The good shepherd — the real-life example

We saw that God is the Good Shepherd. Then we looked and saw that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. We are going to take a third text that focuses on Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and then move on to see two primary texts where the Good Shepherd is applied to early Christian leadership.

The pastoral image

Of all of the symbols in the New Testament about leadership, this certainly has prominence, and it has prominence throughout church history. Many churches refer to the leader of the congregation as the pastor. That's a pastoral image.
It is another way of saying 'he is our shepherd'. And so the text that we need to look at briefly before we turn to our responsibility of shepherds is the famous series of shepherd hymns that we have in the 10th chapter of John. {John 10:1-16}
And these break into three sections.
The first two are important, but the third one is even more important. The first two we will look at fairly briefly. The text begins and reads,
He who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in another way, that man is a thief and a robber.
That concern about the thief and the robber that breaks in another way, we find out a little bit later on in the same text,
a stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.
So this thief that's not going to make it because even if he does, they're not going to listen to his voice. The threat is there, but the faithful will not follow that voice. In the center, it talks about the shepherd who doesn't break in from the outside and whose voice is not unfamiliar, but rather, the text says, but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep, to him the gatekeeper opens.
Now this is the scene, and then it talks about the sheep listens to the voice and they follow him and he leads them out and he goes before them. This earlier picture of the shepherd is taken from morning in the village.
Every traditional Middle Eastern village, everybody has to have two or three sheep because that's your winter clothing, but you can't herd two or three sheep. You can't afford the manpower that's required. And so a whole group of people on one particular street, usually the street is blocked at one end, in the center of the village, and it opens out to the pastors at the other end, and everybody, the homes along it, and the homes are about the size of a one-car garage, so they're not very big, and everybody's home is the walls are the same walls of their neighbors, and they all open into the narrow alley.
And all of the sheep on that particular alley will form a flock, and one young man or two young women will be responsible for leading the sheep. So what happens is, early in the morning, they come to the end of the alley, they give their call, and then the gatekeeper opens. That is, everybody, when they hear the call, they open the door, and of course the sheep recognize the call, and they all flow out into the street.

[fig.1: flocking in the morning]

As soon as they're all out, then the shepherd starts his walk out across the countryside, and when he comes to a valley where there's still something to eat, he stops, and then starts moving very, very slowly so that the sheep will have time to eat as they go along. That's the kind of standard pattern of sheep, and shepherds, and village homes.
And that's the scene in the opening part of it. We again have the shepherd, as we talked about in our previous study, is calling, and he is in front, and they recognize this.
I had students in the Middle East who themselves, in their teenage years, engaged in this kind of activity, and I was able to discuss these matters with them, and I asked them, what do you do when you get a new sheep?
They said, aha. They explained it to me.
What happens is, in the morning, the sheep are all very excited. It's about time for breakfast, and they're about ready to go. The call comes, and the owner opens the door.
They all rush out, but this poor sheep, it's the wrong call, so he has a nervous breakdown. He runs around and bangs his head against the stone walls. He's not allowed to go to the party because it's the wrong call, so it takes a while to teach him the new call.
Once he learns it, then he's okay, and off he goes.

The door

The second scene is not confusion. Many commentators have said, well, the imagery here is really confused, but let's hear the text.

"I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.
I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go out and in and find pasture"

and the text concludes with, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."
Because there's no rain until after February, by February, the rain stops. Every shepherd is trying to find something for his sheep to eat.
By the time you get to July and August and September, everything in the open countryside that's edible, the sheep have eaten, so you've got to go farther and farther to find something for your little flock, and pretty soon, most of the day is spent coming and going, and it's counterproductive. The sheep are using up energy, and they're not really eating that much because they don't have time, so the shepherds take either a cave, and they build a low wall across the front of the cave and leave just a small open space so they can count the sheep that go into the cave at night, and whatever shepherd gets there first is allowed to use the cave. Nobody owns this open land.
Or the shepherds get together, and they build an enclosure, usually large enough for a little over a hundred sheep. The wall is about this high (cca 1m). They weave some thorns in at the top, just so a dog or a wolf won't try and come over because the thorns are too tough, and then there's a small entrance, same reason.

[fig. 2 — cave with the thicket]

You can count the sheep as they come in, and guess where the shepherd sleeps? He sleeps across the entrance. He becomes the door. "They go out, and they come in, and they find pasture."
That's a good day. Not every day do you find pasture.
There is a concern for the sheep in the sheepfold.
There is a concern also that they should go out into the outer world, and we're talking about symbols here that are a part of the life of any worshiping congregation.

Briefing

So in the first scene, the shepherd is not the door. In the second scene, it's overnight in the open countryside, the sheep (is protected), and the shepherd is the door.

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