The Good Shepherd

CHOIR: Surrexit Christus hodie (Scheidt)

JONATHAN:

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Good morning and welcome to Selwyn College in Cambridge. I’m the Reverend Jonathan Collis, Acting Dean of Chapel and Chaplain here, and I’m joined in our Chapel by our choir and members of the College for this service of words and music on the fourth Sunday of Easter. As we continue to celebrate the resurrection and reflect on its significance for our lives our service continues with the Easter hymn ‘The strife is o’er, the battle done’.

CHOIR/ORGAN/CONGREGATION: The strife is o'er (Victory)

JONATHAN:

Let us pray:

Almighty God, whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life: raise us, who trust in him, from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, that we may seek those things which are above, where he reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, and our readings, reflections and music pick up on that theme, including Psalm 23, which expresses our trust in God, as a shepherd cares for their sheep.

CHOIR: Psalm 23 (Hylton-Stewart)

JONATHAN:

Our three readings today are all from the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to St John, and after each one, Professor David Ford, an emeritus fellow of the college and former regius professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, will reflect on the passages.

MASTER:

‘Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’ Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.’

DAVID:

Jesus says, ‘I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.’ In the amazing Gospel of John, by the time we reach this passage, that life has already been shown in many ways. It is there in the abundance of wine at a wedding. In water for the thirsty. In the blowing of the Spirit. In bread shared with thousands. In healing, in teaching, in deep, searching conversation. Again and again, this life is given—freely, and abundantly.

Now here, in what we have just heard, something new is central: this voice. Jesus speaks of being a shepherd whose sheep recognise his voice. A voice that calls each by name. A voice whose purpose is that we should have life—abundant life. But that raises a vital question: will we listen? And will we trust?

Because there are so many other voices competing for our attention. There were in Jesus’s time too—those he calls strangers, thieves and bandits. Don’t we know them! Today, perhaps more than ever, we live in a world crowded with voices, urging us to listen, to click, to follow, and above all, to trust.

And each of us also has a community of the heart—those precious voices and faces in our heart that mean most to us. Who is in our community of the heart? John’s Gospel invites us to be open to this life-giving, love-giving voice of Jesus, who calls each of us by name.

But how can we actually hear him, so that he becomes part of our community of the heart? 

Here is a simple, practical suggestion that has worked for two thousand years, and is still being followed all round the world. Take time to read the Gospel of John—and then read it again. And again. And again.

If we do that, slowly and attentively, something can begin to happen. Among all the other voices in our lives, we can start to recognise one that is different and life-changing. The voice of Jesus—the Good Shepherd—who calls each of us by name.

CHOIR: This is the day (Paul Ayres)

JONATHAN:

‘This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it’ – words from Psalm 118 set to music by Paul Ayres. As we reflect this morning on Jesus as the Good Shepherd, we now hear the next passage from St John’s Gospel.

MASTER:

‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.’

DAVID:

‘The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’ When Jesus was speaking, shepherd was a title leaders and kings were proud to take. It was about power in the public sphere, authority, leadership, control. But such leaders did not pride themselves on laying down their lives in love.

Later, when Jesus, on trial for his life, confronted Pontius Pilate, the representative of the Roman Empire—the greatest military, political and economic power the world had known up to that time—Pilate made it clear where the power lay, when he said to Jesus: ‘Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?’ Don’t we see similar things today, when leaders on the world stage assert their dominance in ways that make opponents – or even allies – feel small and powerless? In his confrontation with Pilate, Jesus testified to the very different power of truth. He said to Pilate: ’For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’

So, this is not just a voice calling each of us by name. It is a voice in the public, political, economic, and religious spheres. And it calls for justice, compassion, the feeding of the hungry, truth, love, and peace and reconciliation: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’, says Jesus, ‘for they will be called the children of God’.

CHOIR/ORGAN/CONGREGATION: Lord of the Dance (Lord of the Dance)

JONATHAN:

That last hymn took us through the key events of Jesus’s life and end with the assurance of his continuing presence with us in our lives.

We now hear the last of our three passages from St John’s Gospel.

MASTER:

‘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 not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’

DAVID:

Jesus laying down his life is not the end of the story. His taking it up again—his resurrection—is what we celebrate in this Easter season.

