"I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11)

I’ve lived in this part of the world for more than thirty years, but I started out as a city boy. I was born in Glenrothes and grew up in Coventry, a built-up hub of the motor industry. The closest I got to agriculture was the occasional visit to the Royal Show where, honestly, I was more interested in the machinery than the animals. Growing up in the city it took me a long time to fully appreciate the imagery of sheep and shepherd you get in the New Testament. My first real encounter with sheep was walking to the train station in Leuchars after a university interview in St Andrews. I came on a bunch of sheep out on the road and, reckoning the farmer would want them back in the field, I tried to herd them back in. You know how that was going to pan out, don’t you? I was the rubbish shepherd.

What I really didn’t get until I’d lived here for a while is that farmers really do care for their sheep; that they recognise each one and know each one. I’ve spent enough time around sheep - and other - farmers during lambing season to know the effort and care they pour into bringing each lamb into the world; that each lamb is precious. This is what informs the New Testament imagery of the Good Shepherd - the care God has for each of us in Christ; the love God has for each of his precious lambs. One of the oldest Christian images still in existence is in the catacombs of Rome and it features Jesus as the Good shepherd, a lamb draped across his shoulders and brought home safe. 

There are those who insist that what Jesus is saying in this passage is that Christians are a kind of exclusive club - a special flock - for whom the love of God is reserved. Such an image has the Church as a flock safe within its fold, cared for by the Good Shepherd who doesn’t care if other sheep are prey for the wolf and the lion. It has Jesus, the Good Shepherd, laying down his life for this special flock - Christians - while the rest of the world can go hang. I don’t buy that.

I don’t buy that because, right in the middle of our passage, we have Jesus saying, “I have other sheep who are not of this fold.” Now, maybe that refers to the coming of people beyond the Jewish world where Christianity began. Maybe. But I think it’s more than that. I think the love of God, revealed in the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep, reaches beyond the boundaries we create between ourselves and others; it reaches beyond the walls of the sheepfold to all sheep everywhere. 

All of which is pretty imagery - imagery that a former city boy like me can now get his head around - but it speaks of something so simple that anybody can understand it, whatever your background, wherever you come from and whoever you are. For the Good Shepherd every sheep is precious - every lamb is worth his life. And for sheep, read human being. For God, every human life is precious - each human being is worth the life of his own son on the Cross. That’s you. That’s me. That’s everyone in this building and beyond. 

Sometimes the way we have done church has forgotten that. In recognising that we all mess up sometimes - that we are all susceptible to temptation and that we all do stuff we know to be wrong, say stuff that is hateful and hurtful, think things that we would never want anyone else to know we are thinking, sometimes we’ve made ourselves out to be worthless. Don’t ever think yourself worthless - and don’t ever think anyone else worthless either - because you, in the eyes of God, are worth coming into this benighted world for; worth sharing the life of a human being for; worth the life of his son. You are the precious lamb that the Good Shepherd guards with his life.

Is that so hard to understand? Really? It’s been a while since my son was born. It’s been a while since I looked at him, newborn, in a wee crib in Cresswell and thought that there was nothing I would not do for this precious new life that had come into the world - that I would move heaven and earth for him. He’s twenty-four now and well taller than me. And he is still precious to me and I would still move heaven and earth for him. That is the love of a parent for their child. It is the love of God for each and every one of his children. It is the love of the Good Shepherd for each and every precious lamb.

So who are these other sheep that Jesus speaks of? They are the others. They are the different. They are the people we try to forget or try to ignore. They are the folk who don’t seem, somehow, to matter. They are those who get caught up in the conflicts of the world and those who get left behind by the stampede for wealth and profit. Those who are broken by the temptations and addictions of the world. Each one of them is a precious lamb. Each is a beloved child of God. Each has been, at some time, a helpless newborn child on whom a mother or a father or both has looked at and thought, “I would heaven and earth for you”. 

When we are taught to admire the wealthy and the powerful - the 1% who own most of the planet - let us also hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and see that the 1% at the other end - the folk who have little more than the clothes they stand up in and don’t know if they’ll eat today or tomorrow, each of them is a precious lamb; each is a child of God created by the love of God. When our leaders cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war, let us insist that those we call our enemies are precious lambs; that each is a unique and precious child of God who has known the love of father, mother, wife, husband, son, daughter and will be mourned. When the sea throws up refugees on the southern shores of Europe, flotsam and jetsam thrown from the fires of conflict and the fear of starvation let us see them for who they are - precious lambs; each a unique and precious child of God. Each my brother. Your sister. 

We are sheep of one fold. Or, rather, we are meant to be. I sometimes think the church lost its way a bit when Constantine embraced Christianity. We got caught up with the business of power. we spread the faith with fire and sword, sometimes. Kings forced conversion on their people. For what? The greatest power there is to change the world is the power of the Good Shepherd:the power you have, that I have - that every one of has because we are children of God, made in the image of God.

What does the Good Shepherd do? He cares for the flock. He makes sure they’re fed and that they can live their lives without fear. That’s what we’re here to do. We’re meant to look out for one another - it’s as simple as that. We are meant to make sure that the weakest lamb in the flock gets enough to eat. We’re meant to make sure that none of the flock gets left behind. We’re meant to see everyone we meet, everyone we hear of, everyone we can imagine, as a precious child of God. Imagine what the world would be like if we did.

Lord, may your humanity be one flock, bound by love for one another, seeing one another as precious lambs of the Good Shepherd; as your children and precious in your eyes

Preached at Gretna Old parish church