Good Shepherd

Today’s question is for those of you who drive a car, especially for anyone who has driven without a passenger. My question is this: have you ever made a wrong turn? Or worse yet, failed to make the correct turn? You’re driving along, enjoying the spring scenery around you, a variety of thoughts come and go in your head. You’ve driven this road many times before, so it’s OK for your mind to wander. You come to the usual stop sign and are momentarily distracted by a group of bike riders crossing in front of you. After they pass, you continue on your way. It’s only a few minutes later when you ask yourself: shouldn’t I have turned back there at the stop sign? You continue on for a few more miles until you see the name of a road you half-recognize and make a turn. Then you arrive at another intersection, but this time you know where you are. Do you give a sigh of relief, make the correct turn and continue on toward your destination?

This kind of experience happens to me, maybe more often than it used to. I’m sure it must happen to a lot of men. Perhaps, not to as many women, since they would have stopped along the way to ask for directions. But, from time to time, all of us get lost. We make the wrong turn or fail to make the correct one.

Yes, from time to time, we all need a shepherd, a Good Shepherd, to guide us, to lead us, to keep us from going astray. And that’s what today’s reflection, of course, is all about. Today, throughout the world, the church celebrates “Good Shepherd Sunday.” And for us, members of Christ the Good Shepherd Catholic Community, this is the day for the celebration of our founding some twenty-one years ago.

Today is, also, the day to consider something more. Pope John Paul II has designated today for the celebration of a “world day of prayer for vocations,” a day to consider how each of us is called to serve the Lord through one another, whether our calling is to a single, married or religious vocation. Today, as really every day, we are called to be Christians, those who manifest themselves as imitators of Christ, himself, those who are called to be like the Good Shepherd, himself. And, so, it’s appropriate for us to ask: what is a “good” shepherd like?

In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus answers that question by telling two stories. The meaning of these stories was clear to not only his disciples who followed him, but also to the Pharisees who questioned him. On the other hand, we who have very little to do with sheep, except maybe once a year at the Houston Livestock Show1, we may not fully appreciate the background known by those disciples and Pharisees some two millennia ago. So, let’s take a closer look at what it meant, back then, to be a shepherd.

Picture, if you will, an early morning outside a small village in Judea. The sun has not yet risen. Several men, young boys and a few women and girls approach a sheepfold with its gate. And standing there by the gate is the keeper, the one who was hired to stand guard during the night. He was supposed to make sure no one entered the sheepfold during the dark of the night. If anyone did, it would have been someone who came to harm the sheep. A thief or a robber. But now it’s morning and the gatekeeper’s job is done. What happens now?

As the herders come near to the open gate, each shepherd, or shepherdess, begins to call out the names of the sheep. Each herder has a pet name for each animal. When the sheep hear their names being called, they scramble toward the herder. In some marvelous, mysterious way, the sheep gather around their own, special leader, who slowly walks off, guiding them away from the village toward the hills where they are to be pastured for the day. When the disciples and the Pharisees heard Jesus, tell his story, this is what they saw. They knew Jesus was telling them that those who were truly of his flock heard his voice and recognized his calling to each one of them. They would follow him and only him.

For a more modern story, consider there is a parent on the edge of a crowded playground, who calls out “Johnny” and only one boy of the many named “Johnny,” runs off to join his parent. He knows the voice of the one who calls him.

If I, too, am truly one of the shepherd’s flock or one of the offspring, I need to do three things. First, I need to hear his voice. Then I need to recognize he is calling me, by name. And finally, I need to go to him, to follow him. For many of us, this is a straightforward process. We are asked to follow Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Yet, for some, this is a difficult task. Some don’t like to be thought of as sheep. We balk at being called. We are stubborn and fail to follow. We ask: why should I follow? What is to be gained? What is being asked of me? And so it was that Jesus told his listeners another story.

He began by saying: “I am the sheep-gate.” Now what could he have meant by that? His listeners knew. To see what they knew, let’s imagine what happened at the end of the day in the pasture, when night began to fall, and the herder was still up in the hills with the flock. Darkness would soon be here. There’s no time to return to the safety of the village and its community sheepfold. The herder knows the flock cannot be left out here, unprotected from the wild animals of the night. However, this is country in which other flocks have roamed. Nearly is a makeshift corral. It’s a small area enclosed by bramble bushes, piled up over the years by many herders to make a safe haven for their small flocks. Now, the herder leads the sheep into the rough enclosure through the only opening there is. As night quickly falls, the herder lights a small campfire near this opening and hopes the flames will keep away the wolves who prowl through the hills at night looking for stray sheep. Then as darkness arrives, the shepherd gathers his cloak around him and lies down in the opening of the thorn bush corral. The shepherd has become the sheep-gate, the gate to protect the flock from the ravening wolves and jackals. Anything that tries to enter the corral must do so over the body of the shepherd.

Tonight, the sheep are safe within the rough enclosure. This shepherd, this “good” shepherd, will stay here until the morning light arrives and the sheep can be led off to new, green pastures. This shepherd is not a hired gamekeeper in a protected village. This shepherd is the one who not only leads the flock during the light of day, but protects them in the dark of night. This is what his listeners recognized when they heard Jesus say, “I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

Perhaps, we can readily understand the first story heard in today’s gospel. We can understand it is necessary to hear the voice of the shepherd, to recognize I am called personally, and I must follow the shepherd to be nourished in green pastures. But with the second story, do we as readily recognize that the shepherd, the guide, the leader, is also the gate? When we see the shepherd in front of us, we feel safe. But what about at night? Do we as readily see he is, also, the sheep-gate protecting us? Do we see that in one direction, we are led into safety through the sheep-gate, and that in the other direction, through this same gate, we are led to pastures where we are nourished? Do we fully understand that when we can no longer see the “good shepherd” in front of us, he is still there protecting us from harm?

If we remain in the presence of the good shepherd, we need not be concerned with taking the wrong turn or failing to take the correct one. Do we appreciate, with equal importance, that we are called not only to be members of the flock, to be led and protected by the good shepherd, but also, each of us is called to become a shepherd or shepherdess?

As we are led and protected by Christ the Good Shepherd, we are also asked to become leaders and protectors of others. On this joint celebration of Good Shepherd Sunday, and of our call for world prayer for vocations, perhaps we can, also, ponder several questions written on a prayer card distributed by the national coalition for church vocations: “If not us, who? If not here, where? If not now, when? If not for the kingdom, why? Dare the dream.2” To which we might add: The dream to follow, and to become the image of Christ the Good Shepherd.

Fourth Sunday of Easter; April 25, 1999 (World Day for Prayer for Vocations)
Acts 2:14a, 36-41; 1 Pet 2:20b-25; Jn 10:1-10

  1. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is a two-week event held every spring when it is time for everyone to “go Texan.”
  2. This prayer card was produced by the “National Coalition for Church Vocations” 1603 South Michigan Avenue, Suite 400, Chicago, IL 60616 for distribution at Masses on Vocation Sunday, 1999

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