The Power of the Shepherd

Sheep and shepherds appear in most of the readings for this Fourth Sunday of Easter, but a shared world of images is not an actual theme. That metaphorical world is full of sheep being herded and cared for, but also at risk, and even being slaughtered. Then there are the humans who interact with them: shepherds, a gatekeeper, robbers, and (implied) butchers. And there are settings: pastures and valleys, sheepfolds and gates. These characters or props constitute he world each of these passages evokes, but the mere fact of them being literally “pastoral” does not reveal their meaning. “God (or Jesus) is (like) a shepherd” will not suffice as a conclusion.

The Psalm, which is the oldest of these texts and the most familiar, provides a key to the sheep imagery. Tradition makes the implied singer (David) also both a shepherd and a lord of sorts, so while this famous divine “shepherd” who is the Lord provides good things for the Psalmist, the way God is depicted here has overtones of political power. The “rod and staff” could be means of protecting the flock, but also and especially the means of guiding it. Their use as political symbols is better-known in the equally ancient Pharaonic imagery of a king holding the similar crook and flail. Shepherds are assumed to be wielders of the rod, not just providers of pasture.

Sheep and shepherding are applied to political leadership elsewhere in the Bible too, such as in Ezekiel’s and Zechariah’s parables of Israel’s false leaders as shepherds (Ezek 34; Zech 10-11). Generally then, the sheep and shepherds in biblical literature amount to more than use of ancient animal husbandry or the idylls of a pastoral landscape to think about personal faith; they take us to questions of power.

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The Psalmist makes the claim however, not simply that God of Israel is a shepherd, but a very particular kind of shepherd. The Lord is a shepherd who cares for the people and gives justice. Not all shepherds would take the kind of care described in this song, and not all sheep would receive the gifts described. The intimacy that the Psalmist expresses is not necessarily part of the relationship between a shepherd and sheep, any more than between king and people. Israel’s God is therefore not simply authoritative or powerful, but beneficent, and wise. God is therefore (long before John’s Gospel puts it this way) a kind of “good shepherd.” And the singer implies this is a somehow a model for human leadership too.

The Epistle from 1 Peter also involves a shepherd/sheep metaphor. We only get the image explicitly at the end of what is read: “For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls” (1 Pet 2:25). Yet a page or two back, in last week’s reading (1 Pet 1:17-23), Jesus has been described as “a lamb without defect or blemish” whose blood has been offered as a ransom. And the author then quotes from Is 53:9b (“He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth”). This doesn’t immediately seem to be about sheep, but on Good Friday many of us will have heard from the same Isaiah passage at greater length:

…he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.…he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth (53:7, 9b)

Isaiah is referring to “the Servant of the Lord,” whose identity in his original setting is not clear; it may be the prophet himself, or Israel, or some faithful remnant, among the scholarly theories. Christians of course have read the text with Jesus in mind from a very early point, as this citation in 1 Peter shows. Even the oblique and (apparently) sheep-free quote from Is 53:9 will have signaled the connection to the ancient reader.

Isaiah had already adapted the traditional sheep/shepherd image by suggesting that God’s care—expressed in the life of the mysterious Servant (whom Christians identify as Jesus)—involves not mere oversight but solidarity, accepting the people’s sufferings as his own. This epistle though takes up the prophet’s identification of the servant as one among the sheep, and as suffering on their behalf, but then says that the servant-sheep who suffered is also himself the shepherd. Jesus is both the innocent lamb whose blood cleanses, and the shepherd who guides. This solidarity with his suffering people is true power.

The Gospel is set entirely within this imagery of sheep and shepherds, although this year’s extract stops before the famous claim from Jesus, “I am the Good Shepherd” (v.11).1 The part we read has Jesus give a warning to his followers, couched “pastorally”; given what we already know about the imagery, this concerns false leadership. The conflicts that lead to warnings about thieves and robbers may be the same as those depicted immediately before this in chapter 9, the story of the man born blind.2 There the local religious elite exemplify false and self-serving leadership, “false shepherds.”

While there may already be an implication that Jesus himself is a true shepherd (v.2), he places himself somewhat differently in the picture to begin with, initially as the “gate” to the area where the sheep are kept. This makes it hard to treat the passage as a straightforward allegory, since he himself seems to be changing roles, but there are some parallels to this mixed metaphor elsewhere in John. In chapter 14 Jesus is “the way” to the Father, but also both a companion and the goal of the journey (“the truth and the life”). This elusive or malleable depiction is part of this evangelist’s claim that Jesus is fundamental to the whole picture, and not just one part of it; he is origin, destination, and journey all in one. So Jesus will also (after these verses) identify himself as one who lays down his life for the sheep, which draws again on the ideas we have seen in Isaiah and applied in 1 Peter.

Jesus presents his role in this shepherding picture as exclusive or unique, even though—or perhaps because—it appears at different parts of the image, and in particular here he is the sole way into the sheepfold. The point is not mere religious allegiance, as though laying claim to the name of Jesus or to Christian identity guarantees entry to the sheepfold, and hence to truth and salvation. Rather, the God revealed in Jesus has a particular character, and faith involves accepting and manifesting life in relation to him. Without participation in the same self-giving love, any claim that leadership, let alone national identity, is “Christian” is hollow; in fact it identifies the claimant as hireling or thief. Jesus is indeed a “good” shepherd who cares for his sheep, and his power is most evident in that he lays down his life for them— and is himself one of them.

Further reading:

Barnabas Lindars, The Gospel of John

Mclntyre, Donald C. “Shepherds and Hirelings in John 10: An Intertestamental Correction.” Eleutheria 6, no. 2 (2022): 94–113.

Christopher Porter, “Of Sheep, Shepherds, and Temples: A Social Identity Reading of the Good Shepherd Paroemia on the Way to a Destroyed Temple,” Conspectus, 32 (2021), 155-71.

Thanks to Misty Krasawski for research and Felicity Harley McGowan for proofreading.