21 April 2024 Easter 4

Today is ‘good shepherd Sunday’, and for many of us we have heard this gospel, or good shepherd stories in the other gospels, many, many times.  And that is great, but also risky, because when we hear familiar stories in Scripture, we often ‘turn off’ from listening, we ‘know’ what this is about, so we drift off into other thoughts and forget to ‘really listen’ to what the story is saying to me ‘today’.

And to be honest, how many of us really know what a shepherd does anyway.  Yes, we are told they care for the sheep, but what does that actually mean.  Jesus calls himself the ‘good shepherd’, but what does that mean for you and me today in 21st century Tamborine and Canungra.  Do we have sheep ourselves?  Are there sheep in our neighbourhood?  In fact, have we ever even seen sheep up close, apart from the lambs in those ‘animal farms’ that are sometimes brought to fairs and schools?  Jesus was using story language that had relevance for those to whom he was speaking, they knew what a shepherd did, it was ‘close’ to them culturally and emotionally.  They also knew that shepherds usually only cared for a handful of sheep, so the sheep knew the shepherd and the shepherd knew the sheep.  When I was in Israel in 2011, we saw a shepherd at one of the theological stops we made and near him was a field with about 10 sheep, and when he called them, the 4 that were ‘his’ looked up and went to him.  They knew his voice, the others didn’t.  If you went to a modern sheep station today, you would not see a shepherd, per se, and the sheep would be scattered over hundreds of acres.  The shepherd of Jesus’ story does not fit our modern context.  But the message does.  God knows us.  We know God.  We know God’s voice and we follow where that voice leads us.  And God, Jesus, the shepherd, will do everything possible to keep us from harm and, as Jesus shows us, he is willing to ‘lay down his life’ so that we may live.  And John’s first letter expands this to exhort us to be prepared to lay down our lives for one another.  This is the example Jesus gave us.

But, there is a statement from Jesus in this gospel which is often either overlooked, or not given much attention even if it is noticed.  And that statement is “16 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.”  So, who are the ‘other sheep’?  You and I.  Jesus was talking to an audience of Jews.  They saw God as ‘their’ God, and they did not see the ‘gentiles’ as being cared for or even considered as one of ‘God’s children’.  But when Jesus commissions the apostles, he sends them into ‘the world’ to share the good news with everyone.  Paul saw it as his specific mission to take the gospel, the good news, to the gentiles.  And we are one of those gentiles.

And one thing we often forget is, we are not the only ones who worship the God of Abraham.  There are three Abrahamic Faiths – Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  All three of those faiths follow the one God, we may have differences in our faith practices, but that does not mean we follow different Gods.  I am often attending ‘multi-faith’ gatherings as part of my connection with Queensland Churches Together and Queensland Faith Communities Council, and at all those gatherings we recognise and respect that while we may come from different backgrounds, there is one God for those who call Abraham as their originator.

I see in this statement of Jesus’ an indication that we are all welcomed by God.  But Jesus’ statement also reflects that ‘God is not finished yet’.  We do not know who will ‘join our flock’, nor do we know what that flock will look like in the future, but that doesn’t matter.  As C. S. Lewis says in his book ‘Mere Christianity’, ‘Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him?  But the truth is God has not told us what [God’s] arrangements about the other people are.  We do know that no [one] can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him’.  Jesus is telling us, all are welcome, the work is ongoing, we will play a part in it, but the work is in God’s hands, and we remain just ‘one of the conduits’ that God will use to gather the flock.