I am the Gate and The Good Shepherd

I grew up in New York City in the ‘50s. We lived in a two–family house in Brooklyn. It was a carefree time of life, a time in which doors merely marked certain boundaries. For the most part, we were not so afraid of others inappropriately crossing them. It was not always necessary to lock our doors. And when we finally did, my father kept a key in the milk box on the porch or left one with our upstairs neighbor. Even as children, we could safely come and go within the confines of our stated limitations. Perhaps the only time in those formative years that I was aware of heightened concern for safety was during the polio epidemic. While as children, our need to process the true impact of this plague was limited and I suppose that was a good thing, the published photos of children in iron lungs were to this day, indelibly printed in my memory. It’s hard to contrast that time with today’s Covid19. For the most part our only news media were the daily, make that twice daily, newspapers. TV’s news were short and not by any means comprehensive. All in all, as long as we stayed in our “sheepfold” we, as children, went about our days without concern.

While gates and doors serve as boundaries to permit entry and exit and security, they also demarcate a safe place, home. In our Gospel (John 10:1-10) (John 10:11-18) Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is portrayed as a “gate” and a caretaker. Our frame of reference for a shepherd does not likely fit with the image of the shepherd in the time of Jesus. Is there any more powerful artistic depiction of compassion than the image of Jesus the Good Shepherd in our Christian heritage? For me it is the famous painting of Jesus with the lamb draped over his shoulder that was hung on the wall in one of my grade school classrooms, and was also depicted in our church’s stained glass window. Yet, when Jesus lived and John wrote his Gospel, shepherds were among the most disreputable and mistrusted outcasts of society. Shepherds were drifters with no fixed address and because of their occupation, they were perpetually unclean and, by definition, in violation of Jewish law. These outcasts are the very people John’s gospel is talking about. So comparing Jesus to a shepherd and then later calling this very shepherd “good” seems at the very least, a paradox.

When Jesus proclaims that “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me” he characterizes his role as a loving protector. There were no actual gates in sheepfolds; rather, the shepherd would stand, sit or lie down at the entrance to the pasture. In this way the shepherd could serve as protector of his sheep. He knew his sheep and they knew him. John purposely contrasted Jesus, the Good Shepherd, with disreputable religious rulers of his time who exploited their congregations.

Jesus clearly spells out is role as the Good Shepherd and his Father’s steward when he says I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one