"The Care of the Shepherd" | Charissa Simmons | May 11, 2025

So just before that gospel reading, we sang this beautiful hymn. It's a paraphrase of the psalm appointed for today. Did you notice that? Psalm 23.

There are four hymns in our hymnal that are based on the text of Psalm 23, and I bet many of you in this room know this psalm by heart, in one version or another. And it's no wonder, because it is a beautiful psalm, full of lovely imagery and captivating metaphor.

And it's an apt psalm to pair with the gospel today, where we hear Jesus speak about being the good shepherd to the sheep. Well, actually, we didn't hear the words "good shepherd" in the snippet of the gospel we had today, but Jesus does say it just a few verses earlier in that 10th chapter of John, just preceding what we heard today. So we can bring that phrase "good shepherd" into our hearing of Jesus talk about his sheep.

What does it mean for Jesus to say he is the good shepherd and we are the sheep?

In the context of the Christian scriptures, the New Testament, we often are told that shepherds were some of the lowest members of society, utterly looked down on. And while that assertion is often a little overdone, manual laborers like shepherds were not held in high esteem in the Roman Empire.

In the context of the Psalms, though, in the Hebrew scriptures, "shepherd" is used as a metaphor—used as a metaphor for the king. The shepherd is the leader, the caretaker, the one who guides. And usually in the Psalms, when the shepherd metaphor is used for God, it's in the context of community—the shepherd of the people, the flock.

But here in Psalm 23, the language is personal. "The Lord is my shepherd" is about my experience of the shepherd and my experience of the shepherd's care.

And such abundance I have under the shepherd's care—green pastures, still waters, protection from those who trouble me, a cup running over. The shepherd revives my soul.

God's goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, says the psalmist.

Now, many scholars, though, agree that that line, "Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me," has a slightly better translation. They put it this way: Surely your goodness and steadfast love will pursue me. God's goodness and faithful love pursue me all the days of my life.

So this is not about sparkles and hearts wafting along behind me because I am blessed. This is about the love that God has for me chasing after me, even if I am running away. God's very nature will not let me stray from God. Surely, the psalmist says, surely God will not lose me.

And notice also that this psalm is written in the present tense. This abundance, this pursuit by goodness and steadfast love, the care of the shepherd, is what God is doing right now—not something merely hoped for in some better future, not something remembered from the past. It's happening now.

I wonder how this psalm applies to your life today. Where do you find that still water? When are you in community with those who trouble you?

So Jesus invokes the shepherd and sheep imagery in his answer to the question, "Are you the Messiah? Tell us plainly," the people beg.

But Jesus isn't one for plain answers. He answers them by saying he's already told them—not in words, by his actions. "The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me," he says. His acts of healing, feeding, and restoration are signs that, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, clearly proclaim who he is. They are signs of caring, like a shepherd caring for sheep.

Jesus' critics don't recognize him as the Messiah because they don't recognize the signs—the signs of care and healing and liberation. They are more concerned with matters of power and influence and control, and they can't recognize the voice of the one who preaches love.

To know and hear Jesus' voice, to recognize that voice, it is not something that is easily, or maybe at all, explainable—because it's an experience. It's one of those things you just know. You know when you are being loved and cared for, like a sheep learns to recognize the shepherd that guides them safely to the green pastures.

It's that intuitive sense of trust that we have in goodness and mercy. It's the part of us that realizes when something is not goodness and urges us to sit at that table in the presence of those who trouble us and work for justice and reconciliation. It's the deep knowing that there is no limit to how much you can love and be loved.

"I know my sheep," Jesus says, "and they follow me." Part of knowing Jesus' voice is being known—being known so intimately that you can't help but follow.

Growing up, I was devoted to Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. At the end of each show, I eagerly anticipated hearing him say, "I like you just the way you are." I adored Mr. Rogers as a child—and frankly, I still do—and that statement was so comforting to me. I knew that Mr. Rogers didn't really know me, but I intuitively understood, even as a child, that what he was talking about was unconditional love. And when I heard him say that, I believed it was possible for me to be loved.

I'm going to share with you two of my favorite quotes from Fred Rogers about love:

"When we love a person, we accept them exactly as is—the lovely with the unlovely, the strong with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade. And of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way."

"And when I say, 'It's you I like,' I am talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch—that deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive: love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed."

This is something of what it means to be known by the Good Shepherd.

Jesus says then, about the sheep whom he knows, "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish." And we need a little bit of context for this statement too. In the first century, the hearers of this gospel did not have developed concepts of heaven and hell as places in the afterlife where we would go when we died. Instead, they would more likely think of perishing as the present evil age that they lived in, and eternal life as an image for the age to come or the kingdom of God.

Jesus is speaking of the kind of life, or the quality of life, that we lead now as we hear the shepherd's voice and follow. In eternal life, Jesus invites us to create that life—the kingdom of God—by following him. And he says, "No one will snatch them out of my hand." What the Good Shepherd offers us can never be taken away.

We are held—but not passively. As we follow the Good Shepherd, we are also being pursued by goodness and steadfast love. We are invited into the creation of the kingdom of God.

The theologian Joseph Bessler puts it this way: Easter is proof that Jesus is in the hands of God, not in the hands of the emperor or in the hands of death. So in our celebration, we claim that we are in Jesus' hands—not in the hands of other powers.

What might it mean for us to live out of that confidence and trust, and so become the hands of Christ in the world? Whom are we willing to hold on to, as we are in the hands of Christ? Whom are we to hold?