John 10: 1-10
Jesus said, "As God is my witness, I say that anyone who does not come into the sheepfold by the gate, but enters in some other way, is a thief and a robber. He who enters through the gate is the shepherd. The gatekeeper allows him entrance, and the sheep recognize his voice; he speaks to his own sheep using their names. When he has herded the last of his own out of the fold, he walks in front of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They would never follow a stranger; rather, they would run away from him since they wouldn't recognize his voice." Jesus used this analogy with them, but they didn't get what he was saying. So he tried again: "As God is my witness, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are naught but thieves and robbers, which is why my sheep paid them scant attention. I say again that I am the gate; whoever comes in through me will be safe and be able to go in and out and find pasture. The thief, on the other hand, comes to steal and slaughter and ruin. I came so they could have life -- a full life." (Translated, condensed and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)
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Not for the first time have we encountered the image of sheep and shepherd. The most celebrated such text is known as the 23rd psalm. In the synoptic gospels there are other instances as well: Mark 6:34, Matthew 26:31 and Luke 12:32, 15:3-7. Human beings are not necessarily complimented by the ovine analogy, but the predominance of animal husbandry in antiquity surely helps account for the frequent allusions to it in the Bible. Anyone who had known then any of the various Jesuses we encounter now in the gospels would have been able easily to picture the scene of sheep and shepherd and, no doubt, appreciate more detail in it than most 21st century urbanites.
If we take clues from the text as it appears, John's Jesus (a different character in many ways from the Jesuses of the synoptic gospels) is depicted as addressing his ovine analogy to the Pharisees (see 9:40).
The time seems to be sometime after the festivals of the Tabernacles (Sukkot) and of the Dedication. It may be that Jews of the period would have heard at about that time the haftarah reading from Ezekiel 34, which is a polemic against the negligent and corrupt shepherds of Israel in which Yahweh is portrayed as declaring his wrath "against those shepherds" and appoints himself in their stead.
The imagery of John 10: 1-10 is a bit convoluted. The sheepfold has a gate or restricted opening for ovine ingress and egress. It is not a device to keep them in or out. The thief (κλεπτης) steals furtively by fraud or cunning, having entered the fold surreptitiously. The robber (ληστης) would be a terrorist in modern parlance, come to cause chaos and slaughter.
If, as is likely, this passage is part of the Johannine Christology, the gatekeeper is the father and the shepherd is the son, whose work it is to name the sheep, lead them out to pasture and back to safety. It is significant that the shepherd goes before the flock, not behind them prodding. The sheep, says the text, respond to the voice they understand. Its verbal content or its tone? Implied here is that early pre-Christian communities were heeding the voices in leadership of the Jesus Judaism movement because such leaders could be trusted, whereas those of synagogue Judaism could not. That is a clear bias of the fourth gospel.
All this, the evangelist reminds us, is an analogy or figure of speech - in Greek, παροιμια, which means literally "by the way." John must mean to say that the sheep-shepherd image accounts for the nature of the community's organization. The Pharisees are depicted as not getting it. Maybe those within the community do.
Does it matter that later in the passage John's Jesus puts himself forth as the gate when in v.11 of ch.10 he will say straight out that he himself is the shepherd -- the "good" shepherd, in fact? "Whoever enters by me will be saved" invites the hearer and reader to believe that salvation from the depredations of thieves and robbers, suffering and dying, death and oblivion is the passage through that one gate to peace and security.
There was little of either of those for Jesus Jews towards the end of the first century, as John tells the story. Following the movement of Jesus Judaism usually brought the follower trouble, so the salvation of "the pasture" must have been conceived as a matter of inward peace despite outward reality. That would be the "full" or "abundant" life. The opposite of that is brought by those who come to kill. The verb form in that text refers to ritual killing or sacrifice at or on an altar.
Is this John's clever way of saying that the Temple priesthood -- although long gone after the debacle of 70 CE -- was part of those "who came before" -- i.e. not the real thing? John himself says at 2:21 that Jesus understood the Temple to be his own body, perhaps reflecting a Johannine understanding that Jesus as "the word made flesh" superseded the Temple as the dwelling place of the Most High.
The homilist and class leader tread on thin ice with this text, as it clearly sets forth the figure of Jesus Christ not only as the Jewish messiah, but as the image of a singular, universal deity -- ergo, anyone who wants in, must come through him. This text must be treated as a piece of history, not as a contemporary dictum. To do otherwise would invite a fundamentalist religious intolerance of which we have enough already.
It was during a potluck dinner on the eve of my becoming pastor of the parish I went on to serve for 22 years before my retirement in 2009. A bright young woman gushed to her friend across the table, "Isn't it wonderful for us to have a new shepherd?" It was a rhetorical question to which the friend, perhaps not quite as enthused as all that, could only reply, "Yes." What I should have done was to have looked appreciative and immediately put that forkful of escalloped potatoes (you can't have a church potluck without them) in my mouth and stayed out of the conversation.
But, no. Ever the formalist in language, I put down my fork and sought gently to explain that I was no such thing. I said I would be a pastor in that I would care for and about members of the congregation, but that I did not think of them collectively as a flock that needed herding. Nor yet content with that -- and utterly uninterested in that starchy and gelatinous precipitate on my plate -- I went on to explain how the image of sheep and shepherd entered the Christian vocabulary and should not in any case be taken anywhere near literally.
The two women had already shifted their attention pointedly to their escalloped potatoes, and I had yet to be formally installed. They still had time to escape.
The problem with the sheep-shepherd figure of speech is the implication or inference that people wanting to embrace Christianity need to accept an ovine-like status: listening obediently to what the bishops and pastors say and trudging along as ordered.
If you wonder why Catholicism is tanking in Europe, just look at the region's cultural history over the past half millennium including the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment and the death of despotic Communism. Europe is again the place in which people proudly echo Rene Descartes' cogito ergo sum.
The sheep-shepherd image along with the idea that there is but one shepherd, one gate, one way, one truth must be seen as part of the religion's history, not of its present. The hierarchs of the Roman Catholic Church and, to a lesser but still annoying extent, of the Anglican Communion still behave as if they were shepherds herding flocks.
Among bishops' regalia are the ever-present croziers which, not incidentally, resemble shepherd's crooks, though many of them are crafted of precious metals and encrusted with jewels. In the fundamentalist churches, it is the preacher himself who becomes the one-man hierarchy and supports that image either by gentle winsomeness (Joel Osteen) to win the heart of fair lady or by stentorian tone and brandished Bible (John Hagee) to cow even men into pious submission.
Religions need their scholars to teach, but to teach in a consensual and collegial manner those who are interested in learning. The era of rote catechesis, godly admonitions and papal bulls is finished. What is wanted are mentored conversations among inquirers. Lose the croziers -- and the attitudes that go with them.
