I recently heard someone say that sheep are dumber creatures than others, and it is a telling coincidence that the Bible, especially John’s Gospel, likens us to sheep, utterly dependent on the Good Shepherd. Although it is an interesting and amusing point, in the drama of Scripture, sheep are depicted differently. So, how should pastors understand their relationship to the “sheep” entrusted to them by God the Good Shepherd? While reflecting upon this question as a pastor, it seems that this question offers much food for thought for all of us, laity and ordained. And although John’s gospel lacks the familiar Nativity imagery of sheep and shepherds, the centrality of “sheep” in John’s gospel invites meditation, especially on the feast of St. John the Evangelist, this third day of Christmas.
Imagine Scripture as a drama, with each book an act, each pericope a scene. Thus, in the act of John’s gospel, three scenes provide food for thought. First, Jesus declares to the Pharisees and chief priests in John 10:11-18, “I am the Good Shepherd.” Second, in John 6:1-15, Jesus miraculously feeds the 5,000 and declares, “I am the bread of life.” Finally, in John 21:15-19, Jesus recommissions Peter: “feed … tend … feed my sheep.”
The Good Shepherd’s Sacrifice
In contrast to hired hands (the Pharisees, chief priests and authorities), Jesus lays down his life for his sheep so that the sheep can live. Another scene, Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the 5,000 in John 6, provides more context. In this familiar story, Matthew and Mark remind us that the Israelites are like sheep without a shepherd (Matt. 9:36; Mark 6:34).
Drawing from prophetic passages like Ezekiel 34:1-16 and Jeremiah 23:1-4, the shepherd-less sheep are described as perishing because Israel’s rulers and leaders have abandoned them to the nations. Jesus, moved with compassion, thus gathers his sheep upon his mount (Ezek. 34:13-14) and miraculously feeds 5,000 of them with bread and fish.
This miracle, Jesus explains, is but a sign that he will feed his sheep with the heavenly food of his flesh and blood. In this way, Jesus lays down his life for his sheep as their Good Shepherd, unlike the hired hands, so that he can feed his sheep with himself. He is slain so that the sheep can live.
This is a plot twist.
Sheep in scripture are sacrificial animals. They were reared to lay down their lives for their shepherds and their community, from their fleece to their meat, to atoning for human sin in Temple sacrifices. They were slain so that the shepherd and the community could live, not the other way around. When Jesus says that he is the Good Shepherd and that he lays down his life for his sheep, it’s an inversion of roles. This shepherd is slain so that the sheep can live, but toward what purpose?
The Purpose of Sacrifice
Drawing from other scenes in other acts, the purpose of animal sacrifice was supposed to elicit in God’s people our own sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, the giving up of self in worship of God. Thus, the prophets and the Psalms are replete with verses like “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6:6) or “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:16-17).
When Jesus chastises the Pharisees and chief priests as hired hands, he repeats YHWH’s chastisement of Israel’s rulers and leaders who abandon the sheep of Israel (Jer. 23:1). They were neither able, nor did they care, to lay down their lives for the sheep, so that the sheep would in turn lay down their lives in the presence of God. But unlike these hired hands, Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He feeds and nourishes us by his sacrifice, so that we too can offer ourselves back to him as living sacrifices to God. Only one, who is both shepherd and sheep, who lays down his life for the sheep as one of us but remains the eternal Shepherd, can lead, guide, and empower us into this kind of holy and sacrificial living.
In our liturgy, no greater words are prayed than these: “And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.” Where is here? The table of the Lord’s Supper, where we are reminded that he offered himself upon the altar of the cross, his soul and body as a sacrifice for our sins.
But here also means anywhere a sheep is obligated to offer itself as a sacrifice, which is to say, everywhere. As the ancient canticle Pascha Nostrum says, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast” — not just the feast of the Eucharist, but the continued feast of pure, holy and blameless living, “with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” For we are living sacrifices, reckoning ourselves “to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 6:11).
What then of pastors?
The Drama of Sacrifice
In John 21:16, while some translations have Jesus commissioning Peter the second time with words like take care of (NRSV and NIV) or tend (RSV and ESV) Jesus’ sheep, a more accurate translation is shepherd my sheep (NASB). The Greek verb used here, poimainō, “to shepherd,” is derived from the Greek noun poimēn, or “shepherd.”
The Good Shepherd, ho kalos poimēn, commands Peter to poimēnē. Thus, Peter uses these same words in his epistle, instructing presbyters, “poimanatē the flock of God … by proving to be examples to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:2). An example of what? The archipoimēn, or arch-shepherd, or chief shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4): Jesus. Jesus passes down to Peter, and to subsequent generations of pastors, the duty to shepherd his flock by following his example of sacrifice.
Within this drama, then, in persona Christi takes on meatier meaning. It isn’t merely that this concept has significant bearing with the celebrant’s role in the Eucharist, but rather that in persona Christi embodies a life of sacrifice for Christ’s sheep, one extending beyond the narthex and into every plain, vale, and valley. Every marriage falling apart that needs a compassionate ear, each body ravaged by disease that needs a hand held in comfort, every interruptive phone call or text from someone battling loneliness or addiction seeking encouragement, every brave and patient proclamation of the gospel with word and deed in the face of lies, unbelief, and injustice — in these moments, pastors are called to make Christ present not only with their lips but with their lives.
But this shepherding ministry doesn’t end here. Contra the hired hands, good shepherds in turn teach Christ’s sheep to offer their lives as a living sacrifice to the Lord — to pursue the narrow paths of righteousness and avoid the broadways of destruction, to pick up the cross of holiness while putting to death the desires of worldliness, to tend a life free of the leaven of malice and evil. This is the “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” that sheep in turn offer back to God. When shepherds fail or abandon this duty, they typecast themselves as the hired hands, inevitably curating consumers merely of liturgical theater, while something gloriously better is being offered.
Therefore, sheep ought to expect pastors not only to administer holy food “in these holy mysteries,” but rather to model that sacrificial life of the Good Shepherd, thereby guiding us to “continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works” that God “hast prepared for us to walk in.”
Likewise, shepherds ought to lead God’s sheep not only to take, eat, and drink but rather to strive for that life where we offer back to God “our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice.” Perhaps then, we sheep and shepherds together, all “partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood” of our Lord Jesus Christ, and be filled with his “grace and heavenly benediction.” This Christmastide, as we sit among the sheep and shepherds marveling at the Christ child in a manger, may we be drawn into this verdant drama in the fellowship of Christ our Good Shepherd. Nothing less would make us into one flock with him, that we may dwell in him, and he in us.
The Rev. John D. Sundara is the Vicar for Worship and Evangelism at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Houston, TX.