First Christian Church, Corpus Christi, Texas

“The Good Shepherd.”

It is one of the most powerful and enduring images of Jesus. Who hasn’t seen a work of art depicting Jesus with staff in hand, sheep at his feet? Or one of Jesus holding a lamb in his arms? Or how about one in which a lost sheep rides on Jesus’ shoulders on his way back to the flock?

We love that image of Jesus. But what does it mean to say that he is the good—or as other translators put it, the ideal or the model—Shepherd? That is what we want to consider today.

First, Jesus is the good shepherd because he knows his sheep.

A few years ago, a colleague wrote a sermon entitled, “Does the Devil Know Your Name?” His point was to ask if we—as followers of Jesus—were living in such a way as to make Satan stand up and take notice. Were we resisting the personal temptations that lead us to sin? Are we challenging the evil systems and structures of our world that keep people oppressed? His assumption was that we had to do something for the devil to even know our name.

While that may be true of Satan, it is not true of Jesus. Jesus knows us! He knows who we are—and that knowledge is not abstract, it is intimate.

In the Greek tradition, to “know” was thought to be analogous to “seeing.” If you saw something, grasped some of this nature, contemplated it, you could say you “knew” it. For example, the former KZTV weatherman, Phil Sokolov, played tennis at the Athletic Club. I met him a time or two. We had very brief conversations. But in a Greek sense, I “know” him. I have seen him and grasp something about him.

But the way Jesus knows us is different. In the Hebrew way of thinking—and Jesus was Hebrew—knowing means “experiencing” something...It means entering into a relationship. I may be acquainted with Phil Sokolov, but I really don’t know him because there is no real relationship. On the other hand, I do “know” many of you. We have experienced each other. We have a relationship. And that is the way Jesus knows us.

Earlier in chapter 10, he said the shepherd calls his sheep by name. Here he says, “I know my own and my own know me, just as I know the Father and the Father knows me.” Jesus knows each of us—who we are, our strengths and weaknesses, our joys and concerns, our sins and successes—better than any other person possible could. And that is part of what makes him “the good shepherd.” He knows his sheep.

But knowing someone is not enough to be a good shepherd. It takes something more.

In the movie “Gone With the Wind,” Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler spend years going back and forth in their relationship. They know each other well. Rhett sums it up well when he says to Scarlett, “I love you because we’re alike. Bad lots both of us. Selfish and shrewd but able to look things in the eye and call them by their right names.” But knowledge of each other ultimately cannot keep them together. For a while their interests intersect, but eventually their self-centered ways leave them estranged. And when Rhett announces his plan to leave, Scarlett wants to know what she will do. And of course, Rhett replies, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Rhett knows Scarlett; Scarlett knows Rhett. But they don’t care about and for each other.

The good shepherd not only knows his flock, he cares about them.

Of course, that was not always the case with God’s shepherds. Often the religious leaders didn’t care for those in their flock. In fact, God sends the prophet Ezekiel to deliver a stinging indictment against the shepherds of Israel, the religious leaders. According to Ezekiel, they are not doing their job. They are not feeding the hungry, protecting the weak, healing the sick, binding up the hurt, searching for the lost. Instead, they are using people for their own ends. So corrupt is their leadership that God promised to oust them and come himself to shepherd the people.

And that is what we see in Jesus. What do the Gospels tell us about Jesus’ ministry? What did he do? He fed the hungry, protected the weak, healed the sick, tended to the hurting, and sought the lost. He served others rather than demanding that they serve him. Jesus cared about and for God’s people. He expressed that care in very real and concrete terms. That is what any good shepherd would do. That is what The Good Shepherd did.

But there is still another characteristic that Jesus identifies that makes the Good Shepherd truly good. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his flock.

Like many Americans, I was fascinated by the opening days of the War in Iraq. Every morning I turned on the news to find out what had happened overnight. And every evening I watched to find out what had taken place during the day. I remember one news conference in which Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks were asked what kind of response they expected from Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard—Iraq’s best military force. The response was interesting. One of them, I believe it was Rumsfeld, said it all depended on whether or not they wanted to die for Saddam Hussein. As it turned out, many, if not most, apparently didn’t.

Of course, dying for someone else is not unheard of. Police officers and firefighters may lose their lives carrying out the demands of their calling. A parent might give her life rescuing her child from an overflowing river. A soldier might dive on a grenade to save his comrades. I even read about a little girl whose infant brother had a rare type of blood and needed a transfusion. Since her blood matched, her parents explained the need and asked if she would give her brother her blood. When she was on the table, blood flowing through arm to that of her brother, she asked her parents, “When will it start?”

“What do you mean?” they asked.

“When will I start to die.”

She thought she was giving her brother not just her blood but her life, and she was willing to do it. We might too for a spouse or a child, a sibling or a good friend, but most of us would be reticent to lay down our lives for the stranger, the sinner, the addict, the enemy. But not Jesus. “I am the good shepherd,” he said. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” And that is what Jesus did. His death was not an accident. It didn’t just happen because things went badly one day. He gave his life not just for his friends, not just for his little flock there in Jerusalem, but also for every human being in every place and every time. What is incredible is that he knows us, with all our flaws, yet cares enough about us that he was willing to die for us. That is a good shepherd—one that is willing to take your place and my place on the cross, one that is willing to undergo God’s judgment so that we won’t have to.

Ultimately, The Good Shepherd is not just paint on canvas or an image on paper. The Good Shepherd is a reality. He is the reality of Jesus our Lord. And the Good News is that he knows us, cares for us, even died for us—all so that we could be a part of his flock, all so that we could listen to his voice and follow the path down which he leads. Amen.