The Good Shepherd Sunday takes us to the gospel of the allegory of the good shepherd and the sheepfold. Israel has such an inalienable connection to this metaphor of the shepherd that sometimes it is difficult to extricate the real from the symbolic. With very few exceptions, the heroes of Israel were all shepherds. Abraham was a shepherd, Moses was one, so were Jacob, Saul and David. That socio-economic activity of their celebrated ancestors has left a linguistic and cultural imprint on Israel.
After he treacherously killed his soldier Uriah and committed adultery with his wife, the most accomplished king of Israel, David would be challenged with an allegory of shepherding by prophet Nathan (2 Sam. 12). David’s action was narrated in a parable as a shepherd who had killed the only lamb of the neighbor when he had his own large herd of sheep. David makes amends for his mistake but the parable of Nathan stays so embedded in Israel’s psyche that non-Jewish reader will meet with unfathomable cultural depths.
The Old Testament celebrates the metaphor of the shepherd many times. But none can match the pastoral song of the psalmist who sings, “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.” With Jesus pronouncing ‘I am the good shepherd’ this psalm gets new nuances. The Lord mentioned in the Psalm is ‘I AM’ = Yahweh. Remember, that this is one of the seven I AM statements of Jesus. Israel is also familiar with a prophesy from Jeremiah 3:15 which says, “I will give you shepherds after my own heart.” These all too familiar Old Testament writings are replayed in the mind of every Israelite when Jesus speaks about himself as the good shepherd.
The usage of the term ‘good’ in the phrase is heavily loaded evocative of the complaint of Yahweh about bad shepherds and the promise of the shepherds after His own heart in Jeremiah. When Jesus explains the nature of the bad shepherds in the subsequent verses and contrasts with that of the good shepherd, the connotations to the Old Testament become sharper.
The most touching sentence in this allegory is the phrase, “I am the door. No one goes in or out except through me.” It is difficult to make sense of a person becoming the door. We know that in those days, the shepherds used to take turns to guard the entrance of the make shift pen at night, by lying across it, becoming a door in effect. No animal can enter in without stamping on him nor can a sheep get out without walking over him. Jesus uses this practice of the shepherds to tell, how he will protect his sheep giving his life for them. Jesus narrates how intimate is the connection he has with the Church and the faithful, knowing each one personally, by name and traits. Oh! How many journeys I have undertaken walking over his heart, sometime breaking and bruising the shepherd! How many return journeys of repentance have I made to that welcoming heart, after I have wasted away all the blessings I received?
More recently, the image of the ‘the shepherd’ who smells like the sheep, resurfaced with new force in the Church with Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium. In that image is an invitation to all shepherds to become closer to the sheep. Getting closer to the sheep will require for the pastors to break down many intimidating infrastructures and even some structures.
The metaphor of the shepherd who smells like the sheep brought to my mind an Indian regional language film named ‘Goat Days.’ This biographical survival drama of a man who went to Saudi Arabia in search of a job depicts how he was forced to a pen to mend the sheep. His constant life with the sheep made him eat, drink and sleep like the sheep. He almost became a sheep, in his habits of life just as the title suggests. The Lord asks the shepherds to develop a close familiarity with all the sheep that they tend; to share their joys, sorrows and anxieties.
Finally, the gospel makes an invitation to everyone to become good shepherds as well. We are always living two roles simultaneously as sheep and shepherds. We are sons and fathers, daughters and mothers, child and a brother or sister at the same time. Whoever is given the responsibility to protect another is a shepherd. Who among us can claim to be not responsible for another? All of us are responsible for one another and so, all of us are shepherds in one way or another. It is important to assume the role of the sacrificing and caring role of the shepherds even as we are sheep in the fold of Jesus.