Lectionary Readings: Year A, Fourth Sunday in Easter

One of the more interesting video shorts that I’ve seen on social media showed how several shepherds – I think it was five of them – got together and let their sheep intermingle. When it was time to go, one of them stood up, called his sheep, and his sheep came to him, and followed him away. Then the next shepherd did the same thing, and so on, until each of the shepherds had their flock. 

Part of the reason that this can happen is because the shepherds use a very specific and consistent call with their sheep, which the sheep learn to trust over time. The other reason is that sheep are natural followers; they don’t go off and find their own way, generally, and they learn to trust and follow the person that they know. In fact, if sheep do not recognize a stranger’s voice, they will most likely scatter and run away when a stranger tries to command them.

This is obviously part of the Gospel message today – hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd. But it requires some interpretation. This passage comes to us from chapter 10 of the Gospel of John, and right up until this passage – in Chapter 9 – the main questions that had been asked of people were “Is Jesus sent by God, or not?,” and “Is Jesus the Messiah? And then we suddenly have an entire chapter – this chapter – that deals with various images of sheep and shepherds. There’s obviously a bit more going on.

In Israel at this time, the king was often referred to as a shepherd, and the people were referred to as his flock. Part of this comes from King David, the shepherd boy who became king, and another is taken from the Prophet Ezekiel, who describes God as the perfect shepherd, the one who will sort out the flock that has been scattered to the ends of the world, and will bring them back to their own land, where God will feed them with rich pasture, let them rest by the water ways, and let them lie down in good pastures.

If Chapter nine of John has been all about answering the question of “Who is Jesus?” and “Is Jesus the Messiah?” then this is Jesus’ answer to that question. By using the imagery of God as the Good Shepherd from Ezekiel, which is mirrored in Psalm 23, a psalm of David, the shepherd king, Jesus is looking at them and saying, “I am the Messiah.” He is telling them that the long awaited shepherd king is finally here.

Around this time in the history of Judea, there were many leaders who came and caused uprisings, attempting to overthrow the Romans, or at the very least, some of the puppet kings that the Romans had put in power. There were zealots and rebels who favored violence to fight high taxation and Roman oppression, and several of these zealots and rebels were presented to the people as though they were the Messiah. 

Jesus is telling his disciples and the people listening to him that there were others out there who were just thieves and bandits, that these people were attempting to distract them from knowing the Good Shepherd, the real king of Israel.

Jesus was asking them, through the use of imagery that they should know, the question of not only his identity, but their identity. “How will you know the real Messiah – the real Shepherd appointed by God – if you are distracted by so many other people who come and try to lead you away? How will you know the voice of the shepherd?”

And all the people responded to all of this with a resounding “What?”

The long winded way of saying that is what we read today: “Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.” 

So Jesus tries with some other imagery. He talks about how he is the gate for the sheep. He tells them that everyone else was just a thief and a bandit – you know, the ones who get into the sheepfold by climbing over walls and other things – but that he is the one who allows people into the sheepfold for safety, and will go out through him to find good pastures. 

Shepherds at that time used to lay down in the gate to the sheepfold, so that they could protect the sheep from predators, and to keep the sheep from getting out into the wild where the predators live. Jesus’ priority is the sheep. And in this case, the sheep are the people who are listening to him. Jesus is telling them, “I am the gate, my sole purpose is to be there for you, my priority is you. If you can find a king, a shepherd like that, don’t you think you’ve found the One you have been waiting for?”

The very next verse, verse 11, which comes after today’s reading ends, tells us that Jesus answers these questions very bluntly, “I am the Good Shepherd. The good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Further in this chapter we find out that some people think he’s nuts, out of his mind, that he has a demon. Others are questioning if he has a demon. In other words, after all the words they heard coming out of Jesus’ mouth, they still don’t understand that Jesus is God’s Anointed, and that among all the distractions of that time, his voice is the only one they need to listen to.

