The Life Promised

There’s a story I came across some time ago about a woman who was startled awake in the middle of the night by desperate cries of “Help! Help!” She lay still for a moment, unsure if she was dreaming. Then she heard it again. She threw back the covers, crept downstairs, and followed the voice to her living room fireplace where she discovered a burglar, upside down, head wedged firmly in the flue, stuck fast and going nowhere.

The police and fire department eventually got him free, though not before dismantling part of the mantle and the surrounding masonry. And the woman? She flipped on every light in the house and videotaped the whole thing. I’ve always thought that if I were her, I might have also reached for a Bible and read aloud from this morning’s gospel: “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.” It would have felt entirely appropriate.

We smile at that story, and rightly so. But behind the humour lies something that Jesus is pressing us to think seriously about something about entry, about access, about who has legitimate claim to care for us, and who does not.

A World Full of Voices

Jesus is speaking directly to the Pharisees when he tells this parable. It’s important to understand the context, because John’s gospel doesn’t let us forget it. Just before this passage separated in our lectionary by several weeks, but not in the text itself we have the story of the man born blind. Jesus healed him. And rather than celebrating, the religious authorities interrogated the man, pressured him to denounce his healer, and ultimately threw him out of the synagogue. He was cast out for telling the truth, for refusing to conform, for declining to play along with a version of religion that prioritized institutional power over human dignity.

And then Jesus finds him on the street. Right there. Outside. In the margins. That’s where Jesus shows up.

Chelsea Harmon puts it beautifully: the man who was healed from blindness serves as an example of coming to recognize the voice of the Shepherd and follow him to abundant life. He heard the voice of the Pharisees authoritative, demanding, commanding and eventually came to realize that it did not sound like anyone who truly cared for him. It didn’t even sound like someone who followed the Shepherd. So when he hears the voice of Jesus, something in him recognizes it. And he follows.

In a very real, even literal way, Harmon writes, the healed man has been led out by the Good Shepherd through the Gate who was his healer.

This is where we enter the passage. Jesus is not speaking in the abstract. He is speaking to a specific moment, to specific people who used their religious power to exclude rather than include, to harm rather than heal. This parable is, among other things, a rebuke and an invitation.

More Than Pastoral Poetry

When we hear the shepherd imagery, whether from Psalm 23 or from John 10, it’s tempting to reduce it to something purely personal and comforting. And it is comforting! There is real tenderness in these words. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters.” These lines have accompanied people through grief, through fear, through the long watches of the night. They matter deeply, personally, intimately.

But we diminish them if we stop there.

The shepherd imagery in biblical literature carries enormous political weight. The rod and the staff that the Psalmist mentions yes, they comfort, but they also protect and guide. They are tools of leadership, symbols of authority. And in the ancient world, the shepherd was one of the most common metaphors for a king. When a biblical writer calls God a shepherd, they are making a claim about power about who holds it, how it should be used, and in whose interest.

Andrew McGowan writes that the Psalmist makes the claim not simply that the God of Israel is a shepherd, but a very particular kind of shepherd one who cares for the people and gives justice. Not all shepherds would take the kind of care described in this song, and not all sheep would receive the gifts described. The intimacy the Psalmist expresses is not necessarily part of the standard relationship between shepherd and sheep, any more than it was typical between king and people. Israel’s God is therefore not simply authoritative or powerful, but beneficent and wise.

This matters. Because when Jesus picks up this imagery in John 10, he’s not just offering a warm metaphor. He’s making a counter-claim against every version of leadership religious, political, social that takes without giving, that controls without caring, that uses power for its own ends rather than for the flourishing of those entrusted to it.

McGowan continues: the God revealed in Jesus has a particular character, and faith involves accepting and manifesting life in relation to him. Without participation in the same self-giving love, any claim that leadership, let alone national identity is Christian, is hollow. It identifies the claimant as hireling or thief. Jesus is indeed a “good” shepherd who cares for his sheep, and his power is most evident in that he lays down his life for them and is himself one of them.

The Gate as Liberation

Jesus says something that sounds strange if we take it too literally: “I am the gate.” Not the shepherd the gate. A gate is a threshold, a point of passage, a way through. And Jesus says that those who enter through him will be saved, will come in and go out, and will find pasture.

What I find moving about this image is its hospitality. The gate doesn’t demand impossible credentials. It doesn’t interrogate you about your past. It doesn’t first require that you prove your worthiness. It opens. And through it, Jesus says, there is life life abundant.

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

I’ll be honest with you. When I read those closing words this morning, I felt something like relief. Because life abundant is exactly what many people are searching for, and not always finding. People are exhausted. People are lonely. People are caught in systems economic, social, institutional that grind them down rather than build them up. And yet here is Jesus, making this breathtaking promise: abundant life. Life overflowing. Life that doesn’t just survive but thrives.

But I also feel the weight of the question that comes with it: Where do we find life in abundance? And harder still Who is being kept from it, and how?

Systems, Sheep, and the Courage to Ask Hard Questions

I believe the promises of Jesus extend beyond this life. And I equally believe that the kingdom of God exists in the here and now — and that we are responsible for tending it. That means asking difficult questions about the systems we live within and participate in. Not because we want to be self-flagellating or despairing, but because love compels us to look honestly at the world.

Lindsey Jodrey writes, “Let us be open to noticing new things about ourselves as we read this text: Where do we participate in systems that oppress others? Where do we grapple and grasp for power? Where are we challenging the systems even when it will cost us something? Are we following the voice of the Good Shepherd who calls us to critique these systems and follow the path to abundant life?”

These are not comfortable questions. But they are faithful ones. Because the shepherd in our scriptures is not a passive figure watching things unfold from a safe distance. The shepherd searches, guides, protects, and most profoundly lays down his life. That kind of leadership is not self-serving. It is entirely other-directed.

And we are called to participate in it.

The Voice You Recognize

The man born blind had his whole world turned upside down, literally, by receiving sight he’d never had, and socially by the fallout that followed. He was interrogated, dismissed, and expelled. But when he encountered Jesus in the street afterward, something happened that theology can only gesture toward: he recognized the voice. Not because of a credential or a title. Because the voice itself carried a quality that matched what he had already experienced, care, dignity, restoration.

That’s what Jesus is pointing to when he talks about sheep knowing their shepherd’s voice. It isn’t magic. It is the accumulated recognition of how someone has treated you, spoken to you, shown up for you. The healed man had already experienced what Jesus’s presence meant. When he heard the voice again, he knew.

We are each learning, over time, to distinguish the voices in our lives, those that speak life into us and others, and those that claim authority without offering care. Those that open gates and those that lock them. Those that lead toward flourishing and those that lead toward fear.

The gate is open. The shepherd is calling. The question left for each of us is this: Are we walking through toward abundant life, and are we helping to make sure that gate remains open for everyone?