The fourth Sunday in the Easter season is known as Good Shepherd Sunday, because the gospel readings each year are taken from the first half of John 10, in which Jesus unfolds the complex theme of God’s shepherding relationship with Israel and applies it to himself as God’s legitimate agent. This year we get the opening ten verses, in which Jesus is just warming up to the shepherding theme and actually likens himself to the gate in the sheepfold as well as the shepherd who comes in the morning to call the sheep and lead them out to pasture. A mixed metaphor for which he (or John his ghostwriter) might get marked down in an English/Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic class, but we get the point. It is all about his legitimacy as protector and leader, in contrast to the Pharisees, and about the sound sense of all who put their trust in him rather than in his rivals then and now. You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time …. but only Jesus can be trusted for all time. Well, that is my version of the modern proverb.
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Howard Pilgrim