Have you ever said something to someone, who seems to be tracking, but then after you’ve finished saying what you were saying, doesn’t respond? They just kind of give you a blank stare? When you ask them if they heard you, they say something to the effect of, “Yes, sorry. I heard you. I just wasn’t listening.”

“I wasn’t listening.” That’s a very honest response. There’s a big difference between hearing and listening. When we hear things, we recognize the pitch, and the flow of the sounds as they come from someone’s mouth. But in order to listen, we need to focus on these sounds, interpret them, and through this process come to understand them. Hearing is passive, while listening takes engagement, effort, and action on our part.

In this passage, Jesus spoke, and used imagery that the people should have understood, but it seems that they only heard the words, and did not actively engage with what he was saying. To many of them, Jesus was just another distraction, another zealot in a sea of zealots. Someone making many words and making claims that made no sense, because they heard his voice, but did not listen and understand.

“He calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out. … The sheep follow him because they know his voice.”

There is an intimacy between the Good Shepherd, and the sheep that follow him. It suggests that not only does the Good Shepherd know the sheep by name, but that the sheep know the Shepherd. It is because of this intimacy that the sheep can follow the shepherd – because they know his voice.

I once had someone come up and tell me that a friend – we’ll call him Jack – had gotten into a verbal altercation with someone else, and had said something completely unhinged. But, because I knew Jack, I said, “That sounds totally out of character for him. I’m going to ask him if he said that.” I questioned the truth of what I was told because I knew my friend, and realized that if this report of them saying something terrible was actually true, that I would be forced to admit that I didn’t know Jack. As it turned out, when I asked him about it, I discovered not only that he had never said those words, but that he had never even spoken to the person making the accusations. It was only because of my friendship with Jack that I was able to determine that the rumor about Jack did not sound like his voice.

So where does that leave us with this passage about Jesus as the Good Shepherd? Where does it leave us with the history of Judea, and the rebels and zealots at that time making claims, either about themselves, or for others about the Messiah? How does all of this apply to what we might be experiencing in our own lives?

Jesus used imagery straight from the pages of scripture to make a claim about himself regarding the question of whether he truly was the Messiah. And the people heard the words, but they did not understand. Perhaps because they simply could not engage with what he was saying. Perhaps because they did not know the scriptures that Jesus was referencing. Perhaps because they found the words of other people more compelling than those of Jesus. Rather than scattering at the voice of a stranger, they instead followed these thieves and robbers straight out of the sheepfold.

These people of Judea did not own televisions, radios, smartphones, or listen to podcasts streaming over the internet. They had to sit or stand and listen to someone like Jesus making claims about themselves, and they had to weigh all of that against what their faith had taught them. And some of them discovered that they did not know their faith as well as they thought. They did not know enough to know that the voice of Jesus was the one worth listening to.

St. Jerome said, “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.” And by that he meant that the only way to determine the voice of the Good Shepherd requires that we actually come to know who Christ is, by spending time with him in the study and understanding of Scripture.

In this day and age of the internet, television, podcasts and radios, we may hear all sorts of words that sound good, and which seem to carry with them some weight and some majesty just because they are exactly the words that we want to hear. Those saying these things may claim the words coming out of their mouths are the words of the prophets, and the very voice of God, even though their words call for violence and furious anger. They may call for people to steal and kill and destroy, just like the thieves coming to plunder the sheepfold in today’s Gospel. But if we know the Shepherd, we can say to ourselves, “That sounds totally out of character for Jesus. I should go and ask him about that.”

Do we recognize the voice of Jesus? And do we scatter at the voice of strangers who wish to seek and kill and destroy?

The voice of the Good Shepherd is the one who makes us lie down in green pastures, leads us by still waters, revives our soul and guides us along the right paths. That voice lets us know that even in the shadow of death, we do not need to fear evil, because the Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. If we follow the voice of the Shepherd, then we can be sure that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives and that we will dwell in the house of the lord forever.

[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on April 26, 2026.]