I came across a lovely children’s book this week called In God’s Name by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso.  The cover declares it to be a finalist for an award given by the Hungry Mind Review recognizing children’s books of distinction.  Asserting the book’s religious inclusivity, the publishers declare it to be endorsed by Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders.  Accompanied by brightly colored contemporary images, the opening words of the book are these:

            After God created the world

            All living things on earth

            were given a name.

            The plants and the trees,

            the animals and the fish,

            and each person,

            young and old,

            had a special name.

            But no one knew

            the name for God.

            So each person searched

            for God’s name.

            The farmer

            whose skin was dark

            like the rich brown earth

            from which all things grew

            called God

            Source of Life.

            The girl whose skin was as golden as the sun

            that turned night into day

            called God

            Creator of Light.

            The man who tended sheep in the valley

            called God

            Shepherd.

The book goes on to make the point that there are many names for God.  Over time people have disagreed on how to name God.  Some have even come to blows to defend their name for God as the best and only name.  But our brightest theologians now urge us to accept that there can be many names for God to help us understand more fully who God is.  And yet one of the most ancient of these is still among our favorites.  God is our Good Shepherd.

That’s actually a curious thing considering our own time and place.  If you come back from visiting rural Scotland or Ireland today there’s a very good chance that many of your photos will show sheep in them.  But not here.  Sheep do not enter our mindset unless something like Scripture directs us there.  So perhaps we need a little help to understand how God as shepherd might help us in understanding God.

In a culture with sheep and shepherds common to the lifestyle – such as the culture of biblical times and places – the image of God as shepherd easily takes on important nuances of meaning.  For instance, in our culture we might think of shepherds as people who drive sheep from the rear with snarling sheepdogs pushing the reluctant flock of sheep to places the shepherd wishes it to go.  But such is not the case.  Shepherds do not push from the back, they lead from the front.  If a shepherd were to stand in back of the flock and call for the sheep to move forward they would turn instead and gather behind the shepherd.  Sheep want the shepherd to lead them.  As they learn the shepherd’s voice and trust in it, they follow it.  With this image of shepherd and sheep in mind we can see much more clearly the nature and role of Christ who called himself the good shepherd: to lead us toward God, not to drive us; to guide and inspire, to protect and save, rather than to coerce or force or bully.

Jesus says in John’s Gospel:  I am the good shepherd.  I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.  And I lay down my life for the sheep.  I have other sheep that do now belong to this fold.  I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.  So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

In these words we learn much of Christ’s mission to us and his hope for us.  When Jesus says that he is the good shepherd, he makes quite a radical statement.  Even with the use of the words I am he echoes the voice of the God of Moses, making clear that he is God’s servant and obedient to God’s purposes.  Moreover, he is the good shepherd, distinguishing himself from false shepherds or leaders that call to the sheep with a self-serving voice to follow them.  As the sheep, we bear the responsibility to discern the true voice to follow.  The hired hand is bound to another authority and does not have our best interests at heart.  Many hired hands care only about the next election.  The voice of God calls us to our true allegiance.

I know my own and my own know me.  Jesus is not any run-of-the-mill shepherd.  He embodies strength, power, sympathy, compassion, kindness, and mercy.  In Ezekiel, God assumes the duties of the shepherd – the one who leads, guides, feeds, protects, and seeks the lost.  By his own declaration, Jesus takes up that very mission, linking himself with God’s redemptive work in the world.  He claims that his very life and work are acts of obedience to God.  No sacrifice is too great for the good shepherd on behalf of the sheep of the flock.

But there is in fact even a greater flock to come.  Jesus the good shepherd not only takes care of the flock that is; he seeks a greater flock that will be, so that more and more might be gathered in.  Jesus seeks out the lost, those in need of rescue, who are often the forgotten ones.  Lowly shepherds “keeping watch over their flocks by night” were the first to hear the news of the birth of the Messiah.  Kings and wise ones came later.  The simple ones who heard the voice of angels were the first to behold God’s glory. 

And when it comes to the shepherd and the sheep, it’s what the shepherd does first that counts.  In the relationship between sheep and shepherd it’s the shepherd who makes the first move for the sheep to follow.  We feel secure when we learn to recognize the voice of the shepherd who leads us.  Through that reassurance we, like sheep, yet as people with more abilities than sheep, not only follow the shepherd but also allow that same shepherd’s voice to speak through us as we reach out to the lost and hurting ones we encounter on the way.

For ultimately Jesus calls us to follow in ways that resemble his ways.  As he loved us, so we are called to love one another.  As he laid down his life for us, the first Letter of John suggests, so we ought to “lay down our lives for one another.”  We are to show as much love for each other as Christ showed for us through self-giving and loving care:  “ . . . let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

In her book One Hundred Wisdom Stories from Around the World, Margaret Silf retells a Hans Christian Anderson story that uses the image of a mirror to communicate the truth of God’s love for us.  Satan always takes great delight in creating confusion, she recalls the great storyteller imagining.  To help [Satan] do this better, he once had a special kind of mirror made.  This mirror shrank the reflections of all the good and beautiful things in the world, and it enlarged all the bad and ugly things.  Satan took great pleasure in going around the earth, holding this mirror in front of people’s eyes, until there was not a single land, or a single person, who had not seen this distorted view of the world.

One day Satan was laughing so much over the trouble this mirror had already caused that it slipped out of his hand and shattered into thousands and millions of tiny fragments.  And a great storm blew up and carried these fragments to every corner of the world.  Some of the fragments were as small as grains of sand.  They lodged in people’s eyes, and from then on these poor people could only see the bad things in the world.  The good things shrank until they were almost invisible.  Other fragments were gathered up over the years and made into [eye] glasses, and when people wore these glasses they could never see anything in its proper perspective again.

God was very sad [to] see how damaged people’s vision had become and how so many of them could only see the bad things around them and had lost sight of all that was good and beautiful.  [God] had an idea for putting everything right again.  “I know what I will do,” [God] thought.  “My son is the image of me, he is my true reflection.  I will send him into the world.  He will reflect my goodness and my justice and show the world how I long for it to be.”

So Jesus became a mirror for God’s people.  He reflected God’s goodness out to the world, even to thieves and frauds and to those whom the world despised.  He reflected courage and confidence into the hearts of the sick and despairing.  He reflected comfort to those in grief and trust to those whose hearts were crippled by fear.  Many people recognized God’s mirror and followed Jesus.  They loved and trusted him.  But others were jealous and felt their own power threatened by the love of God.  In the end they could tolerate him no longer.  They plotted against Jesus and killed him.  They shattered God’s mirror.

And a great storm blew up.  It blew millions of fragments of God’s mirror to every corner of the world, and it continues to do so today.  These fragments lodge in the eyes of many, many people, and whenever this happens they are able to see God’s world again just as Jesus saw it.  The beauty and goodness of God’s creation and God’s people are the main things they see, and then they realize that the bad and the ugly are only transient and can be overcome.

The Hans Christian Anderson story imagines a mythical explanation for how we can “see” as Jesus sees – looking to him and believing that his way is our way.  Although we can’t fully explain how it is that we know Jesus as our way, it is all about finding him, trusting him, and following him.  It’s how his words in John’s Gospel compel us: the good shepherd watches over the sheep and keeps them on the right way as they are led from pasture to pasture.  The radiance of the one we have come to trust as God’s own Good Shepherd – the one the hymn writer calls “blessed Jesus” – transforms the world so that what we once found fearful and threatening has become the path that takes us home.