The Good Shepherd

I am aware that children all want some unusual things. There is the child who will only eat food that is a certain colour, there is the child who wants and prays for a dog and in my case the child who wants a lamb. Now that sounds very nice and you might picture a lovely setting for growing up with fields and lots of green. In my case I lived on a council housing estate in Cardiff without much green. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t have a lamb after all we did have a garden !

I was thinking about this as I looked at our readings for today, readings which talk of sheep and shepherds. In our readings we heard what is perhaps the most well known Psalm, Psalm 23 The Lord is my Shepherd. Then in our gospel reading (John 10:1-11) we heard of Jesus as the good shepherd. 

I really don’t know much about the countryside, I have lived in a rural area and did learn there that if a bull is coming towards you, move slowly away, I also learnt not to check that others don’t fall in cows muck to such an extent that you end up falling in the muck yourself.

There was a preacher once who preached on the gospel passage we have heardand talked of sheep as being cuddly and rather cute. He then went on to say how comforting it was that these cuddly and cute creatures should be so well cared for by a shepherd – they would be safe and warm in his care.
After the service someone approached the preacher and said ‘you can tell you’re from the City !’ When the preacher asked ‘Why?’ he was told that sheep were not cute and cuddly at all, but smelly, dirty and stupid !

We are God’s sheep and I am not suggesting that we are smelly, dirty or stupid but we are all people in need of the shepherd who offers us protection and a better life. A shepherd who is good. 

Now I have often wondered about the fact that if Jesus is the Good shepherd what would make a bad shepherd. A bad shepherd wouldn’t know His flock and look after them. 

Jesus is the good shepherd and He looks after us and in His loving arms we are safe. This never means that all will be well but it does mean that with God life is just somehow that bit easier. Easier in terms of having someone we can turn to who will never let us down even when life is not so good.

We also heard the most famous of all the Psalms, Psalm 23. There is a lovely story about this Psalm. It is that once a famous actor was the guest of honour at a social gathering where he received many requests to recite favourite excerpts from different books. An old preacher who happened to be there asked the actor to recite the twenty-third Psalm. The actor agreed on the condition that the preacher would also recite it. The actor's recitation was beautifully intoned with great dramatic emphasis for which he received lengthy applause. The preacher's voice was rough and broken from many years of preaching, and his diction was anything but polished. But when he finished there was not a dry eye in the room. When someone asked the actor what made the difference, he replied, "I know the psalm, but he knows the Shepherd."

We know the Psalm so well, and we also know the Shepherd who loves us more than we can begin to imagine. 

Back to my thought of a very cute lamb and the knowledge that sheep are apparently smelly and dirty.  We don’t follow a cute and cuddly God who makes sure that nothing bad ever happens to us but we do follow God who is there inthe mess of life and in the difficult situations and He always supports us. Through every moment of our lives, good or bad, God is there with us.

We follow the Good shepherd and to be honest I would much rather Him do the leading than for me to try to attempt to lead myself. If you knew anything about my sense of direction, you would never want to follow me ! Unless you wanted to get lost. 

A young woman who wanted to go to college, was disappointed when she read the question on the application form that asked, "Are you a leader?" Being both honest and conscientious she wrote, "No," and returned the application, expecting the worst. To her surprise, she received this letter from the college: "Dear Applicant: A study of the application forms reveals that this year our college will have 1,452 new leaders. We are accepting you because we feel it is imperative that they have at least one follower."

There is no shame being a follower of someone or something – and when we follow Jesus we are following someone who it is impossible to lead, and someone who always knows our thoughts and needs even before we do…

To follow Jesus means to love as He loved. As we heard in our Epistle reading (1 John 3:16-end) if we don’t love others how can the love of God abide in us. We are sheep with a good shepherd who knows and loves us, to whom we can always turn. To whom we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He restores my soul”. Yes, we know the Good shepherd who promises us life even better than we think as we turn to Him. But we also follow God whose love for us, causes us to want to love others as He loved us. 

At the moment in the news people have been in uproar about the situation in Syria, people seem to be blaming each other. It is a difficult situation but to this situation all we can ever say is that the Lord is our shepherd as we trust that He will hold us and all those who suffer. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of a situation we can know that the Lord is the good shepherd, He loves us and He asks us to truly love others and not just for when we feel like it. After all if God had done just that we would not be here to worship Him. God gave up everything for us and so we are to love and to pray that all those who suffer in Syria, in our country, in our city, in our community will know that the Lord is their shepherd and He will be with them through everything. To our shepherd, our leader, all praise and honour is due. Amen