Fourth Sunday of Easter (C): John 10:27-30
We are His people; the sheep of His flock. – Psalm 100:3
The Fourth Sunday of Easter is also known as Good Shepherd Sunday. This is because the Gospel reading for this Sunday is always drawn from John 10, where Jesus speaks at length about Himself as the Good (or True) Shepherd.
For us, the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is consoling and comforting. We imagine Him, gentle and humble of heart, smiling and tending to His sheep. We picture cute lambs romping in meadows, amid wildflowers of all kinds. A very peaceful, totally non-threatening image.
There is a great deal of truth in this image, of course. Jesus is all these things for us, and more. We forget one “minor” detail, however. What was the result of Jesus’ original sermon on how He is the Good Shepherd? What kind of reaction did He get? Were people all starry-eyed and smiling dreamily? No. Read on for a few verses past our Gospel reading for today. They wanted to kill Jesus.
Likewise, in the first reading, Paul and Barnabas ultimately face rejection and persecution for preaching in the name of Jesus the Good Shepherd. In the second reading, from Revelation, we encounter a countless throng of people, from every nation, race, people, and tongue, who were willing to endure every kind of trial for the sake of the Good Shepherd and who will now be sheltered forever by Him.
Why this reaction? Why would Jesus’ talk of Himself as the Good Shepherd, which seems so non-threatening to us, cause some people to reject Him – even violently?
As Bishop Robert Barron pointed out in his miniseries Catholicism, Jesus is the only religious founder who challenges people to make a choice about Him. Other religious founders did not make it about themselves, as a rule. They generally claimed to have found a way or to have received some special revelation, and then passed it on to others. Jesus consistently brings people to the point where they must make a choice about Him, personally. Will they accept Him as THE revelation of God, as the true Lord and Shepherd, or not? He took every opportunity to do so.
For example, Jesus’ sermon about Himself as the Good Shepherd happens in the Temple in Jerusalem, on the feast of the Dedication – the feast we now call Hanukkah. That feast honored the Maccabean family that led a revolt against the Greek kings who sought to eradicate the worship of God and who had defiled the Temple with worship of pagan gods. The Maccabees were successful, the Temple was rededicated, and Israel won some independence for about a century, until the Romans entered the picture. Many Jews had lost their lives in the revolt, and were all praised as heroes.
Jesus comes along, in this very Temple on this very feast, and claims to be the true Shepherd and the true Temple, the One whom the Father has truly dedicated, and that it will be His death that will truly free Israel. To have a feel for this, imagine Jesus in, say, Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, saying that it was not these veterans’ deaths that gave us freedom, but only His death that can give us true freedom.
That would not go over well in our country, and not only because of how we honor veterans. We also don’t like either/or options. We don’t like black and white choices. We prefer gray areas. We want wiggle room. We want to have some of Jesus and some of someone or something else. We want to go with the flow. We don’t want to stand out. Like Jesus did. Like the apostles did. Like the martyrs did.
To do this, however, we have to hide our love of Christ. We have to act as though we did not love Him as we do. If we keep acting in this way, then our love for the Lord does become cold. Our faith, then, becomes bland and unappealing to others, and even to ourselves. If we are no different than people who do not believe, what’s the point of believing in the first place? Can we be surprised if our young people do not practice their faith, if they get the impression that we ourselves don’t really believe? If they see that we will not put ourselves on the line for Christ and for His Body, the Church? If they fail to see what difference our Catholic faith makes in every aspect of our lives?
To love someone, however, is to make a choice for that person. You will want to make great promises to the one you love. You are willing to let that love be seen and be known by other people. The love of this other person changes your life. If you truly love and are loved, it cannot be any other way.
This is all the more true with Jesus Christ. If we claim Him as our Shepherd, then we are saying that He is our greatest love. He is our God. He is our all. We will want to be totally committed to Him. We will want to be with Him, wherever He goes, wherever He leads us. We will want other people to see how we love Him and how He loves us, so that they, too, will know the love and joy that He alone can give. We will make His words, His teachings, the indispensable center of our lives. The love of the Lord changes us forever. We become His. We find that the more we are willing to open our hearts to the Lord in faith and love, the more we grow in our ability to love. The Lord fills our hearts and makes them like His own. We become more fully alive, more joyful, more at peace, the more we are willing to put ourselves on the line for Him.
What happens when we allow our love for the Lord be the center of our lives; to shine through and influence our thoughts, words and actions? Some people will reject it. Jesus warned us of this. But they are not rejecting us personally. They are rejecting Jesus as Shepherd, King and Lord. On the other hand, other people will welcome it. Whenever we allow our faith and love for the Lord to shine, other believers are encouraged. In the same way, the faith and witness of others encourages us.
We have a source of encouragement that is greater than this. We have Jesus’ own words:
My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 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 Lord has entered into a covenant with us. He will be our God, and we are to be His people. Every time we come to Mass, we renew our covenant with Him, and He renews His promises to us. He gives us His very life, His Body and Blood, as food for our life’s journey. He is with us in joyful times and in sorrowful ones. He sustains us through it all. He is our Good Shepherd; He and none other.
The Lord reminds us that we cannot serve two masters. We must choose, sooner or later, who our shepherd really is. Let us resist any temptation to have it both ways. Let us be willing to love the Lord totally, exuberantly, without limit, proclaiming to anyone who cares to listen that He is the one and only Good Shepherd, the one and only Savior, our Lord and our God. Let us be, then, truly His people, the sheep of His flock!