The Shepherd Who Dies for the Sheep

The leaders had thrown the man who used to be blind out of the synagogue, and Jesus had found him. Some of those same leaders stood around Jesus with their arms folded, sure they were the ones who could see.

So Jesus told them about sheep.

"Truly," he said, "anyone who climbs over the wall of the sheep pen instead of coming in by the gate is a thief. The shepherd comes in through the gate. The sheep listen for his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out."

(In those days several flocks often slept in one stone pen at night. In the morning each shepherd stood at the gate and called, and only his own sheep came trotting. A stranger could shout "Here, sheep!" until lunchtime and get nothing but a field of woolly backs turned toward him.)

"They will never follow a stranger," Jesus said. "They run away from him, because they don't know his voice."

The leaders looked at each other. Sheep? They did not understand a word of it.

Jesus tried again. "I am the gate for the sheep. Whoever comes in through me will be safe. He will go in and out and find good grass. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they could have life, life full to the brim."

Then he said, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."

To lay down your life means to die. A good shepherd stands between the wolf and the flock, even if the wolf kills him.

"A hired man is different," Jesus said. "The sheep aren't his. When he sees the wolf coming, he drops everything and runs! The wolf grabs one sheep and scatters the rest. He runs because he is only a hired man, and he does not care about the sheep."

(A sheep cannot climb a tree. A hired man can, and he has usually picked his tree already.)

"I am the good shepherd," Jesus said again. "I know my sheep, and my sheep know me, the same way the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep."

He looked past the crowd, past the city walls. "I have other sheep that are not in this pen. I must bring them too. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd."

Then he said the strangest thing of all. "The Father loves me because I lay down my life, so that I can take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down myself. I have the right to lay it down and take it up again. My Father told me to."

Any shepherd brave enough to die for his flock leaves them alone the next morning. No one stands at the gate. No one calls their names. The wolf only has to wait.

But this Shepherd had said he would take his life up again. He was the one God had promised, too. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God had scolded Israel's leaders for feeding themselves and letting the sheep wander, and he had said, "I myself will search for my sheep." The leaders in front of Jesus had just pushed a man out of their pen, and the Shepherd had gone looking for him.

Before long Jesus did exactly what he said. He died on a cross, and no one took his life from him. He laid it down himself. Then, on the third day, he took it up again and walked out of his tomb alive. Since then his voice has gone out past those city walls and across the seas, into languages those leaders never heard. One by one, sheep hear their own names and come out through the gate, and the gate is Jesus.