Patrick Comerford
Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (24 May 2026), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 26 April 2026), sometimes known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Later this evening, I hope to take part in a meeting of the trustees of a local charity in Stony Stratford. But, 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.
The Good Shepherd … a stained glass window in Saint Mark’s Church, Armagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)John 10: 11-18 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away – and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’
Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλόςToday’s Reflections:
This morning’s Gospel reading continues the Good Shepherd passage we were reading yesterday (John 10: 1-10).
In Saint John’s Gospel, there are seven I AM sayings in which Christ says who he is. The Dominican author and theologian, Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, points out that that in the Bible, seven is the number of perfection. We know of the six days of creation and how God rested on the seventh. In Saint John’s Gospel, we have seven signs and seven “I AM” sayings disclosing for us who Christ truly is.
The seven signs in Saint John’s Gospel are:
• Turning water into wine in Cana (John 2: 1-11);
• Healing with a word (John 4: 46-51);
• Healing a crippled man at Bethesda (John 5: 1-9);
• The feeding of 5,000 (John 6: 1-14);
• Walking on water (John 6: 16-21);
• The healing of the man born blind (John 9: 1-7);
• The Raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11: 1-46).
The seven ‘I AM’ sayings In Saint John’s Gospel, disclosing for us who Christ truly is, are:
• I am the Bread of Life (John 6: 35, 41, 48-51);
• I am the Light of the World (John 8: 12, 9: 5);
• I am the Door of the Sheepfold (John 10: 7, 9);
• I am the Good Shepherd (John 10: 11, 14);
• I am the Resurrection and the Life (John 11: 25);
• I am the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14: 6);
• I am the True Vine (John 15:1, 5).
In the book of Revelation, we have the seven churches and the seven seals. And I could go on.
Today’s Gospel reading presents us with the best-known and best-loved ‘I AM’ sayings, which is repeated twice in this passage: ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ (John 10: 11, 14).
This is such a popular image – one that has been with many of us since our Sunday School and childhood days. I think, perhaps, that the image of the Good Shepherd is one of the most popular images to fill stained-glass windows in our church buildings, surpassed in popularity only by windows showing the Crucifixion or the Last Supper.
But sometimes I have problems with our cosy, comfortable image of the Good Shepherd. Christ is so often portrayed in clean, spick-and-span, neatly tailored, nicely dry-cleaned, red and white robes, complete with a golden clasp to hold all those robes together.
And the lost sheep is a huggable, lovable, white fluffy Little Lamb, a little pet, no different from the Little Lamb that Mary had in the nursery rhyme and that followed her to school.
But shepherds and sheep, in real life, are not like that.
I remember once, on Achill Island, hearing about a shepherd who went down a rock-face looking for a lost sheep, and who lost his life. Local people were shocked – lambs don’t fetch a price in the mart that makes them worth losing your life for.
The sheep survived. But as you can imagine, in the process of being lost, it had been torn by brambles, had lost a lot of its wool, was bleeding and messy. Any shepherd going down after a lost sheep will get torn by brambles too, covered in sheep droppings, slip on the rocks, risk his life. And all for what?
And yet Christ says he is the Good Shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep, in the face of great risks from wolves and from the terrain, and against all common wisdom, as the hired hands would know.
Christ, against all the prevailing wisdom, identifies with those who are lost, those who are socially on the margins, who are smelly and dirty, injured and broken, regarded by everyone else as worthless, as simply not worth the bother.
God sees us – all of us – in our human condition, with all our collective and individual faults and failings, and in Christ totally identifies with us.
Christ has already told those who are listening: ‘I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved … and find pasture … the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have [spiritual] life, and have it abundantly’ (verse 9-10). Now when he speaks of himself as the good shepherd, the image is one that is familiar to those who hear him. True followers, he tells them, recognise the good shepherd.
Perhaps they are prompted to recall that David too had been a good shepherd (I Samuel 17: 34-35), but this was when he lived on the margins, and before he became king. Would they recall the many Old Testament promises that God would come to shepherd his people (Isaiah 40: 11; Jeremiah 23: 1-6; Ezekiel 34: 11)?
