John 10:22-30
On Good Shepherd Sunday, we are reminded that Jesus is indeed our “Good Shepherd,” and that we are his sheep. Since we are his sheep, he watches over us and protects us. He leads us to green pastures and still waters. He guides us to places of peace and safety.
These “pastoral” images do apply to the relationship that we have with him, because the analogy of sheep and their shepherd is a fitting picture of the spiritual relationship that Christians have with their divine Redeemer, Savior, and Teacher. But for this analogy to work, and to be a good picture of our relationship with Jesus, we need to see ourselves as his sheep, and we need to act like his sheep.
Literal sheep are dependent on their shepherd. They have little if any sense of the danger that is at hand when a predator is near. If they are in danger, they will not realize it, and will just stand there, until and unless their shepherd calls and leads them to safety.
They are also not very adept at foraging for food, as other animals are. If they are hungry, in a place where there is nothing to eat, they will likely stay in that place, and stay hungry, until and unless their shepherd calls and leads them to a place where they can be fed and nourished.
Literal sheep will not follow just anyone, however, even if it is to safety, or to food. They will listen to and follow the one whom they trust, and with whom they have a relationship.
Each individual sheep in a particular flock has this kind of personal relationship with the shepherd. They function as a flock – as a group of sheep – only because each of them is following the same voice, and is being led by the same protector and guide.
In the Smalcald Articles, the Lutheran Church confesses: “Thank God, a seven-year-old child knows what the Church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd.”
Do we all know what a seven-year-old child knows? Do each of you, individually, hear the Shepherd’s voice?
That’s what is supposed to be happening, as each of us believes in the saving grace of Christ and in the authority of Christ. That’s what it is supposed to be like for us as disciples of Jesus, who have been mystically united to him in Baptism, and who are being taught to observe all that he has commanded.
But is this actually an accurate description of our life of faith? Are we like sheep? Or are we instead like some other kind of creature in the animal kingdom?
Lemmings are interesting little animals. They are not like sheep. In their migratory patterns, Lemmings are crowd-followers.
There is no particular individual leader whom they follow, but at a certain point, when a group of lemmings senses intuitively that it is time for a migration, they all just collectively start running away from where they had been living.
And the more they run, the more of an inner compulsion they have to continue to run in whatever direction they are going. If the trajectory they are on takes them to a river or a lake, they run into the river or lake, swim across it, and resume running once they get to the other side.
If the trajectory they are on takes them to a cliff, it has been reported that they will run off the cliff: sometimes falling to their deaths, and sometimes falling into the ocean – if it’s a shoreline cliff. When that happens, if they survive the drop into the ocean, they swim in the same direction they had been going before, out to sea, where they might drown – if they do not find land before they get exhausted from their swimming.
Lemmings have no lemming herder, who would try to direct them away from hazards and mortal danger as they migrate. And even if there were such a thing as a lemming herder, lemmings would not listen to him or follow his lead. That is because lemmings are lemmings. Lemmings are not sheep.
In your spiritual life, and in your religious beliefs, are you a lemming? Are you following a crowd? Or are you following the voice of your divine Shepherd? In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus says:
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”
Are you hearing and paying attention to the voice of Christ – as that voice echoes from Holy Scripture? Is that why you are here? In your soul and conscience, are you following Jesus?
Or are you here because your family or friends are here, and you have – as it were – followed them, and have come along with them, without giving a whole lot of deep thought to why you are here?
God very often does use relatives and friends as his instruments in bringing us into a relationship with him. God is providentially at work for our spiritual benefit when our parents bring us to the font of Baptism, and raise us in the faith.
God is providentially at work for our spiritual benefit when a spouse or future spouse introduces us to the life of the church. God is providentially at work for our spiritual benefit when friends invite us to worship with them.
God can and does use these kinds of human relationships as external means whereby he exposes us to the means of grace. God thereby positions us to be in a place where his Word can come into contact with us and enter us: so that we can then be convicted of our sin and be driven to repentance; and so that we can then be called to faith and be given the new birth of the Spirit.
But being a part of a family or a circle of friends that goes to church, is not in itself more than the equivalent of being a part of a herd of lemmings, until and unless we do in fact hear and listen to the voice of our Shepherd – our own Shepherd – who personally loves us and claims us as his own sheep.
When you hear his voice – not only in your ears, but also in your conscience – and when you know, deep down, that he died to atone for your sins, you would follow him even if none of your relatives or friends believed in him, or joined you on that pathway. That’s the kind of personal and trusting faith that the Holy Spirit creates in the heart of each person who clings in this way to the promises of Christ.
It is in regard to each of these sheep of Christ’s flock – who believe in him for themselves, and do not rely on the faith of others – that Christ the Good Shepherd also says:
“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.”
That you believe in God’s Son, is a consequence of your hearing his voice for yourself, and being drawn to him in your heart and soul by the working of his Spirit within you. A true saving faith does not arise as a byproduct of a religious “lemming effect,” based only on who the crowd wants to believe in.
