoken gardener, two grieving disciples met him in a wise stranger they met on their way to Emmaus, other disciples met him hosting them to a cooked breakfast on the Galilee seashore. These stories are the Evangelists’ ways of telling us that Jesus is present to us in the ordinary events and happenings of our daily lives, if only we are sufficiently alert to recognise him, sufficiently open to welcome him and receptive enough to open our gates to receive the abundance of life he offers us.