“The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”
The dominant icon in the little Chapel at King’s-Edgehill School in Windsor is the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. The dominant icon at Christ Church is the image of Christ Crucified. Together they belong to the spiritual landscape that shapes our Anglican and Christian identity here in Windsor.
They go together. The further paradox is that they both belong to the teaching of the Resurrection. In other words we only think the Crucifixion through the doctrine of the Resurrection and the image of Christ the Good Shepherd, too, is a Resurrection image. It belongs to the radical meaning of the Resurrection, something which we know about primarily through the eyes of John.
John’s Gospel shapes our thinking about the Resurrection throughout the whole of the Easter Season and right through to Trinity Sunday. We learn to think the radical meaning of the Resurrection through the eyes of John.
“The good shepherd,” Jesus says, “giveth his life for the sheep.” It is impossible to think about the idea of the good shepherd apart from the reality of Christ’s sacrifice. That is critical to the idea of care which the image conveys but it is care in a far deeper and profounder sense than the forms of care in our contemporary therapeutic culture. This care is about suffering and death which have to be gone through and not simply bandaging and medicating with drugs. Christ dies and rises. Death and Resurrection underlie the more radical care of Christ for us.
The teaching of the Resurrection is largely conveyed to us through the eyes of John. He shows us the dialectic of sorrow and joy and the transition from disappointment to wonder. We may cling to our pains and sorrows, our bitterness and our resentments. We are rather good at doing that and in a way we live in a culture which encourages our complaints rather than the idea of passing through them. We refuse the radical care of Christ the Good Shepherd. That more radical care has to with how the Resurrection opens us out to the love of God.
This is an essential feature of the Easter season. The mantra, as we shall see, in the subsequent Sundays, is Christ’s word, “because I go to the Father.” In every way, Christ’s Resurrection opens us out to the community of the Trinity, the community of divine love. “As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.” The connection is inescapable. Christ’s Death and Resurrection gather us into the love of God in himself, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is an essential aspect of the traditional pattern of the Easter Season.
The Resurrection is about God for us but that is the living expression of God in himself. The image of Christ the Good Shepherd is one of the seven so-called “I am” sayings of Jesus in John’s Gospel. They are all images about our incorporation into the life of God: “I am the bread of life”; “I am the Resurrection and the Life”; “I am the way, the truth and the life”; “I am the Door”; “I am the light”; “I am the Good Shepherd”; “I am the vine”.
These are images that speak about the nature of our living relationship with God in Christ. But it is impossible to hear these sayings without connecting them to the outstanding and definite form of God’s Revelation of himself to Moses in the Burning Bush. “I am who I am.” In saying “I am”, Jesus identifies himself with the universal and transcendent God of the Exodus revelation. Through the eyes of John we see that divine self-relation further explicated in terms of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. These are all the lessons of the Resurrection.
Through disappointment we awaken to wonder and joy. What defines us need not be the ups and downs of our cranky souls, the clinging to hurts real and imagined, the holding onto the comforts of bitterness and resentment. These are things which we have a tendency to hold on to and are reluctant to let go. We complain and become a complaint. We are as good as dead and refuse the word of life.
The radical care of Christ the Good Shepherd is about the radical love of God in himself and for us. It means seeing that love in and through the pains and sorrows of our lives. The image of Christ the Good Shepherd reminds us of the realities of suffering and death because without that we can never know the redemptive love of God for us. Through all the follies and wickednesses of human sin and evil we are gathered into the love of the Blessed Trinity.
Such radical care should spur us into joyous service and sacrifice. It is the care that challenges us to cling no longer to our fears and anxieties, our sorrows and bitternesses. It is the care of Christ the Good Shepherd.
“The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”
Fr. David Curry
Easter II, 2014