What you believe about God’s Son – and about yourself as a Christian – is also a consequence of your hearing his voice for yourself, and being drawn to him in your own mind and spirit. A personal commitment to the truth of God’s Word does not arise as a byproduct of group dynamics, based only on what the crowd is willing to believe.
The Christian way of looking at the world, and measuring reality, is shaped by the fourfold message that Scripture reveals to us about humanity’s “big story”: as that story focuses on creation, the fall, redemption, and restoration. The full Biblical content of each of these focal points of the Christian worldview is under direct attack today.
The crowds that surround us are in many cases no longer willing to believe in God’s special creation of the heavens and the earth in general, and of our first human parents in particular.
The crowds believe instead that all life, including human life, evolved from nothing for no purpose, through random mutations and undirected chance events. Will you follow the lemmings over this cliff, or will you, as a sheep, listen to the voice of your Shepherd?
The crowds that surround us are in many cases no longer willing to believe that all members of the human race, who descend from Adam and Eve, are conceived in a state of sinful alienation from God, and with a condition of inner spiritual and moral corruption.
The crowds believe instead that all people are innately good, so that any urge, impulse, inclination, or orientation that feels natural to someone, is natural and good, and not to be criticized. Will you follow the lemmings over this cliff, or will you, as a sheep, listen to the voice of your Shepherd?
The crowds that surround us are in many cases no longer willing to believe that God’s righteous wrath against human sin has been propitiated and turned away by the substitutionary death of his only-begotten Son, so that it is through Christ alone that God is reconciled to his fallen creation.
The crowds believe instead that if God does exist, he is an indulgent God without holiness or wrath, who judges nothing and condemns no one. Will you follow the lemmings over this cliff, or will you, as a sheep, listen to the voice of your Shepherd?
The crowds that surround us are in many cases no longer willing to believe that it is only in the Word and Sacraments that Christ left for his church, that the Spirit of Christ converts hearts, bestows faith, and offers and seals to believers the forgiveness and eternal life that our crucified and risen Savior earned for the human race.
The crowds believe instead that each individual needs to find his own pathway to God, and that all pathways to the divine are equally valid. Will you follow the lemmings over this cliff, or will you, as a sheep, listen to the voice of your Shepherd?
Might we need to hear the rebuke that St. Paul gave to the Galatians?:
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.”
“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.”
“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel.”
So far St. Paul.
The sheep of the Lord, who hear his voice, are to be found in all nations. In the history of Christian missions, whenever the gospel of Jesus Christ entered a new nation, a new country, or a new community for the first time, the first believers were willing to forsake the paganism and the idolatry that everyone else still believed in.
Through the preaching of the missionaries, they had heard their true Shepherd’s voice. Jesus’ words had reached into their souls – as he called them to faith and discipleship – and touched them very deeply, and very personally.
As regenerated lambs of the Lord, each one of them became willing to break away from the crowd, and to renounce the ancestral religion of their family, in order to follow Jesus, and to become a part of his flock.
This is still happening in the mission fields of the world. This is still happening in our own land, which is in many ways a new mission field once again.
There are no doubt many people in our neighborhoods and in our community who are not only not Christians themselves, but who have no relatives or friends who are Christians. If they were to listen to the voice of Jesus, and follow him, they would – in regard to their new faith and its implications – be breaking away from everyone they know, and from all that is familiar to them.
But this is what God calls them to. And God calls each of us also to be his instrument and servant – his representative and his mouthpiece – through whom the Good Shepherd reaches out to them, and draws them to himself.
Even if none of their relatives and friends come, God wants them to come – and so do we. Jesus welcomes them to his flock – and so do we.
And so, don’t be afraid to tell unbelievers or adherents of a false religion about Jesus, or to share the forgiving and life-giving words of Jesus with them. Let them hear the voice of their Shepherd, through you.
And for the sake of your own soul, your own standing with God, and your own eternal destiny, never stop listening to the voice of the Good Shepherd yourself.
When Jesus warns you about your misspoken words and your misguided actions, about the manipulations of the devil and the deceptions of the world, in repentance accept his warning, and in humility follow him as he leads you away from danger.
And when Jesus leads you toward the sweet spiritual nourishment of his justifying promises and of his eucharistic banquet; when he speaks his absolving words of comfort and joy into your heart, and enlightens your mind and will with his saving truth: follow him then, too. Follow him wherever he goes.
Follow him even if your friends and relatives do not follow. Follow him and trust him, for he knows you better than you know yourself. And he loves you more than you can ever imagine.
The testimony that is borne of the Lord’s elect in the Book of Revelation, will be the testimony that is borne of us, who have heard the Shepherd’s voice, and have followed our Shepherd into eternity:
“They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.”
“They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
O God, let us hear when our Shepherd shall call In accents persuasive and tender,
That while there is time we make haste, one and all, And find Him, our mighty Defender.
Have mercy upon us, O Jesus! Amen.