Reflection: The Good Shepherd / The Gate

When it comes to the helpless, Jesus gets very attentive. 

He’s just healed a man blind from birth.* Intimately spit and polished him into a worshipping trophy of God’s grace. Brilliant! But… Danger! Milling around are lots of un-helpless people. Churchy bigwigs who cross-examine the former blind beggar and cast him out.  

Jesus has something to say, something very personal … and damning to say to this crowd of the ‘seeing’ and the ‘blind’. And he tells it not with a pithy I AM-statement, but this time like a parable, so the story is clear to the ‘simple’ and confusing to the ‘smart’. It’s a cast of millions.  

• Villains—thieves, robbers, strangers, hired hands 
• Sheep 
• A gatekeeper  
• A shepherd/The Good Shepherd/The door to the sheepfold  
• (and Father of the Good Shepherd)

The story is told … and the crowd is left curious where they fit in. 

The bad guys — we know a lot about them from the Old Testament — are the ones whispering behind hands, chins up so they can look down on their sheep; swishing around in fancy get-up, feasting on their positions, and ever-so-busy with book work … in pretence of leading, guiding and safeguarding. Not on the lookout for the blind and injured, no patient searching for the wayward, no tough-tender hands for lifting the lost, no vigilance against the predator. They ride roughshod over the sheep, in it for the status or the money. Trouble comes, they’ll cut and run. They’re dangerous interlopers.  

Against that contemptible crowd, we appreciate all the more how helpless are the sheep … and how, all the more good is the Good Shepherd. 

A shepherd’s treasure is each one of his sheep. He knows them from birth, names and nurtures each one. He leads them (and they follow his familiar voice). Chases them down with goodness and mercy (and they flourish). Is their door and protection** (and they are safe). He’ll risk his life for each helpless one. In fact, he’s slaughtered by the villains. The Good Shepherd does ‘lay down his life’ (and raise it up!) that they might live for keeps. And all this makes the Father grin from ear to ear. 

Prayer:

Good Shepherd, confront us.

Comfort us.

Help us to know your heart and recognise who we are in relation to you.

 Notes:

*that the works of God might be displayed in him … he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash …” (John 9:3,6-7) 

**Shepherds were known to sleep in the enclosure entries, guarding the sheep with their lives.