O Lord, we come once again asking for Your help. We have many passions in life, but we are often lacking in zeal for godliness. So forgive our complacency, our love of cheap grace, and have mercy on us, Your sheep. Seek and save even this morning those that are lost. Gather in Your arms those that are hurting. Call us by name, Good Shepherd, and give us ears that we may come. In Jesus we pray. Amen.
Our text this morning is from John’s Gospel, chapter 10, John 10, verses 1 through 10. Follow along as I read from John’s Gospel, chapter 10, beginning at verse 1, these words from Jesus.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved and will go in and 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.”
I’ll tell you one of my favorite movies, and it’s not the one that you have in mind. Yes, I do like the standard Christian movies like Lord of the Rings, Chariots of Fire, Princess Bride [laughter]. It’s true. But, right up there with those movies in my book, think, you’re thinking “what is it, what is it, Pastor?” Babe. I love that movie. It’s not based on a true story, as far as I know, since it has talking animals, but it is a story about a pig that thinks it’s a sheepdog.
Now, I won’t tell you the whole story, that’s basically it. You have animals and they talk and there’s a pig that thinks he’s a sheepdog and he learns the secret to herding the sheep and he enters a sheepherding contest in Australia against all the other dogs and the pig wins and the man at the end says, “That’ll do, pig.” It’s just great, okay? [laughter] It’s great. Talking animals, they’re cute.
Now you could think of the story as about not being content or complacent with the role that you are assigned in life, and you could sort of take that view on things because he is, after all, a pig, but he wants to be a sheepdog. But more than that, I think it is a story about the power of optimism and unrelenting kindness. Sort of a reverse Animal Farm in what would things look like if this one animal, rather than lording dominion over others, were unrelentingly optimistic, innocent, and kind. That’s Babe, the pig. And if you’ve seen the movie, you know he is successful as a sheepdog because he knows the sheep, he speaks to the sheep, he deals gently with the sheep, and so when I watch it, I like to think of it as a visual illustration of John chapter 10. That’s how pastors think.
Now it’s hard for us to understand personally some of what Jesus is speaking of, because most of us do not have anything to do with sheep. But we’ve seen sheep, we maybe have seen movies with sheep, we understand the basic metaphor, and everyone is ancient Israel would have understood the special bond that ought to take place between a sheep and the shepherd. It was the perfect illustration of trust, of protection, of loyalty. That’s why the imagery of a sheep and shepherds is so common throughout the Bible an...
