“The Good Shepherd”

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Creator. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Creator loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from the Creator.”

Today’s scriptures readings feel like coming home. They are the softball pitches of the bible. They come in easy, and they take us for miles. How many times have you heard Psalm 23 or John 10 read in church? I can’t even begin to count. I have Psalm 23 more or less memorized, not because I worked on memorizing it, but just because I have heard it read so often. Since today’s bible passages are about a metaphor, I’ll mix mine and say they are comfort blankets of scripture. When we feel lost and afraid, the metaphor that has brought so many of us comfort is that of our God, our Good Shepherd.

I find it somewhat ironic that we love this metaphor so much since most of us live in cities, far from sheep and those that tend them. I grew up in a city, but on holidays or summer vacation, we would go down to my grandparents’ farm in California, where they had sheep. The sheep there weren’t quite like the clean, fluffy stuffed sheep we’ve got all around us here. They were dirty and smelly and surprisingly loud. The corrals were muddy, and the sheep could be surprisingly obstinate. But the hay barn sure was fun to jump and play in.

I won’t pretend to be an expert on sheep or tell you what this passage really means about the act of tending sheep. Today, I feel like a sheep in want of a good shepherd. I want someone who will lead me beside still waters. Someone who will protect me when the wolves come. I love that that someone is and has always been God. God has this metaphor with God’s people for millennia. We have a Good Shepherd.

           Jesus says that the Good Shepherd is willing to lay down his life for the sheep. He shows us who the Good Shepherd is by comparing himself to what he is not—a hired hand. The hired hands don’t own the sheep, and so they do not really care about the sheep. They care about a paycheck, but they do not care enough for it to cost them anything. They run at the first signs of danger and then they come up with a thousand excuses to explain their behavior. I’ve been thinking a lot about these hired hands and what they look like in our world today. I think of hired hands as people who have been entrusted, in one way or another, with our welfare—pastors, teachers, politicians, doctors, and leaders of every kind. These ‘hired hands’ are people whose job it is to care for us. Some do it well, and some are like the hired hands Jesus speaks of—they run when things get difficult. It’s an act of betrayal by the hired hands. Their job was to protect, and instead, they left us to the wolves.

Betrayals of any kind sting, but betrayals by those we trusted to care for us can cause deep wounds. These wounds can literally change our brain chemistry and affect the course of our lives. Every single person has a story of betrayal. It might be a small, individual moment, like a friend sharing your secret, but even a system can betray you. How many times have you interacted with the American healthcare system and wondered, “is this for my own good or for the insurance company’s bottom line?” A necessary prescription denied or a doctor who didn’t listen to your concerns can feel like a betrayal; like they were just a hired hand who didn’t really care. I think of the pastors who have abused their positions of authority and betrayed not only their direct victims but their whole community.

As I thought about modern-day hired hands, I listened to an interview with Patrick Radden Keefe on his new book Empire of Pain, which is the story of the Sackler family’s role in creating the opioid crisis. In his book, he tells the history of a family who sought profit above all else— first, they skirted FDA rules to create the MS Contin, the morphine precursor to OxyContin. Once OxyContin came on the market, they realized that doctors were accidentally overprescribing to their patients, mistakenly thinking this new drug was less potent than morphine. But as it turns out, overprescribing is great for shareholders. And so, for decades, despite knowing how addictive the medication was, the Sackler family kept producing more and more OxyContin at higher and higher dosages. And when things began to fall apart in the 2000s, when people who had gone on Oxy for legitimate reasons found themselves completely addicted and turning to heroin and fentanyl, the Sackler family responded by pulling $10 billion dollars out of the company for their own gain and bankrupting Perdue Pharma in the process. When the wolves of addiction came for the American people, they turned and fled to save themselves.

           This is what the corrupt hired hands do. They say, “we were only doing our jobs. We weren’t hired to deal with that. That is someone else’s problem.” They run away because they don’t care about the long-term consequences. How much damage has been wreaked on this Earth by people who did not care about the long-term consequences? Pollution spewed into our rivers, oceans, and atmosphere because it will be someone else’s problem to clean up. Young men were sent to Vietnam with no concerns for the trauma of war and the PTSD that would follow them all their lives. Wall Street bankers were shorting the housing market and betting on millions of Americans to lose everything so that they could profit. These betrayals make it hard to trust again. If you’ve been burned by the church, it’s pretty hard to trust that the next congregation won’t do the same thing. If you’ve been betrayed by a partner, to love again is a profoundly vulnerable act. If you’ve seen entire systems fail to protect you, it is hard to believe that a good person can exist within that system.

           All of these betrayals by “hired hands” are such a contrast to who Jesus. When the wolves come, Jesus will not abandon us because Jesus genuinely and truly cares for us. Jesus’ love for you is not conditional and does not depend on all things being right. Jesus’ love for us is a love that plays the long game. Jesus cares about long-term consequences, and Jesus will be there for the long-haul. What makes the Good Shepherd remarkable is that he identifies with the sheep even though they are not the same. He is a shepherd, and we are the sheep, and yet his love for us is so deep that he is willing to lay down his life for us. He sees our concerns as his concerns, and so in the Good Shepherd’s eyes, there is no safety until all are safe. That is what solidarity means—to care for the pain of others just as we care for our own. Jesus is always on the side of the hurting, the marginalized, and the oppressed. When the wolves come, Jesus takes sides. He does not make excuses for the wolves’ behavior or the hired hands’ betrayal. He takes the side of the sheep who are in danger and risks his life alongside theirs. 

           We have only one Good Shepherd, and it is God alone. But we can become hired hands who model our lives after Jesus’ example. We can learn to take sides with hurting people in this world today, and there is no shortage of ways we can do that. We care for those in our lives we have influence over as Jesus—with care for their future and the flourishing of their lives. We can care for others in such a way that they will be able to see the Good Shepherd who is guiding us.

            When I think of wolves crashing in, of dangerous times where some leaders failed and others stepped up to the challenge, I think of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Katrina killed more than 1,800 people and many, many political leaders from the mayor to the President were criticized for their responses and failures. But there were also leaders who stayed. There are countless stories of community leaders and pastors who stayed with their people when all hope was lost. They stayed when everything around them was flooded and destroyed. There wasn’t a neighbor they could go to for help because everything was destroyed and everyone was in need of help. Rev. Charles Duplessis was a pastor in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans whose house and church were destroyed in the flooding. His house was rebuilt, but there was no funding for the church. And so instead of giving up, which would have been an understandable thing to do for someone who has gone through such a traumatic experience, Rev. Duplessis started hosting church in his home. His wife leads worship and they set up folding chairs in the living room. Their congregation is a fraction of what it was when they still had a building, but it is a congregation that knows they have a leader who will not abandon them when things get hard. Their pastor is not perfect, and he is not The Good Shepherd, but he is a hired hand that has chosen to model his life after Christ and in doing so, reflects God’s love for God’s people.

           Friends, we have a Good Shepherd who will abandon us when things get difficult. You are part of God’s flock and you cannot wander away from God’s love. When you need someone to love and care for you, to lead you beside still waters and restore your soul, listen for God’s voice. Trust and believe that you know what God's voice sounds like. You may be out of practice but will know when you hear it. Seek out a quiet place where the endless stream of noise in your mind can be still and you can hear the voice of the Good Shepherd who says, “Come, my beloved. Let me show you the way.”