When Moses, Aaron and Miriam led the ex-slaves out of Egypt and into freedom, the people learned as they went to appreciate the value of a nomadic life.
They learned, first, that everything is a gift from God, symbolised by the manna, the first Bread of Life. And they learned, too, that worship need not be centred in one place. They came to value Tent over Temple and sheep over settled land. To be a shepherd was a noble occupation – a continuing theme in Jewish history.
Entering the Promised Land, these nomads found themselves surrounded by nations whose powerful elites ruled by subjugating the poor and weak. Yet this new community understood themselves to be completely differently. They were equal partners with each other. And they were equal partners because – as they learned in their wilderness – they were partners with God, the true owner of the land, with God who, as with the manna in the wilderness, called them to share in common all they had.
They had come to value equality and mutual respect. From the beginning, these ex-slaves understood themselves as one people, who lived in an equal partnership with each other and with God by holding fast to the values of the Exodus, when they shared the manna in the wilderness.
But by the time of Christ, however, all this had changed. With the development of a royal aristocracy and the adoption of Temple worship under King Solomon, nomadic values faded and social divisions appeared.
Social strife and class warfare appeared, and any understanding of the land as an equally shared resource belonging to God disappeared.
The kingdom then split into two nations, Israel and Judah, and Judaism split into rival branches. Some were centred on the Temple in Jerusalem, while Samaritan Judaism had its own rival temple on Mount Gerizim. Two kingdoms, two Temples, fear and hatred, injustice and inequality, were in sharp contrast to Christ’s message of radical inclusion, symbolised in Saint Luke’s image of the Good Samaritan and Saint John’s image of the Good Shepherd.
In Christ’s time, shepherds are the dispossessed, the lowest rung of society. They no longer own their own land. And when they longer owned their own sheep they often ended up as the hired hands of the wealthy urban dwellers, the absentee landlords who feature in so many of the Gospel parables.
These hired shepherd-servants depend for their livelihood on work that requires them to be out in the fields and away from their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, the family members any honourable man would have stayed home to protect. As a result, shepherds were considered to be men without honour. At best, they were unreliable; at worst they were borderline bandits. Shepherds are despised as much as Samaritans. In this context, a good shepherd, like a good Samaritan, is a contradiction in terms.
As with Saint Luke’s story of the Good Samaritan, Christ uses the image of the Good Shepherd, a despised external ‘other,’ to challenge our preconceptions about others. The invitation is to think about what is really important in human relationships. And Christ’s answer is always the same: compassion, individual moral character, and generous, inclusive action. We are not to condemn by assigning human beings to hated categories.
Christ constantly challenges his followers to live out the Gospel on the margins as he consistently placed himself among those who society had rejected: tax collectors, sinners, Samaritans, shepherds …
He says that he is the ‘good’, the real or proper ‘shepherd’, the one who dies for his ‘sheep’, his flock (verse 11).
But the ‘hired hand’ (verse 12) does not care enough to save the sheep from the ‘wolf’. Old Testament prophets spoke of leaders of Israel in these terms, so Jesus probably speaks of them here – shepherds who are not worthy of the name.
Christ’s relationship to people is like the Father’s relationship with him (verse 15).
Who are the ‘other sheep’ in verse 16? Are they the Samaritans? Are they non-Jews, the gentiles, the nations? They will have equal status with those who already follow Christ, as part of one Church.
Christ has been given the authority to choose to die and the power to rise again from the dead (verse 18). He is in control of his own death and resurrection. A truly Easter theme in the week of the Fourth Sunday of Easter.
Today’s Prayers (Monday 27 April 2026):
‘Prayer and Action in Pakistan’ provides the theme this week (26 April to 2 May 2206) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 50-51. This theme was introduced yesterday with Reflections from the Revd Davidson Solanki, Senior Regional Manager for Asia and the Middle East.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 27 April 2026) invites us to pray:
Lord, we lift up Pakistan and all who continue to recover from recent floods. Bless the frailest and most vulnerable, and may your presence bring comfort and renewed hope to those rebuilding their lives.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment