4th Sunday of Easter
By Very Reverend John Arnold, Sunday 3rd May, 2009
The Good Shepherd
A few weeks ago I was out on the North Downs near Canterbury to see the ewes and their newborn lambs like animated dots of white on the green meadows. We take that sight for granted in England; but German visitors always express amazement, for they are used to seeing sheep, if at all, gathered together in a flock in one part of the field, not scattered at random all over it. I wonder why that is and I would be grateful if anyone could tell me whether the same is true of Denmark. I suspect it is. My guess is that on the European mainland sheep have become accustomed to huddling together for safety, whereas in England, where there have been no wolves for three centuries or so, they have lost the corporate memory of danger and of need for protection. Sheep may safely graze; and their scattering over the landscape is a sign of that. In first century Palestine the norm prevailed. Sheep were kept together in a flock and, if the shepherd deserted them, then when the wolf came he could snatch the first victim, scatter the rest and pick them off one by one. Only a good shepherd, a brave shepherd, a shepherd, whose primary concern was for the sheep because they were his own sheep, would stand and fight and if necessary die, giving the flock a chance to run back to the fold intact. The sight of sheep in the fields is not only a sign of paradise; it is also a sign of paradise lost and of ‘nature, red in tooth and claw’.
And never more so than now, when agriculture, like politics and economics, trade and industry, is in crisis. This is not the time to go into that in detail. The point about this crisis is that it is due not to wind or weather (though if the nations of the world don’t sort out the effects of climate change here in Copenhagen in December it will be), it is due to economic and political forces over which we have no control. To be subject to nameless uncontrollable powers and to feel helpless in the face of them is to share the fate of most of humankind in most of the world for most of human history; but the risk now is not to fall back into the natural paganism of Canaan or to burn incense to the sophisticated pantheon of Graeco-Roman Gods, both of which options were available in Jesus’ day and are now no longer available to us. The temptation is to fall prey to despair, to understand what is happening passively as fate and to lose the active sense of an all-embracing providence, which can in fact only be mediated through the fellowship and solidarity of other human beings. The despair of some is always a challenge to the humanity of others. St John asks ‘How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need and refuses help?’ Not a bad quotation for today and, indeed, for next Sunday, which is the first day of Christian Aid Week. But there are limits to what charity can do unaided.
A lasting remedy requires not just aid but also solidarity, the sharing of the circumstances of the victims by one who not only enters into their passivity, their vulnerability to suffering and loss, but who also brings with him the strength to participate actively in changing those circumstances and overcoming suffering and loss. A shepherd who is only a victim is no use to the sheep at all. What is needed is a shepherd who can die actively, laying down his life rather than having it taken from him, a shepherd who even in sacrificing himself for the sheep has power and a mandate from the Father. St John in his gospel sets before us the image of just such a shepherd, when he has Jesus say: ‘I am the good shepherd.’ That looks like a simple sentence. Actually it is a complex one with every word having a deeper meaning than appears at first sight.
First of all, to the people for whom he was writing, a shepherd was not a yokel. His readers would know that the Prophet Ezekiel had written of the shepherd as King, they would know too that Moses had been chosen by God to be the shepherd of his people and to lead them like a flock out of Egypt into the promised land; above all they would remember that King David, had been ‘taken away from the sheep folds. As he was following the ewes great with young ones (God) took him that he might feed Jacob his people and Israel his inheritance. So he fed them with a faithful and true heart and ruled them prudently with all his power’; and of course it is King David who is credited with the authorship not only of that Psalm, Psalm 78, but also of the better known Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd. So this shepherd in St John’s Gospel is regal as well as pastoral; he exercises leadership as well as care.
Secondly, the word ‘good’. Greek has two words for ‘good,’ where we have one. The first means ‘morally good’ in the sense that a good shepherd would be a shepherd who did not get drunk, was faithful to his wife and did not steal from his master. That isn’t what is meant here. The second meaning is ‘beautiful, graceful, good at your job’ as we might say that a soldier is a good shot without making any judgement about his morals. The good shepherd, with whom Jesus identifies himself, is a shepherd who is good at shepherding, who shepherds beautifully. It is aesthetic and effective as well as moral.
And thirdly ‘I am’ is not just an equals sign. As always in St John’s gospel when Jesus says ‘I am’ there is an echo of God appearing to Moses in the burning bush and revealing himself as ‘I am that I am’. ‘I am’ is the name of God as well as the subject and verb of a sentence.
‘I am the good shepherd’ discloses who and what Jesus is for us in his life on earth; but it leads on through ‘I know my own and my own know me’ to ‘just as the Father knows me and I know the Father’, which is a disclosure of who and what Jesus is as he is in himself, that is to say as he is with the Father from all eternity. He is not just a good craftsman, whether as carpenter or as shepherd on earth; he is the Son of God, consubstantial with our Father who is in Heaven. That is what gives him his magisterial power and the authority to say ‘I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.’ That is the goal and purpose of his life and work on earth, not just to go after the lost sheep of the house of Israel but to restore the unity of the whole human race. That unity cannot be a biological or natural unity in Adam; we are too far gone in wickedness for that to be possible. It must be a new spiritual and supernatural unity in Christ, who died for us on the Cross and rose again to lead us back to the Father.
Note that there may be many folds but that there will only be one flock. A fold is a solid stone courtyard attached to a building; it can be used by parts of flocks or by many different flocks in turn or indeed for other purposes entirely. It is not a symbol or sign or instrument of the kind of unity which God wills for us. True unity is not the unity of a solid dead structure or institution. Indeed Jesus has already said in the passage preceding this one ‘I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture’; unity is not an enclosure; it is a movement in search of nourishment; and it is organic, with the life and liveliness of a society or fellowship, in one syllable – a flock.
The confusion of fold with flock, which goes back to Jerome, was disastrous for the church’s understanding of the true nature of Christian and human unity for centuries. Modern ecumenism is greatly indebted to modern biblical scholarship and indeed to translators as early as Luther and Tyndale for clearing that up. But the important thing for us is not just to understand it. Rather we should pursue it, further it and enjoy it. This corner of Copenhagen is not a bad place to start.
Amen.
