First Reading: Ezekiel 34:1-16
The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: To the shepherds—thus says the Lord God: Woe, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat; you clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatted calves, but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak; you have not healed the sick; you have not bound up the injured; you have not brought back the strays; you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.
Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As I live, says the Lord God, because my sheep have become a prey and my sheep have become food for all the wild animals, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves and have not fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God: I am against the shepherds, and I will hold them accountable for my sheep and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them.
For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep and will sort them out. As shepherds sort out their flocks when they are among scattered sheep, so I will sort out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them into their own land, and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strays, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
Before we dive in to the gospel according to John this morning, I want to take a moment to deal with the first reading. What Doug just read for us came from the book of Ezekiel, one of the Old Testament prophets.
Ezekiel spoke specifically to the people of Judah, exiled to Babylon after the overthrow of the southern kingdom and destruction of the first temple in 586 BCE.
Ezekiel was a priest, you see, and he was captured and carried off as a prisoner during the first Babylonian attack on the city of Jerusalem, before the kingdom fell. This book starts five years later, as he sits on a hill overlooking an irrigation canal in Babylon. Ezekiel spends no small amount of time telling the people what went wrong. In this chapter, he indicts his own colleagues and bosses – the priests and the kings – who were meant to be shepherds but instead exploited the very people they were meant to feed, protect and defend.
But this passage comes toward the end of the book, when Ezekiel gets into the ‘now what?’ part of God’s message for a beleaguered and now-exiled people. God promises that this is not the end of their story – that there will come a day when all of creation is renewed, when justice and righteousness reign. Out of humanity’s failure comes God’s great hope.
God promises that one day, God will be the shepherd who leads the people.
In the gospel of John, we’re picking up in chapter 10. It’s important to know that just before this, in chapter 9, is the story we heard a few weeks ago where Jesus encounters a man who was born blind. After a conversation with his disciples about whose fault it was that he was born blind, Jesus uses spit to make mud on the ground, rubs it into the man’s eyes, and tells him to go and wash. He does it, and suddenly he can see for the first time. There’s a big hullabaloo when everyone finds out—not because they’re so overjoyed, but because…local politics. You see, Jesus did this on the sabbath. Everyone agrees that he’s obviously incredibly powerful, but at the end of the chapter the religious leaders are arguing amongst themselves about where his great power comes from. Is he from God? If he is, then why is he breaking God’s commandments about working on the sabbath? Could power like this come from the devil or some other evil force?
That’s where we pick up the story.
Scripture: John 10:1-14
“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.
But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.
Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me…”
Bad shepherds, good shepherd. Hired hands, good shepherd. Gate, thieves and robbers. These two passages give us a lot of metaphor, sometimes overlapping, comparing and contrasting, sometimes wandering off a little into left field.
But the core of both passages is this: the people of God do not exist solely to make their leaders’ lives better. In fact, the leaders are the ones meant to sacrifice their comfort, their security, and even their lives for the good of the people.
Jesus had a huge variety of metaphors available to him in the ancient world – kings, emperors, military generals, even priests or house managers for the wealthy – people who take charge, give orders, and get things done. But when he wants to talk about the power of God, Jesus says “I am the good shepherd.”
An emperor exists solely to be obeyed without question, to be served, to be made comfortable. A queen might be concerned with the welfare of her citizens, or she might not – and no one can make her do otherwise.
A shepherd, on the other hand, spends 99.9% of their time concerned with the well-being of the sheep. That is the WHOLE POINT. The role of a shepherd is to protect the sheep from predators, to guide them to food and water, to make sure they don’t injure themselves or get stuck. The bad shepherds in Ezekiel failed to do this, and instead slaughtered the lambs for their dinner, kept all the best milk and wool, and outright ignored the sheep who wandered off or needed help.
So you’ll notice that Jesus doesn’t just say ‘I am the shepherd’ – he says ‘I am the GOOD shepherd.’
