“I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine”
Jesus says that he is “the good shepherd”, emphasis on the adjective “good” which, I will argue, is also substantive, meaning the Good that is God. He is “the good shepherd,” he says, not once, not twice, but three times. And he explains what it means.
It is one of the most concrete of the seven so-called “I am” sayings of Jesus. All the others are to some extent or other more abstract and general: the bread of life, the light of the world, the door of the sheep, the resurrection and the life, the way, the truth and the life, the true vine. They are notable metaphors for the nature of our incorporation in Christ. They speak to who he is essentially and absolutely in himself and what that means for us in our lives. They are, in this sense, analogies that point us to the mystery of God understood universally through the particularities of human experience that at the same time reveal who he is in himself. Like his saying “before Abraham was, I am”, they echo God’s Revelation of himself as “I am who I am” to Moses in the burning bush.
Good in Greek, (αγαθος) also means beautiful, (καλος). The terms are interchangeable. Three times Jesus says that he is the “good shepherd” (καλος). Beautiful. It is a strong statement. You know, of course, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, one of the essential stories for Christians about the ethical understanding, meaning what is it that is right to do because it is what is true and good to think and be. Nowhere in that parable is the Samaritan actually identified as the “good” Samaritan. That is, understandably, an interpretation that arises from our reflection on the power and truth of that story.
But here is something different: namely, the explicit statements by Jesus that he is the “good shepherd.” The image is quite concrete and specific and yet is universal in terms of historical, literary and philosophical thought. It is a universal “symbol of divine and human government”, but here it takes on a fuller and an even more universal meaning precisely through two things: first, the repetition of the adjective/substantive “good” and, secondly, because of the meaning of its radical universality: “the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep … I lay down my life for the sheep.” The sheep are those who are known in God’s own knowing beyond the limits of our knowing. I “know my sheep,” Jesus says, ”and am known of mine;” known in the mutual knowing and loving of the Father and the Son, a knowing that extends to the whole of our humanity beyond the limits of our knowing of one another.
The radical meaning of this familiar image is the reason why it belongs to the Passion and Resurrection in their necessary interrelation. Jesus is “the good shepherd” because he gives his life for the sheep; in short, Death and Resurrection. He is, as the Collect puts it both “an example of godly life” and “a sacrifice for sin” for us in our lives with him and in him by following in “the blessed steps of his most holy life.” All is in the giving not the getting.
Christ the Good Shepherd is a common image in church iconography and yet often misunderstood. The image of care has been co-opted by the therapeutic culture but in very different ways than what this image scripturally and theologically conveys. The image is often viewed sentimentally and emotionally. Almost as if it means something like “gentle-Jesus-come-and squeeze-us/when and where it pleases”, when actually it is more akin to “drop kick me Jesus through the goal-posts of life” to use a lyric quite different from our usual hymns. The image challenges us to think more deeply about human agency and community. It is not who is going to huddle and cuddle me, i.e., whose going to look after me, so much as how are we going to look after one another and ourselves. The answer is Christ the Good Shepherd. His life is given for us to be lived in us. Christ is our life.
In one of the earliest literary works known to our humanity, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the image of the King as Shepherd is presented to us as that which Gilgamesh, the King, should be, but isn’t. He is using everyone for his own self-interest. The city of Uruk has the ethical wisdom to recognise this as a problem, thus calling our attention to the true and real nature of governance, both spiritual and temporal, we might say. The rest of the epic is about how Gilgamesh learns to become who he is in the mind of the culture. It happens through his quest for wisdom impelled by the death of his friend, Enkidu, and through the tension between things mortal and things immortal, unresolved in the epic and in antiquity in general. His learning contributes to a long tradition of reflection on the image of the shepherd which undergoes a complete transformation in Christ in terms of mortal and immortal best signalled in Christ’s Resurrection, and in terms of the radical idea of the friendship between God and man by the grace of Christ.
Plato, in the Republic, sets up the question about ‘what is justice?’ in part through the interchange with Thrasymachus who argues that justice is simply “the interest of the stronger”; in short, might equals right, meaning that there is no justice. There is just what you think you can get away with. He dismisses the idea of the shepherd as having a vested interest in the good of the sheep. He makes a category mistake in thinking the shepherd is really a business man seeking what he can gain from his sheep. In short, he has no real interest in them qua sheep but only as market commodities. In short, to use them but not know them (or love them). Socrates shows the mistake in this logic; a mistake which dogs us in our times in thinking that everything and everyone can be reduced to the economics of a global world that is radically indifferent to the realities of life lived in local communities and in so many ways dehumanizing and anti-life.
The (so-called) ‘rule-based global international world’ serves the interests of the few at the expense of the many and lacks any ethical substance. The good cannot be just for the few without negating human agency and dignity. Rule by law means endless regulation – just one finite thing after another, a kind of tyranny; the rule of law has more to do with what is substantial and true best imaged in the governance of the good shepherd. To govern is to serve. It is not about using and manipulating one another but about the ultimate good for our humanity found in God. This is the Christian legacy which we have forgotten and need to relearn and reclaim; in short, to be “returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls,” meaning Christ the good shepherd.
Just as kings and governors are meant to act as good shepherds, so too with the clergy of the Church. Bishops and priests are to be pastors – the word means shepherd – not CEO’s, not systems managers. Can there be any better example of this than Peter “thrice fallen, thrice restored”, bidden thrice by the Risen Christ to “feed my lambs”, “tend my sheep”, “feed my sheep”?
All this is captured rather beautifully in the 6th century mosaic in the apse of Sant’ Apollinare in Classe, near Ravenna, Italy. St. Apollinaris is sent forth as a shepherd to the sheep under the sign of the Cross, even as the twelve apostles depicted as sheep are sent to be the shepherds of the sheep with the blessing of the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep is the Lamb of God. To put it all rather simply: the shepherds of the Church are also the sheep of the Good Shepherd who is equally the Lamb of God
It means knowing and loving, as this Gospel shows. The good shepherd knows his sheep and is known of them in the divine knowing and loving of the Trinity. “As the Father knows me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.” These Eastertide words complement the last words of the Passion: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” In the Passion and Resurrection of Christ we are embraced and gathered into the divine love of the Father and the Son in the mutual love of the Spirit.
The Good Shepherd image is a standing critique of all our human constructs – our social, political, bureaucratic and technical processes and all their short-comings – that belong to an instrumental reason. The image shows us that service means sacrifice, the service which is Christ’s sacrifice for us so that his life may live in us in all things both great and small. It is the opposite of vanity and vain-glory, of worldly interests and gain, the opposite of the will to power that denies the will to truth. It is really about the radical meaning of the good in the Good Shepherd which calls us to act out of that vision. Simply put, Christ the Good Shepherd is the Lamb of God whose life is given to be lived in us, the good which is beautiful and true and everlasting.
We are only known and know who we truly are in the embrace of the Good Shepherd who knows us better than we know ourselves in his eternal knowing and loving of us in his love for the Father. Once again, Passion and Resurrectionare inseparable. His life lives in us because he gives his life for us. Passion is transmuted into Resurrection and thus into the real meaning of love and care for one another.
“I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine”
Fr. David Curry
Easter 2, 2026