Fourth Sunday of Easter

Dominica in Pasqua IV
21 April 2024

 The Gospel passage for this Sunday is familiar.  We hear the Lord declare that he is the Good Shepherd.  It is a tender image.  The Lord Jesus is not simply claiming to be a good shepherd in a superficial way, as if to use the image only to put a nice sentiment in the minds of disciples.  He is also making a contrast between himself and those who are bad shepherds, what the text refers to as a “hired man” and other translations call a “hireling” and even a “mercenary”.  There is an Old Testament precedent for this image of the good shepherd.  It is the strong rebuke of the shepherds of Israel, meaning the religious leaders, who have God’s Word launched against them by the Prophet Ezekiel, in Ezekiel chapter 34.

Ezekiel delivered these words of God because he was told to prophesy against the shepherds of Israel and what they had done to the sheep: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves!... You have fed off their milk, worn their wool, and slaughtered the fatlings, but the sheep you have not pastured.”  And further, Ezekiel says, “As I live, says the Lord God, because my sheep have been given over to pillage, and because my sheep have become food for every wild beast, for lack of a shepherd; because my shepherds did not look after my sheep, but pastured themselves…. I swear I am coming against these shepherds.  I will claim my sheep from them and put a stop to their shepherding…. I will save my sheep… I myself will pasture my sheep” (Ez. 34:1-16).  The Lord is more indirect in his words in the Gospel than was the prophet, but the tender image he uses of the good shepherd has behind it this very forceful language about the seriousness of shepherding God’s people rightly toward the sheepfold and the pasture of eternity.  It has behind it a serious indictment for shepherds who take up the responsiblity of shepherding, but use it as an opportunity to pasture themselves, that is, to make shepherding about caring for themselves and what they can gain.

With that Old Testament prophecy as a backdrop, let’s consider again the Gospel passage.  In this section of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus is in Jerusalem and the temple area.  He is in the place of religious significance for Jewish faith, the place of encounter with God in the temple, the place where the religious authorities operate in a most important way.  And in fact, I think we get a richer sense of the Good Shepherd imagery by noticing that just verses before today’s passage, backing up into the prior chapter, in John 9, we have an entire chapter where the Pharisees are exposed for opposing the miraculous healings worked by Jesus, where they appear to be like clowns running a kangaroo court as they investigate the healing of the man born blind.  You should check it out and read John 9 today to see what immediately precedes the Lord’s declaration that he is the Good Shepherd.  As the Pharisees refuse to accept that Jesus healed the man born blind and they even refuse to believe that the man born blind was indeed blind, they reject that Jesus is the one sent from God, despite the fact of his doing the works of God.  At the conclusion of John 9, Jesus says, “ ‘I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.’  Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not also blind, are we?’  Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains’.”  Did you catch what happened there and what was being revealed about the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the shepherds of Israel?  The Pharisees themselves sure caught it!  “You’re not saying we’re blind, are you?”  While they might see with the eye, the Lord is calling them spiritually blind.  Because they refuse to acknowledge their blindness they are caught in sin.  They are shepherds who are being rebuked.  And so, in this context and atmosphere, the Lord reveals that he is the Good Shepherd.  It is he who fulfills the words from Ezekiel.  He is God coming to claim His own sheep and to take them away from the bad shepherds who are only taking care of themselves.  In their own blindness and sin, the Pharisees are leaving the sheep neglected, scattered, and even subject to the pillage of wolves, meaning the destruction of the evil one, Satan.

Next in this passage, the Lord says, “I know mine and mine know me.”  These words here and other Gospel words about the one good shepherd, and the one entrance to the sheepfold, and the one gate by which the sheep go in and out, have a strong resonance with later words of the Lord: “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6).  St. Peter, in the first reading, likewise speaking to the Jerusalem elders and leaders, the same ones indicted by Jesus in the Gospel, seems to be saying something similar: “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved” (Acts 4:12).  The Good Shepherd says, “I know mine and mine know me.”  Surely, we can understand that the Good Shepherd’s knowing us the sheep, his relationship with us, his knowledge about us is complete, and firm, and strong, and lasting.  He is God and there is nothing lacking in his knowledge.  “I know mine.”  But what about the last part of that claim, “and mine know me”?  For that claim to be true, that requires something of us the sheep.  How do we remain firm in our knowing of Jesus, our Good Shepherd?  I suggest that a cornerstone for our knowledge of the Good Shepherd and for our advancing toward the pasturing that leads to eternal life is whether we accept and truly embrace that Jesus is the only way to salvation.  There is no other name, no other person, no other figure, no other power, no other claim, no other system of belief, no other system of worship, no other movement, no other thing that will save us!  If we don’t accept that and live by that, then we are not knowing the Good Shepherd for who he is for us.  And if we do not know him, then we are weakened in identifying his voice and in following him.  We gradually seek pasture elsewhere and we listen to other voices that are not his.  And that will not lead us to eternal life and salvation in the pastures of heaven.  In an age like ours that treats everything as equal and equivalent, an age that emphasizes “my own personal truth”, an age that parrots “tolerance” and “coexisting”, an age that promotes what is really a secular progressive religion that promises the “salvation” of a man-made utopia here on earth, in this atmosphere we can fall prey to the wolves that weaken our confidence and faith in Jesus as the Good Shepherd and the only way to salvation.  The only way to salvation is the Good News that God Himself desires us to be shepherded rightly into good pastures, and He Himself has come as the Good Shepherd to save us.  The Lord has to have that kind of primacy and priority in our lives.  He knows us.  But for us to know him, we need to place all our confidence and faith in him.  We need to identify and remove from ourselves other persons, ideas, or things that we might follow ahead of the Lord.  We should examine our conscience for those things we make explicitly more important than the Good Shepherd and his guidance.  But we also need to search ourselves and to be honest about naming those things that, perhaps unintentionally or accidentally, we give more allegiance to than we do to the Lord.   We have the opportunity to repent and to know our shepherd more deeply by listening to his voice and entrusting ourselves to the One who knows us intimately.  Our Good Shepherd makes the astounding claim of calling us into a relationship with him that mirrors the relationship of the very Blessed Trinity.  What he says should fill us with joy: “I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father”.