This is also where the gate metaphor comes in. It’s a little Easter egg for those of us who come later to find, because it likely didn’t make a ton of sense in the moment.
But Jesus says ‘I am the gate for the sheep, and anyone who comes into the pasture any other way is a thief and a robber.’
Think of it this way: if someone knocks on your front door, they could be anyone, with any kind of intentions. They may or may not be invited in. But if someone breaks your window and climbs into your house at 2am, you can assume it’s not a friend coming over for dinner, or the internet company there to reset your router.
Jesus is the gate. Anyone coming around saying ‘hey, God sent me to ______’ without showing the fruits of the life, love, and care of Jesus is…probably lying. Many—SO MANY—will come ‘in my name’, Jesus says. You have to test them before you follow them.
How many of us have heard of the science behind the ‘alpha male’ in wolves and wolf packs?
In 1970, a researcher named David Mech published a book on wolf biology that became a central text for biologists and scientists of all kinds. In order to get the data for that book, he and others studied a group of wolves in captivity – a large pack, stuck together in a limited space.
What they found was that the males would fight one another for dominance and eventually, one would come out on top as the ‘alpha male’ of the pack. The alpha got the best mates, the best food, and controlled the rest of the pack. The rest of the males were ‘betas’ who would fall in line and take whatever was left over.
This became the narrative for how wolf packs operate, and eventually the language and frameworks spread into the dog world and, unfortunately, the world of human relationships as well. There are millions of people around the world unironically calling themselves ‘alphas’ and using ‘beta’ as an insult.
But that’s not the end of the story. For two decades after that book was published, Mech and his colleagues studied wolf packs in the wild – and what they found there was very different.
In the wild, wolf packs are much smaller and consist of essentially a nuclear family of wolves. You have dad wolf, mom wolf, and their children who stay with them for a couple years before going off on their own. Like human families, mom and dad are the ones running the show in these packs – but there is no fighting for dominance. There is no alpha or beta male. There is no pecking order except for the fact that the younger pups generally eat first.
Mech discovered that he was wrong about wolves, and he has spent the past several decades retracting his research, publishing corrections, and trying to get the word out that he was wrong. In 2022, just four years ago, he finally got the publisher to take the original book out of print.
As it turns out, the behavior he observed in captive wolf packs was unique to those circumstances – where a bunch of unrelated wolves were shoved together with limited space and limited resources. Later, Mech said it was more like the structure of a prison population than any kind of in-born trait or behavior.
So the ‘alpha wolf’ is a myth. But I believe it caught on so quickly precisely because we have been marinating in violent power struggles for so long that when we saw one book that said this was a fundamental part of the natural world, we all went ‘yep, absolutely, makes sense, let’s run with it.’
Meanwhile, Jesus, God made flesh—when he needs a metaphor that will capture his relationship to God and God’s people, he does not reach for an image of dominance or power or influence. Instead, he says ‘I am the good shepherd.’ Not even just ‘I’m like a shepherd.’ He says I am the good shepherd.
We have plenty of examples of bad shepherds, from Ezekiel on down the list. It’s a long list.
But we also have an abundance of examples of Christ, our Good Shepherd, binding up wounds and seeking the lost and feeding the sheep to remind us that we are safe in his fold.
If you’re wondering how I’ve talked this long about the Good Shepherd without bringing up Psalm 23, don’t worry – we’ve arrived.
There’s a bookmark in your bulletin with two versions of Psalm 23 on it – the KJV, which many of us have already memorized over the years and might feel the most familiar and comfortable – and the NIV, with some updated language.
I want to invite you to put this in your spiritual emergency kit. Leave it somewhere that you’re likely to find it when you need a reminder that you are loved, that you are held in God’s hands, that you are safe.
But for now, I want to invite us to read it aloud together, as we meditate on Jesus’ loving care. We’re going to read the New International Version side.
The Lord is my shepherd… 187 – Savior Like A Shepherd Lead Us