On Good Friday, suffering and death happened to Jesus. So did sin and evil. But Jesus also happened to sin, evil, suffering and death. Because of who he is—utterly one with God, as well as utterly one with us—he is not overcome by them. He overcomes them. He has the last word.

And what does Mary Magdalene find on the first Easter Sunday? She has seen Jesus being crucified; now she is further traumatised by finding his tomb empty; she’s weeping and searching for the dead body. Then she hears and recognises the voice: ‘Mary!’, Jesus says.

The resurrection means that Jesus is alive in a new way, present as God is present, and calling each of us by name. ‘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’. There’s no deeper relationship than that intimate knowing in trust and utter love.

And it’s not only person by person—Mary, me, you—it is also about community: ‘one flock, one shepherd’.

When it comes to the tragedy of divisions among Christians, it is hard to beat seventeenth century Europe: the Thirty Years War on the continent, the Civil War here. It was a time marked by bloody conflict, violently competing claims about religion and politics, and the shaking of many institutions and whole societies. More than a little like our world is now.

But a historian of the period, Paul Cefalu, has discovered that in response to all this many people, across many different Christian traditions, turned anew to the Gospel of John. They found in it a resource for thinking, imagining, and living differently. It shaped their faith, and also their public life, their art and writing. It helped some of them resist violence, and to seek peace, truth, and hope. It was a quiet, and largely unrecognised renaissance, but sowed seeds of some of the best things to follow. Cefalu calls it ‘a Johannine Renaissance’—a John-inspired renaissance. He shows what can happen when people attend deeply to this Gospel.

And in what he has discovered there is an invitation for us.

Among all the many voices that compete for our attention—can we learn to attune to this one? Can we read and reread the Gospel of John, until we learn to recognise, and welcome into our community of the heart, the voice of Jesus the Good Shepherd?—A voice that calls us by name, in order to lead us into abundant life.

To speak personally, much of my last twenty-five years has been spent reading and rereading the Gospel of John, by myself and with others: studying it, wrestling with it, teaching it; writing about it; praying with it; and trying to live by it. And what I have found is that it never runs dry. It continues to open up new depths of meaning—new questions too—and, above all, new inspiration for living.

In recent years especially—through the upheaval of the pandemic, and amid growing global uncertainty, turbulence, and conflict, with so much being shaken—I, like those seventeenth century men and women, have found John’s Gospel to be astonishingly relevant.

So the invitation—actually, the challenge—that is given by the Gospel of John today is to be part of a new quiet renaissance: take up this Gospel again and again, listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd, and be open to the life he wants to give you. Amen.

CHOIR/ORGAN: My beloved spake (Hadley)

NIC:

Let us pray.

Loving God, we are the sheep of your hand, the people of your pasture. You know us; we are yours. You call us; we listen for your voice. Protect us from false leaders and hired hands who would seek to snatch us from safety. Keep us in the security of your fold and unite us with your people in all the earth. By your Spirit, make us one flock, one people; through the one who laid down his life for us, Jesus Christ, the good shepherd.

O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom you chose us, before the foundation of the world, and destined us in love to be your own: help us to pray for all your children.

Grant, Almighty God, that all who confess your Name may be united in your truth, live together in your love, and reveal your glory in the world. Guide the people of this land, and of all the nations, in the ways of justice and peace; that we may honour one another and serve the common good.

Give us all a reverence for the earth as your own creation, that we may use its resources rightly in the service of others and to your honour and glory. Bless all whose lives are closely linked with ours, and grant that we may serve Christ in them, and love one another as he loves us.

As we gather all these prayers together, we say the prayer Jesus himself taught us:

ALL:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come;

thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

JONATHAN:

On the east wall of the chapel here at Selwyn there is a large sculpture of the risen and ascending Christ, blessing his followers and flanked by angels. Above it is a stained glass window depicting Christ in glory, surrounded by the heavenly host. Our final hymn celebrates Jesus’ resurrection and looks forward to his ascension into heaven where he reigns and into which he welcomes us all.

CHOIR/ORGAN/CONGREGATION: Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendour (St Helen)

JONATHAN:

The God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the eternal covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be upon you and remain with you, now and for ever. Amen.

ORGAN: At Easter-tide (Stanford)