What Makes a Shepherd Good?
What Makes a Shepherd Good?
Easter 4, Year B; Psalm 23, John 10:11-18
Each year this fourth Sunday of Easter presents “shepherd” themes, and is sometimes known as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” The much-loved Psalm 23 comes up all three years of the lectionary cycle, while the Gospels are different pieces of John 10 where Jesus presents himself as the “Good Shepherd.” This is a challenging day to find something fresh in what is an important biblical metaphor, but also a cliché. This potentially makes Jesus boring.
The discourse in John is repetitive enough that all three years’ lections give something to talk about regarding shepherds, but this adds to the danger of reducing the message to the image itself. The texts are all saying something much more than “God/Jesus is a shepherd.” They are in fact all about power and its exercise. Unless we grasp this, we risk making this shepherd-Jesus oppressive, as well as boring. The stakes are high.
Despite its “pastoral” tone, the Psalm is based on what was familiar political imagery.1 Shepherding was a standard metaphor in the ancient world for kingship (cf. Ps 80; Is 40; Jer 31). The divine “shepherd” oversees and protects the Davidic psalmist—himself implicitly a king, at least in tradition or canon. The “rod and staff” are a means of directing the flock, not just protecting it; their symbolism is even clearer in the ominous imagery of Pharaohs equipped with crook and flail. While these are used against predators, the direction of the flock along right pathways—and “for his Name’s sake”—happens by use of the stick.
While this is sobering, the initial point is not that God is a “shepherd”—this is assumed— but that even the earthly ruler (the literary “David”) is subject to divine authority. The Psalm uses traditional sheep-shepherd imagery to underscore not just (and not so much) peace and plenty, but frailty and dependence on the part of the ostensibly powerful. The divine shepherd is no less a bringer of discipline than other rulers, but more reliably a leader whose discipline will give what we need, and who is not be supplanted by earthly proxies.
There is a second point too, that God is not just a bigger or ultimate version of the shepherd ruler. The theme of compassion and care resounds through the Psalm to qualify the metaphor. Note also how the last verses shift the metaphor to feasting; presumably the “house of the Lord,” the Temple, is also the scene of the festal banquet following a sacrifice. Feasting in the house of the Lord would often involve sheep, but in a quite different way. So despite the assertion of God’s authority, care has the last word: the unlikely sheep who sings the Psalm will not be prey, but guest, and so praises this atypical shepherd.
When Jesus in John speaks of himself as a “good shepherd” we must assume the Psalm—and the other biblical instances—as background. “God is a shepherd” is a premise, but not the point. And this year’s selection from John 10 is where the most critical aspect of the shepherd discourse is shared, to get us further beyond “pastoral” vagaries as well as beyond conventional understandings of power.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (10:11). The first phrase (“good shepherd”) is not just a sort of moral or technical assessment of this herder, but means something like “I am the real shepherd,” the one who really embodies the principle, not just in herding but in the familiar biblical-political metaphor.2 So far this is quite a similar idea to that of the Psalm, which says in effect that the Lord is the “real” shepherd of Israel.
The second, counter-intuitive statement—”The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”— is repeated three more times in the course of these few verses, in case you missed it. The good shepherd “lays down” (vv. 15, 17, 18) his life. This is not shepherding (literal or metaphorical) as usually understood, nor is it power as usually understood.
So the classic “God is shepherd” metaphor relied on the common association of leadership and monarchy in particular with shepherding, but suggested God’s loving shepherding was the “real” leadership of Israel; Israel’s use of that imagery was often a critical engagement with the metaphor (and with kingship), presenting God’s care as not only just but loving. The Gospel seems to take this further—although we can also see themes of this self-giving divine love in parts of the Hebrew scriptures like Isaiah and Hosea.
Neither shepherds nor kings are expected to lay down life for the sheep. A “good” (in the expected sense) king or shepherd maintains the order and prosperity of the flock, but not at their own expense but because their own wealth and welfare depends on the flock, literal or political. To say that this real shepherd lays down his own life is a radical overturning of conventional notions of power, and of course a commentary on the power to be shown by Jesus in what lies ahead in this story. This subversion of the shepherd metaphor is an anticipation of his exchange with Pilate (18:36-7), where Jesus states he has a kingdom, but that the world’s notions of power cannot possibly comprehend it. Yet that is also, he says, what power is really like, because only love can offer real power.
Both Psalm and Gospel use this shepherd imagery, creatively and confrontingly, to address the human condition as subject to the order of God’s love. This means we receive God’s genuine compassion and care, but the Gospel present Jesus not merely embodying this as a “pastor” (in whatever sense) or caring leader, but as the one whose solidarity with us extends to sharing our experience and our fate. He is not merely an “ideal leader,” but suggests that real power is the opposite of what the world tells us. This is what makes him not just a good pastor (or a benevolent despot), but a shepherd to whose voice we should respond, because he has laid down his life for us.
And he is, therefore, neither boring nor oppressive.
Keen readers will note that I have re-used some material in these middle paragraphs from the post a of year ago here, for which I apologize; my readership however was then less than half of its present number, so at least some will read this for the first time.
C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John; an Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text. New York, Macmillan, 1956., p. 373.