Patrick Comerford
Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (20 April 2025) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (8 June 2025), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 11 May 2025), sometimes known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Dom Gregory Dix (1901-1952), priest, monk, liturgical scholar and author of The Shape of the Liturgy (1945). Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
John 10: 1-10 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 1 ‘Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’ 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
7 So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.’
Today’s Reflection:
The Gospel reading today (John 10: 1-10) continues the theme of the Good Shepherd, which we heard of yesterday’s portion (verses 22-30) of the ‘Good Shepherd Discourse’ (John 10: 1-42).
When I was a child on my grandmother’s farm at Cappoquin in West Waterford, all the summer days, it seems, were filled with sunshine, and there was endless time to go fishing in the brooks, and walking through the meadows.
But there were two tasks I hated. One was trying to milk the cows: the adults seemed to think it was funny in some way that only adults understood to send us out to herd the cattle in at evening time for milking. Inevitably, I ended up covered in something more odious than milk – and never even liked the smell of milk anyway.
The other task was one that came around, it seemed, every time I was around – the great sheep dip. My city friends and cousins joked at the time about television ads about liver fluke and sheep dipping. But I knew all about it – and it was no joking matter.
Sheep are easy to call together – that was not the problem – and no, I did not have to milk them. But the smell of the sheep dip was only surpassed by the smells I associate with milking the cows. It was pungent … and there was always some fresh-faced younger uncle who thought it funny, seeing my face, to ensure that I ended up in the dipping area too.
So, when Jesus says he is the Good Shepherd and the Gate for the sheep, he has no romantic city delusions.
I imagine that the Good Shepherd is one of the most popular images for stained glass windows in churches. But we portray him dressed in dry-cleaned or freshly-laundered and pressed red and white clothes, when everyone knows that it is impractical for any shepherd to dress like that.
He has a cuddly, white lamb draped around his shoulders, when any shepherd knows that a lamb that needs to be rescued is only that is likely to be covered in briars and brambles, cut and dirty, lost and bewildered and frightened.
At this time of the year, we have moved beyond lambing time, and the little ones are beginning to grow although still suckling.
I remember hearing many year ago on Achill Island about a man who died when he climbed down a cliff face in search of sheep that had strayed. He lost his footing and fell to the sea below. It was a risky undertaking, and he paid the price. And someone commented on the low price sheep were fetching marts at the time. The lost sheep worked their way back up the cliff face, in any case, but they were not worth it.
Shepherding has seldom been a good career move. It’s not on the list of most guidance teachers or careers advisers.
That’s why the Christmas story is so shocking to those who first heard about it.
Sheep were cheap meat, and the shepherds were easy prey – to wolves, to hyenas, to thieves and to sheep rustlers. Sheep provided wool, meat, milk, cheese and yoghurt. Yet, shepherds were cheap to hire, and they did a lowly job. They were exposed to unprotected heat in the day, and to the bitter cold at night.
Christ is humbling himself when he calls himself the Good Shepherd.
The Prophet Ezekiel compared the well-off politicians and rulers of his day with negligent, impoverished shepherds: ‘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’ (Ezekiel 34: 6).
And Ezekiel, of course, is reminding the people that they too were once like lost sheep. They had wandered like lost sheep in the wilderness.
Everyone expected the Messiah to be a king, but kings were not good role models. No-one expected the Messiah to be a shepherd, and so it is shocking when the shepherd boy David is chosen to be king, and shocking when Jesus compares himself not with kings but with shepherds.
This is costly leadership. This is leadership that allows itself to be vulnerable, to be a potentially victimised.
When Christ becomes the good shepherd, he becomes vulnerable and compassionate, and he expresses his compassion for the lost sheep in going to meet them where they are, in their towns and villages, teaching them, bringing them the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.
Yes, the one who is hailed by Saint John the Baptist as the Lamb of God (John 1: 35), becomes the Good Shepherd. And the God Shepherd becomes the Lamb of God.
Christ calls us to turn our values upside down, not for the fun of it, but out of compassion for the vulnerable and the lost, those who have fallen by the wayside, those everyone else thinks are not worth the risk of going after.
Who are the lost sheep for you this morning?
Who do you think Christ is foolhardy in going after?
Will we follow him to find them?
Will they be welcome back in through the gate?
Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Today’s Prayers (Monday 12 May 2025):
‘Health and Hope in the Manyoni District’ provides the theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced yesterday with a programme update from Dr Frank Mathew Haji of the Integrated Child Health and End Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV Programme in Tanzania.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 12 May 2025, International Mothers’ Day) invites us to pray:
Gracious God, on this International Mothers’ Day, we thank you for mothers and pray for the success of the Anglican Church of Tanzania’s healthcare programme in the Manyoni district.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life:
raise us, who trust in him,
from the death of sin to the life of righteousness,
that we may seek those things which are above,
where he reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Merciful Father,
you gave your Son Jesus Christ to be the good shepherd,
and in his love for us to lay down his life and rise again:
keep us always under his protection,
and give us grace to follow in his steps;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Risen Christ,
faithful shepherd of your Father’s sheep:
teach us to hear your voice
and to follow your command,
that all your people may be gathered into one flock,
to the glory of God the Father.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
