The Weight of Glory w/ Jon Ritner W3

Anthony: Well, moving on to our next passage, it is John 10:11- 18. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for the Fourth Sunday in Easter, which falls on April 21, and it reads,

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² When the hired hand sees the wolf coming, he leaves the sheep and runs away. That’s because he isn’t the shepherd; the sheep aren’t really his. So the wolf attacks the sheep and scatters them. ¹³ He’s only a hired hand and the sheep don’t matter to him. ¹⁴ “I am the good shepherd. I know my own sheep and they know me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. I give up my life for the sheep. ¹⁶ I have other sheep that don’t belong to this sheep pen. I must lead them too. They will listen to my voice and there will be one flock, with one shepherd. ¹⁷ “This is why the Father loves me: I give up my life so that I can take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me, but I give it up because I want to. I have the right to give it up, and I have the right to take it up again. I received this commandment from my Father.”

Jon, if you were preaching this text, what’s your sermon going to be?

Jon: It’s one of the first Bible studies I ever led as a summer camp counselor, maybe eight, nine months after I had given my life to Jesus. And it was this. It was on, I am the good shepherd. We were teaching through the “I am” [statements].

And I was reflecting this week on whether I would have the courage to teach it today the way I did then, because what I did on that day was I took everyone outside and I scattered the high school kids around this field. And I gave them all blindfolds and from the point where they started in this scattered dispersed area, I told them to put on the blindfolds.

And then I stood at one spot in the field, and I read this text, and I told them to follow me as I read. And I wandered around the field reading through John 10, while these blindfolded people tried to follow me. And then eventually I invited everyone to sit down, take off their blindfolds and look around the field.

And some were amazed at how far away they were from me. Some were very close. And then we gathered around, and we just had a debrief conversation of what was it like to try to follow someone simply by their voice. And some of the kids said it was scary. I bumped into a tree, and I quit. I just sat down. I was like, I’m not doing this.

Others said, I found your voice pretty quickly. And the closer I got to you, the more confident I felt. And when I realized I was right near you because your voice was so clear, I knew I was safe. I remember others who said, along the way I bumped into somebody else. And we started holding hands and I had great comfort knowing that I wasn’t alone trying to follow this voice.

And I was like, y’all this is incredible. This was such a sermon that they were writing of what the Christian life is like and what it’s like to follow and the discouragement that can come from being all alone and wanting to quit versus the comfort that comes from community, and what it’s like to be close to the voice versus far from the voice.

And I think more modern communicators need that level of experiential learning. I know it’s hard to do on a Sunday, but I think there’s a lot of lessons in there that someone could gather from that experience.

The other thing that came to my mind is really contrasting this text with a lot of the prophetic critiques of the leaders of Israel in the Old Testament. Because this idea of being bad shepherds or false shepherds, even evil shepherds, is used a lot in the Old Testament, prophetic writing that the Jewish leaders did not really care for the people that they were like these hired hands that were in it for their own interest and versus the shepherding impulsive of Jesus as the good shepherd.

So, there’s bad shepherding and good shepherding and understanding those motivations. And then I might actually even then connect it over to Ephesians 4 with this shepherding function that we’re all called as a church to fulfill. So how do we identify the characteristics of a bad shepherd who’s in it for their own glory versus a good shepherd who’s willing to lay down their life. And then how do we embody that as a community as we try to shepherd those in the world around us?

Anthony: It seems to me that verse 16, Jon. gives us a hopeful word to people sometimes deemed as outsiders. We love to do that, don’t we, as human beings? Who’s in? Who’s out? But we sometimes see them as outsiders to God’s care and promises.

So, I wanted to ask you, how would you exegete this scripture for 16? And it says, “I have other sheep that don’t belong to this sheep pen. I must lead them too. They will listen to my voice and there will be one flock with one shepherd.”

Jon: It’s funny, that summer camp I had I did this lesson for seven weeks, right? You’d have different campers come through. And somewhere along there, a kid said to me, is Jesus talking about aliens? I said, wait, what?

He goes, he says that there are some who are of my flock who are not here yet. And one day they’ll [inaudible]. Are those aliens?

And I thought, what a valid question a kid would have. What is Jesus talking about?

Anthony: So, what did you say, by the way?

Jon: Yes, of course, there are aliens. And if there are aliens, Jesus is calling them too.

I think the ancient context to this, in the ancient Near East, was that he is trying to prepare his people to understand that there’s going to be a Jew and Gentile mixing. That Jewish community that has thought of themselves as insiders and God’s holy, protected people are soon going to be mixed into a community that involves those who were deemed as outsiders.

And those are Gentiles. And so that begins to happen, of course, in the book of Acts. But Jesus knows that is coming, so he’s trying to prepare them for that. I think today where we don’t think in terms of Jew and Gentile, the natural way to translate this would simply be to say, who around you, what communities around you, do you feel like don’t belong to you?

Because of their lifestyle, because of their socioeconomic reality, because of their race, class, gender, sexuality, who is it that you feel like doesn’t belong in the pen, so to speak, with you? And what would it be like if Jesus called them to join you or Jesus called you to join them to be in a pen with them?

How do you prepare your own heart for that? How do you recognize that you are not unique or special because he’s called you? There are others unlike you.

And I think that opens up us to be better prepared for multiethnic communities and communities that have come from different socioeconomic backgrounds and communities that are open to people with all sorts of different lifestyle choices who want to come investigate Jesus alongside them and recognizing that the sheep don’t get to say who’s in the flock, the shepherd does.

And so, the shepherd might invite some people in here that you’re uncomfortable with and that’s okay.

Anthony: Yeah. And in reality, as the Savior of the world, he has. I think it was Bob Goff I heard say, God drew a circle around the world and said, you’re in. And now let’s go about proclaiming that and inviting people to live into that reality that he has died and been raised to life for them too.