Reading This Story
Commonly John 10, the story of the Good Shepherd is read along the lines of
“Follow Jesus and you will be okay”
And there is a lot in that.
John 10 “I have come that they may have life in all it’s fullness” is one of the most quoted verses in the New Testament
I was associated with an organisation a number of years ago called Ten10 – which was about whole life evangelism for 20-40s.
But it’s a story about finding life in Jesus
Which consists in leaving the sheep pen, and grazing on pasture.
In the middle of competing, harmful voices.
And the offer of Jesus, the urging of Jesus to let him guide us.
Middle East Shepherd
There is the lovely story of the Theology Professor taking his students on a tour of the Holy Land, and coming to the fields around Bethlehem and the professor explaining that in the West a shepherd would normally walk behind the sheep driving them, but a shepherd in the Middle East would prefer to walk ahead, lead by example show the way, and that is the example that Jesus is giving here.
However, as he was explaining this, one sharp eyed student spotted a flock of sheep and the shepherd in the distance, except this shepherd was walking behind the sheep.
Look their sir, look at the flock of sheep, the shepherd is behind the sheep.
Taken aback at this obvious contradiction the professor left his students behind and walked off to investigate this improperly herded flock of sheep.
Ten minutes later he returns with a self-satisfied grin on his face
That my students was not the shepherd
That was the butcher.
That story does illustrate something about the parable of the Good Shepherd.
It is a parable that takes place in the context of threat, of hirelings, bandits, brigands and wolves.
And in this hostile environment that one who keeps you is the good shepherd.
And what the juxtaposition with John 9 is force you to realise that very often religion is at the heart of what is threatening, what prevents life being lived to the full.
Healing Of Blind Man
What do we make of all this?
It seems to me that the place that you have to go to understand John chapter 10 is John chapter 9.
What happens in John chapter 9?
John chapter 9 is the story of the healing of a blind man.
You may have heard me say before that recent archaeological evidence has uncovered which newspapers were read by each of the gospel writers.
Luke, the left feminist, read the Guardian
Matthew, the conservative read the Daily Telegraph
Mark, the punch, story teller read the Daily Record
And John with his long in depth look at stories read the Times Colour Supplement.
And this John 9 is a like a long told story in the colour supplement, with lots of scenes, and John 10 is like an insert box with more comment on the story.
John 9 is reportage
John 10 is editorial.
So John 9 is about the story of a blind man
And remember blind men are very important in John ever since he told us in the first chapter that Jesus is the true light coming into the world, and the light shines in the darkness. And at the start of the chapter Jesus says that he is the light of the world.
You have a blind man whom Jesus heals by spitting on his eyes.
Gives him life
Life in all its fullness
He puts mud on his eyes, and says to the man go and wash and and he goes and he washes and he comes back
So you have someone going and coming back, because they have heard Jesus’ voice
And his neighbours notice that he can see, and they say “How can you see?” and Jesus says The man known as Jesus made mud, and anointed my eyes, and then he said “Go and wash”
And the Pharisees go and quiz the man
And then they quiz the parents who are afraid, and hand back the son to them
You go and talk to him, because they are afraid.
And does this remind you an incident where someone has been afraid and run away
And some predators have been left to the sheep.
So the parents remarkably are like the bondservant, I have more to do with this guy than even his parents
And the wolves are like the Pharisees, desperate that this man be not blind, desperate that his life be not full.
So they quiz the blind man, who is fantastic and taunts them
“How did he open your eyes?”
“I told you already, And you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Surely you people don’t want to become his disciples also..
Later on he says
“If this fellow were not from God, he could do nothing?”
They replied and said to him, “You were utterly born in sin, and do you teach us? And they threw him out.”
And then the blind man goes back to Jesus, and listens to him
“Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asks him
He replied and said “And who is it Lord, that I may believe in him?”
Jesus said to him, “Not only have you seen him, but the one speaking to you, that’s him.” And he said “Lord, I believe.” And he worshipped him.
No one has ever done this before with Jesus.
The Voices That Destroy Life
Last month at presbytery, I was shocked (Leslie and Hilary are sick of me going on about this) when after a fairly uncontroversial talk on climate change (in advance of the Copenhagen Summit), an elder whom I know fairly well got up and said that the evidence behind all of this is fairly questionable, and that the warming of the earth is quite probably part of us coming out of an ice-age
To be fair, he would probably have had a better response at presbytery if he had advocating fascism,
But it did make you worry how many out there believe that
I bumped into the elder in question a few days later when we were carol singing at Morrisons, and he was good enough to send me the articles from the Daily Telegraph where he had got his information from
And they were written by someone whom I think is a Christian (certainly he once gave one of my favourite ever talks at the Christian Arts Festival Greenbelt)
It’s not such a big deal here, but the in the world’s biggest polluter,
It is Christian Republican politicians who are the biggest opponents of legislation on climate change,
Not least Sarah Palin who recently said
“we can’t say with assurance that man’s activities cause weather changes”.
By the way, if you want good evidence, this is the graph that illustrates what is going one – the hockey stick.
Now, less than half Americans believe that humans are responsible for climate change.
Another friend whose job is to measure the carbon footprint of UK companies says that most company bosses don’t believe that climate change is human induced.
And the likes of Jeremy Clarkson is of course a famous climate change denier.
He said recently
"I think people are rather bored with the idea of climate change and, when we do get a lovely day, let's just enjoy it, not get guilty."
Why am I getting upset about this
Why trumpeting an environmental message when I should be talking about the gospel.
I guess it is because of photos like this.
Kadija Omar stands by the lifeless body of the last remaining goat from her herd, all 50 of which have died during the current drought. This last goat died just 90 minutes before this picture was taken.
For Kadija, 45, it means the end of her pastoral way of life, and she has now set up her makeshift camp on the edge of Elwak town, along with her right children, one of whim has malaria, another pneumonia
The life of the pastoralist is over. The loss of my last goat is just another death, I’ve lost so much already I can’t think about it.
Or this woman here, Habiba Malim, whose family now lives in a camp by a roadside, surrounded by starving hyenas, who come to the tarpaulins with water in them, and last month snatched her one month old baby.
There has to be something here for us about being led by the good shepherd, and not the hired hands and the bandits and the brigands who crush life.
|
Tags
Subscribe to this comment's feed