In the name of the Risen Jesus. Amen.
Who is Jesus to you? I was in a meeting recently and that’s a question that came up. It’s such a foundational question, but one that is easy to overlook given how often we refer to Jesus – he’s in our parish identity statement, the hymns we sing, the art we are surrounded by, and at the end of all of our prayers in the phrase “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” But who is Jesus to us? What is the operative image of Jesus that comes to mind if I ask you to close your eyes and think about the question: “who is Jesus to you?”
To be clear, there’s no right answer to this question: lover of our souls, the Alpha and the Omega, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the Word become flesh, Mary’s boy, Pilate’s victim, judge, savior, and bread of life. For me, Jesus is my Good Shepherd.
It was 1997 and I was preparing to become a Level 4 acolyte at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in Boynton Beach, Florida. We had levels for acolytes based on experience and training and I was seeking to become the first acolyte to achieve Level 4, because, of course I was. Well, in addition to being able to train other acolytes on all of the liturgical duties, there was also a written test. From what I remember, from memory, I had to write all the books of the Bible in order, the Creeds, know certain page numbers in the Prayer Book, and write a few short essays about worship and serving as an acolyte. And then there was one more thing that I had to write from memory – Psalm 23. I remember asking the priest, “I understand why I need to know all of these things because they come up in worship regularly, but why do I need to memorize just this one Psalm?” He said, “Well, it’s the most popular one and gives a lot of people comfort. And you never know when you’ll find yourself in a hospital room or somewhere and need to be able to say it from memory.” This priest saw my call to the priesthood before I did.
Ever since then, Jesus as my Good Shepherd has been my central image of him, and I offer it to you to try on this Good Shepherd Sunday, as it is often called; which is always the Fourth Sunday of Easter. For me, this image is about Jesus guiding me towards God’s grace and love. The still waters and green pastures of Psalm 23 assure me of God’s desire for my peace and wholeness. But I know that life is full of challenges and confusions, which is why Jesus having both a rod to correct and protect me and a staff to guide me is an image I appreciate. The Good Shepherd is someone I can follow and who loves me so much as to lay down his life for me.
I have a prayer desk at home where I pray Morning & Evening Prayer, and there’s an icon of Jesus, the Good Shepherd in front of me when I pray. It’s an image that I cherish, mostly because it reminds me of just how cherished I am. I hope that each of you have an image of Jesus that does something similar for you – and if you need help exploring your image of Jesus, I’d love to talk to you about it.
Context always matters when it comes to Scripture, and I’m particularly intrigued as to why Jesus, at this particular moment, chooses to say “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” It’s a great image of Jesus – to hear that we are secure in his flock, but what prompted Jesus to offer these comforting words?
John tells us the setting: “At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem.” This isn’t just a chronological marker; it’s setting up the theological claim that Jesus is about to make. We have to go back in time, about 200 years earlier to 175 BC. Antiochus IV has just taken the throne of the Syrian Empire and wants to expand his influence all the way down to Egypt, which means being in charge of everything in between, including Israel. At first the Jewish leader resisted this foreign occupation, but eventually Antiochus was able to persuade enough of the aristocrats and priestly class to align with him – effectively, he bought them off with opulent gifts and seats of power. People selling themselves out is nothing new.
With enough of a foothold in Jerusalem, Antiochus then deposed the high priest and sold the post to the ousted high priest’s brother, who would be more loyal. Then, with both religious and military power, the decree went out that regional religions, such as Judaism, should be abandoned, and everyone would now be a part of the civil religion. In 167, a pagan altar was built over the sacrificial altar in the Temple and sacrifices were offered to Zeus. I can’t overstate how sacrilegious this was. It would be as if we cleared the altar, adorned it with MAGA paraphernalia and assault rifles, and replaced the cross with an AI generated image of Trump leading us into the Promised land. Or, if you’re not offended by that image – then it would be like spray painting “Resist” across the front of altar and decorating it with rainbow, DEI, and antifa banners. If your blood pressure is raised – good. Scripture refers to it as the “desolating sacrilege.”
A group of faithful Jews knew that this could not be tolerated, so Matthias Maccabeus and his son, Judas, organized a revolt against the Syrians and eventually won in a turn of events that can only be explained by divine providence. There is no way that these rebels should have been able to defeat the powerful Syrian army, but they did. We might say that the rod of their Good Shepherd was with them. On the 25th day of the month of Kislev in 164 BC, Judas Maccabeus entered the Temple, cleansed it of pagan symbols, and rededicated the Temple. So, when John says that they were there for the festival of the Dedication, that’s what’s being referred to. Today, the festival is more often called Hanukkah.
And maybe you’re wondering – what about the menorah? Well, we might say that the moment of the Temple’s rededication is when the lights of the candelabra were restored. Only ritually purified oil could be burned, and the process of making this oil would take a week. They had only one jar of oil, enough for a day. But they’ve just conquered the Syrians and cleansed the Temple – you’re not going to wait a week for oil to officially rededicate the Temple. That’d be like calling off a wedding because the wedding cake isn’t quite ready. So they lit the menorah, and that one jar of oil provided enough fuel for a full eight days, enough time for them to make enough oil to keep the light going. Hanukkah is the story of God’s protection and provision, just like our Good Shepherd who is with us in the valley of the shadow of death and who makes our cups to run over.
So what does this context of the Dedication have to do with the image of Jesus as our Good Shepherd? It’s all about Grace. Here’s what I mean – earlier in John, in the prologue, we hear “In the beginning was the Word… The true light was coming in the world… And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” John has laid out that Jesus is the light of the world and refers to his coming among us with language evocative of the Temple. Jesus is saying that what we used to have to maintain and build is now located him and he gives it freely to all. It’s not about what we hold in terms of status or buildings, it’s about who holds us. We are in the flock of the Good Shepherd, and that matters more than anything else. As Jesus says, “What my Father has given me is greater than all else.”
God’s redemption and mercy are not things that we have to deserve or earn, but rather we receive them as gifts. The Maccabeus family name means “hammer,” and that’s the contrast Jesus is making – he comes not as a hammer, but a Good Shepherd. Jesus comes not to get retribution, not to bring more violence into the world, not to give us something else to build.
The people who come to Jesus ask him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” For the rest of this sermon, I’m going to tell it as plainly as I can. Grace has been on my mind a lot recently. Last week, I attended the annual conference of Mockingbird Ministries, a grace-centric organization that takes it as their sole mission to preach the message of God’s unlimited, unbounded, and unmerited mercy and love towards us. This Grace is exactly what Jesus refers to – “I give my sheep eternal life, and you will never perish. No one will snatch you out of my hand.”
As you all know, Grace is at the core of my understanding of who I am, what Jesus means, and what ministry is all about. And that’s all thanks to Mockingbird, whose work I first encountered in 2015. Being in the flock of the Good Shepherd is all about Grace. We are a part of the flock because our Good Shepherd has chosen to be our shepherd, not because our application to join the flock has been reviewed, our references checked, and our dues paid. And the relationship between a sheep and a shepherd is about right – the sheep gets to eat grass from the green pastures and drink from the still waters; the shepherd does the rest. When a sheep gets lost, the Good Shepherd will risk everything to bring us back, again, not because we deserve being saved but quite to the contrary. If there’s one word the Christian should erase from our vocabulary, it is the word “deserve.”
One of the speakers at the conference talked about the status-based culture that we live in. Everything is about status – we’re constantly measuring ourselves and others through the lens of status. She noted that sociologists call this “homophily,” where we seek out people who are like us. We don’t want to risk lowering our status by being affiliated with those too far below us, and while we want to ascend the ladder of status, we know that we have to take small steps, or we’ll be accused of being a pretentious status-seeker. Based on the degrees we have, the cars we drive, the titles we use, the photos of ourselves that we allow others to see, the types of vacations we take, the grades that we get, the number of people who laugh at our jokes, we’re constantly thinking about status. We lie awake at night reviewing the mistakes that we’ve made, or are afraid we will make, and wondering how our status will be impacted.
But Grace jams a stick in the spokes of the status game. The theme of the Mockingbird conference was “The Big Relief,” which is also the title of the newly released book by David Zahl, the director of Mockingbird. It’s an absolutely fantastic book that I’m sure I’ll be drawing further inspiration from. I really appreciate the idea of Grace as relief: relief from the pressures to be better, do better, and live better. We swim in an ocean of strategies, hacks, and techniques for somehow maximizing ourselves. Effectively, our lives are no longer gifts, they are projects. We view our bodies as things to sculpt, our bank account as our scorecard, our popularity as a referendum on us. Our attention is so often on the things we’re trying to build, the project list that we maintain, and the oil supply we’re always having to replenish.
I’m pretty sure you feel the same way as I do about it all – tired, burdened, and anxious. I just want some relief. And relief, thanks be to God, is exactly what our Good Shepherd gives us. Jesus Christ gives us that precious combination of love, mercy, and belonging. You are enough and you are set free from the status game. The thing about status is that none of us are reliable narrators of our lives. We either overinflate our sense of self or we criticize ourselves mercilessly. But the gracious words of our Good Shepherd stand in relief to the stories we tell ourselves. Our Good Shepherd knows us, blesses us, cherishes us, and love us so much as to die for us that we might always and no matter what belong to his eternal life. Because of Jesus, there is not to earn, but plenty to enjoy. To put it plainly, Jesus is our Good Shepherd and that’s a big relief.
