In the sermon this week, I think I will focus on the issue of “identity.” The verses that are coming back to me again and again are these: “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice” (John 10:3b-4).
The whole passage of Scripture also contains two of Jesus’ important “I am” statements, which lend themselves to the theme of identity. But let’s look at them on their own for a moment, apart from any theme, and consider the images that they paint. As I’ve said, this blog is a good place to explore some of the details or research that inform the sermon, but won’t be evident in the sermon.
First, Jesus says “I am the gate” in verse 7. This is a pretty intriguing statement, and one we tend to forget about when it’s paired with “I am the good shepherd.” When Jesus says that he is a gate, he indicates that he is the way, the means by which a person finds God – or in the context of John 10, the means by which one enters “abundant” life (v. 10). Notice the freedom that a person gains in relationship to Jesus: the person for whom he is the gate “will come in and go out and find pasture” (v. 9). When one draws close to Jesus, he or she discovers true freedom and finds pasture everywhere.
Jesus also says, famously, “I am the good shepherd” (v. 11). He defines this in a positive and a negative way. On the positive side, the good shepherd does something – he “lays down his life for his sheep” (v. 11). This is the definition of self-giving love, which Jesus exhibits in his death. On the negative side, the good shepherd is not something – he is not a “thief” or a “bandit” whose interests are not only selfish, but are destructive. In John 10, Jesus is still speaking to the leaders gathered around the man born blind, who are refusing to celebrate that person’s health in their quest to undermine Jesus. He is pointing to them as bad shepherds. One biblical scholar, Jay Wilcoxen (an American Baptist pastor who lives here in Chicago), notes that by the time people would have been hearing and reading John’s Gospel, they would have had in mind various rebel movements that ended disastrously during the Jewish War of 66-73. People may have questioned whether every zealot had the overall community’s best interests at heart.
The failure of the leaders in John’s Gospel and the failure of the rebel leaders John may have wished to evoke point to the important thing about these “I am” statements: Jesus is the one making them! His shepherding ministry is the pattern of all spiritual leadership, and his authority – grounded in self-giving love – is our only hope for living authentically with God and with one another.
(Danielle Thompson)
(Danielle Thompson)
