In describing himself as a good shepherd and his followers as sheep, Jesus emphasises the intimacy and warmth of the relationship they have with him. The heart of this relationship is mutual knowledge and love: ‘I know my own and my own know me’. That would be significant enough but Jesus adds ‘just as the Father knows me and I know the Father’. In many passages in the Gospel of John the little word ‘as’ reveals the height and depth of the relationship with God that Jesus has made possible: love one another as I have loved you; as I am in the Father and the Father is in me so may you be completely one in us; as the Father sent me, so I send you.
The intimacy of this
relationship is seen in other ways. The good shepherd calls his sheep and they
recognise his voice. Peter says in the first reading that there is no name
other than the name of Jesus by which we can be saved. When Jesus appeared to
Mary Magdalene after his resurrection the moment of recognition is when he
calls her by her name. Then she knows who it is, and knows also that she is
known. The relationship with Christ in this life is in a glass darkly, Saint
Paul says, but a time will come ‘when we will know even as we have been known’.
Saint John’s way of
putting this is: ‘we do not know what we are to be in the future, except that
we shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is’. This echoes an
idea in ancient philosophy that the person who wants to look at the highest
reality must become like that reality, must have an eye, mind, or soul, adapted
to such a vision. Jesus adds something extraordinary to this: he teaches us
that the highest reality is already looking at us, knowing us and loving us,
calling us into being and calling us by name. It is not, then, that we must
make an effort to draw God into a relationship with us (that would be paganism)
but that God has alerted us to the relationship he wants us to have with him.
And he has firmly established that relationship between humanity and himself in
the sacrifice of the only Son.
The good shepherd lays
down his life for his sheep. This is another way in which we see that this
relationship with the good shepherd is a relationship of love. Jesus is
committed to his disciples, fully given for them. The Eucharist shows this most
clearly, the gift he gave them on the eve of his death so that they might
remember his sacrifice. That sacrifice originates, he says, not in any justice
to which God must be obedient, but simply and completely in the love of the
Father and the Son. ‘The Father loves me because I lay down my life. I lay it
down of my own free will and this is the command I have been given by my
Father’.
The relationship of
intimacy and warmth into which we are invited is the relationship between the
Father and the Son. It is their mutual knowledge and love, what we call ‘the
Holy Spirit’. Their knowing and loving is the foundation stone of our lives,
our point of reference in all things, the originating source of the new
creation, and the ground on which to build our lives.
There are other sheep
that are not of this fold. It is not immediately clear what Jesus means by
this. There are others who will come to be disciples through the preaching of
the apostles? When he is lifted up from the earth, Jesus says, his sacrifice
will draw all people to himself. So the others who are not of this fold are, it
seems, everyone else. All humanity is potentially the one flock of which he is
to be the one shepherd.
The good shepherd
calls and leads his sheep to participate in the knowledge and love he shares
with the Father. His teaching is all about this new relationship we can have
with God. The mysteries of his suffering, death, and resurrection seal God’s
commitment to this project and cause it to begin. Our job is to recognise his
voice and call on his name, to believe in his knowledge and love of us as we
seek to grow in our knowledge and love of him.
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