How does one know a good shepherd from a bad one? In the opening verses of John 10, Jesus says a good shepherd enters by the gate and no other way. The gatekeeper recognizes the good shepherd and opens the gate, while bad shepherds won’t be recognized so that their only recourse is to try breaking in by other ways. Jesus goes on to say that the sheep recognize the right shepherd’s voice and that is why they follow him through the gate. They will not follow the voice of a stranger.
John then says that the people did not understand this figure of speech, so Jesus tries again. This time he says that he is the gate, which actually seems to add to the confusion. The gatekeeper (whoever he or she was) disappears, no longer needed if Jesus himself is the gate. Through this gate, the sheep come in and out and by so doing, find pasture. When Jesus says that everyone who came before were thieves and bandits, the implication is that they pretended to be the gate but weren’t. What makes Jesus the true gate? Jesus says that he came so that the sheep can have life abundantly while thieves and bandits only come to kill.
Does this clarify things? Not altogether, but maybe it’s easier to understand this passage in John if we don’t try to put all the ducks in an ordered row. Throughout, we have an emphasis on the voice. The voice of another person is important to humans, but it is helpful to try to empathize with animals, the sheep in this case. Sheep get acclimated to a certain voice, or maybe several, and respond to those voices, but once habituated, don’t trust a strange voice. The tone of voice is important. The intonation of words is important to us humans, but comprehending the actual words can be distracting to the subtleties of the tone of voice. Animals have only the intonation to go on, so all of their attention is directed to that. This is why we talk to our pets with exaggerated tones to get our feelings across to them.
Jesus says that the right voice is a voice offering life, abundant life. He also says that the shepherd with the right, familiar voice, will lead the sheep out to pasture, which is where they feed. This promise of feeding echoes Jesus’ earlier promise, after he had fed the multitude in the wilderness, to give his people the bread from Heaven. Not only that, but Jesus discloses that he himself is the bread from Heaven that feeds them. This is an example of how a few basic themes in John’s Gospel keep circling round in different ways to enrich these themes.
The liturgical setting for this Gospel reading is the middle of Eastertide, which places the discourse of the Good Shepherd in the context of the Paschal Mystery. The Paschal Mystery is also, of course, the context for the whole Gospel of John. The crucified and risen Christ is now speaking to us when Jesus offers to shepherd us out of the gate to pasture. So the circling themes in the Gospel, such as that of feeding, are different ways of referring to the Paschal Mystery. In fact, just a bit further in this chapter, Jesus will say that a true shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The lectionary further accentuates the Paschal dimension of this Gospel by coupling it with these words from First Peter: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” The reason given that Jesus had to suffer so is that we, the sheep, had been going astray, but we have now returned to “the shepherd and guardian of our souls.” (1 Pet. 2: 24–25) Here, the voice of Jesus is connected with what Jesus does.
The image of the Good Shepherd who feeds us by laying down his life may seem remote from our everyday lives, although in tense times such as these, it behooves us to look ahead to such possibilities. Meanwhile, the second chapter of Acts gives us a more everyday look at living the life of the true shepherd. The followers of the True Shepherd shared possessions and distributed to those in need. That is, they fed the sheep as Jesus feeds his sheep. (Acts 2: 45) To do otherwise is to be a thief and a bandit. If we feed others to give abundant life to them, we will also naturally speak with the voice of Jesus. We can all do as much as this. There is no other gate to life than this.
Right after dramatically recalling God’s deliverance of the Jews from the Red Sea, Isaiah proclaims that God is “about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Is. 43: 19) By his time, the Red Sea deliverance was an old thing, something the Jews repeatedly recalled, especially at the celebration of Passover. But at the time of that deliverance, it was a new thing that had sprung forth. Delivering escaped slaves through turbulent waters just wasn’t in the play books of deities at the time. God had changed the play book and revealed the hitherto unknown truth that God is a God who delivers victims and outcasts from the rich and the powerful.
I was introduced to the Transfiguration of Our Lord when Raphael’s great painting of the event hit me between the eyes during my student travels in Rome. With the Feast of the Transfiguration coming during my church’s summer slump (and it wouldn’t have celebrated the feast anyway) I knew nothing about it. In many ways, I didn’t have to. The painting opened up a vision of a transfiguration of humanity beyond what I had thought possible. At the time, what faith I had wasn’t centered around any particular religious viewpoint but I was majoring in religion because I thought the subject dealt with the most important things in life. Seeing the painting was more of a religious awakening than I knew. I was, of course, impressed by the sublimity of the upper half of the canvas where Jesus is floating in the air with Moses and Elijah. But I was even more impressed by the inroads the transfigured light made into the lower half which is often interpreted as indicating sinful and benighted humanity. It has taken me years to see further into the significance of this chiaroscuro effect.
Imaginary Visions of True Peace 