Definition by contrast
A sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday
11 May 2025
Primary Texts
Acts 9:36-43
Rev 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
John is quite specific about the time and location of Jesus’ interaction with the Jewish authorities in the gospel passage this morning. There is nothing accidental about those details. They help us understand the sort of leader or shepherd Jesus was (and is) so I’m going to begin this morning by briefly elucidating those circumstances.
The time that John gives us of the encounter is the Festival of the Dedication, which he places in the winter.
The festival referred to was relatively new in the Jewish calendar (about as distant from Jesus’ day as Waitangi Day is from us – it wasn’t like Passover, which commemorated an event more than 1000 years prior). This festival commemorated the victory of Jewish nationalists (led by Judas Maccabeus) over their Syrian overlords, and the rededication of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 164BC. It had to be rededicated because the Syrians had set up a statue of Zeus (principal god of the Greek pantheon) in the Temple some three years earlier. The rededication took place in the winter close to the time we celebrate as Christmas (it shifts around a bit because Judaism uses a lunar calendar – 28 Nov to 27 Dec) and is referred to by Jews today as Hanukkah (begins on 25th of Kislev in the Hebrew calendar and runs for 8 days).
The place where Jesus was walking is called by John the ‘Portico of Solomon’. This was a long arcade that formed the Eastern perimeter of the Temple precinct. Apart from columns, it was open on the inside, so anyone walking in it would have a good view of the Temple itself. It was a public space, open to Jews and Gentiles, and quite suitable for engaging in discussion and teaching. The portico wasn’t built by Solomon. The temple Solomon built on the site a thousand years earlier had been destroyed by the Babylonians about 600 years before Jesus’ ministry (587/6 BC), and had subsequently been rebuilt, in fits and starts after the exile, and was, in Jesus’ day, a very smart looking edifice following Herod the Great’s recent renovation of the complex.
The Portico of Solomon would go on to be an important meeting space for the first generation of Christians (Acts 5:12 – “Now many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico”). And it was near the portico that Peter and John healed a paralyzed man, after which he walked into the Portico of Solomon with them, creating quite a stir – “all the people (Luke tells us in Acts 3) ran together to them in the portico called Solomon’s Portico, utterly astonished.”
So, it’s a public space, busy with people coming and going, with a rich history behind it (when we encounter Jesus in it today) and a rich history to follow.
That is all well and good, but now we need to move beyond the first sentence of the gospel passage to the heart of the matter – the substance of the interaction between Jesus and the group which John calls ‘the Jews.’ The latter are very keen on getting a clear indication from Jesus that he is the Messiah – God’s chosen deliverer. Jesus refuses to give them a straight-forward ‘yes’ but implies that he is when he says ‘[t]he works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me’ (v25). Jesus puts it to them that their failure to recognize him as Messiah – as the person who would decisively restore Israel – stems from their disconnection with God; a rather bold move to take. He puts it in different terms though. He says that his interlocutors are not his sheep (‘you do not belong to my sheep’ -John 10:26) and a little later indicates that his flock was given him by his Father (‘What my Father has given me (presumably the sheep) is greater than all else’ – John 10:29). Then he concludes his case with an assertion that is guaranteed to jar with an audience committed to strict monotheism ‘The Father and I are one.’ John 10:30. The audience are indeed incensed. The very next verse, which is left out of our Gospel passage, reports that ‘The Jews took up stones again to stone him.’ (v.31)
If we backup from this tense ending, we might ask why there was so much interest shown in Jesus at this time and place – particularly in his Messiahship. The answer, largely, is in the context itself – as well as the fact that Jesus had got himself quite a reputation as a charismatic leader, healer, teacher and prophet. That is to say, being aware of Jesus’ celebrity, the Jewish crowd was triggered to ask these questions because the festival of dedication – the winter festival of Hanukkah – was all about the deliverance of the Jewish people. The festival celebrated the impressive military success of Judas Maccabeus, the ‘Hammer.’ He had shepherded the Jews as a traditional strongman – rather an extreme one. He was the type of Messiah or deliverer that many Jews were expecting. The hope of a good proportion in the crowd who confronted Jesus at that time and place was probably that Jesus would be that sort of Shepherd.
To use another metaphor, if the crowd thought that was the case (that Jesus would be like Judas Maccabeus), they were barking up the wrong tree. Jesus’ approach to shepherding was not militaristic in the least. In that regard, he was about as far from Judas Maccabeus as one could get. Jesus never tried to force God’s hand politically, preferring instead to trust in the inevitable unfolding of God’s plan – divine providence.
It was in that sense – at the very least – that the Father and he were one; or to say this more fully, Jesus lived to do the Father’s will to an extent that had never been seen before, nor would be after, and paradoxically, that complete subordination made him one with the Father who sent him.
That made him a very safe pair of hands for people who the Father sent his way.
In the first century, the people the Father sent him were fishermen, tax-collectors, prostitutes, the possessed, the poor and marginalized, as well as the rich and well-connected; that is to say, a cross-section of society.
The flock which continues to gather around Jesus is diverse in nature. Thanks be to God, he still welcomes us, and watches out for us with unprecedented care, because it is God the Father who has gone to the trouble of sending us – by priority mail, as it were – to him.
‘What my Father has given me is greater than all else’ – John 10:29.
How fortunate we are to have Jesus as our Shepherd, the true Son of the Father and a more mighty deliverer than any man of war.
Tony Surman