In the center of this chapter, John gives a date for the event, or more specifically, a festival from which we can date it: the Feast of Dedication, that is, Hanukkah. The Judeans celebrated the liberation of their temple from foreign Greek forces and the establishment of the Maccabean kings. Jesus was walking in King Solomon’s portico, and Judea was occupied by foreign Roman forces. The parallels were unmistakable.
So, in this chapter, when Jesus talks about shepherds, everyone’s thinking of that most famous of shepherds, the boy who defeated a giant and became King David. If Jesus was a conventional king, this would have been a good time to make the first-century equivalent of a major campaign announcement. But Jesus was no conventional king. He is much more.
Right before the Hannukah scene, Jesus teaches of shepherds, gathering their sheep. He says the sheep know their shepherd’s voice, but the people respond with blank stares. (John 10:6) I’ve lectured enough to know how that feels. That’s the time when you go back and try again from another angle – which is what Jesus does.
He tells his listeners exactly who he is with more vivid, concrete language: “Amen, amen [translating loosely as “Listen!”] … I am the sheep’s gate. … I am the good shepherd.” (John 10: 7,11) The activities he describes are kingly duties. The occupying Romans certainly seem like “thieves and bandits” (10:8) and “wolves” (10:12). Driving out the powerful implies taking power, doesn’t it? Declaring yourself shepherd is one step away from declaring yourself king. The shepherd’s staff and the king’s scepter are closely related.
Jesus sounds like Ezekiel, who tells of how the “word of the Lord” (Ezekiel 34:1) came to the “son of man” (Ezekiel 34:2) against the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves. These shepherds eat the sheep and wear the wool, but don’t strengthen the diseased, heal the sick, bind up the broken, gather the straying, or seek the lost. The sheep are only resources to extract and exploit. “With force and with cruelty have you ruled them!” (Ezekiel 34:4 KJV) Sound familiar?
God will justly remove them from office. So who will be the shepherd in their place? None other than God himself: “I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out.” (Ezekiel 34:11) The Lord is my shepherd, as David wrote. The word for the green “pasture” God will provide in John 10:9 is only used here in the whole New Testament, and also in Ezekiel 34:14.
Ezekiel’s shepherd sure sounds a lot like Jesus (and Ezekiel is clear, it’s God who’s speaking). “I will feed them on the mountains of Israel” (Ezekiel 34:13) becomes the Feeding of the 5,000 and the Sermon on the Mount. “I will seek that which is lost” (Ezekiel 34:16) becomes the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15). “Behold, I judge between cattle and cattle, between the rams and the he goats” (Ezekiel 34:17) becomes the Parable of the Sheep and Goats (Matthew 25).
Ezekiel continues with how God will be a shepherd, until suddenly in the middle of Chapter 34, this shepherding action is focused into one man. “And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David, he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd.” (Ezekiel 24:23) God will accomplish this redemption of Israel and the world through a single person, a shepherd-king who will feed his people. When Jesus says “I am the good shepherd” and “I am the bread of life,” he says he is both of these things at once.
When Jesus was a baby, the Spirit gathered shepherds and kings to him. In John 10, he is both shepherd and king in one. This union of prophetic, shepherding word and kingly authority leads to the most astonishing claim of theological union: he says before everyone, “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)
Jesus is always talking about how to do the will of his Father — thy kingdom come, thy will be done. God wants to gather his sheep, and God’s prophets tell of one shepherd and one king who will do his will, and God says God himself will accomplish this. It all adds up, to infinity perhaps, but adds up nonetheless. God does himself what no one else can.
Which means that Jesus has just made himself out to be God, and has committed high blasphemy. Out come the stones again. But Jesus defuses this – barely — by asking more questions, and quoting Scripture. Psalm 82:6 has God saying to humans who had received the law, “you are gods.” God enabled men and women to fulfill particular tasks or speak particular words, for a time. They were one with God’s will in some small way, though they later fell short of this calling. Jesus is asking, if that union was real, can’t that union be greater than it was, more perfect and complete?
Jesus doesn’t say the Judeans have too high a view of scripture, he says their view is too LOW. Since “scripture cannot be dissolved,” (John 10:35 DBH), there must be at least some sense in which the giving of the law and/or the giving of the spirit can cause God to call humans “gods.” Psalm 82:6 (like the rest of Scripture) points to the Incarnation, if you take it seriously.
So his accusers pause, puzzled, and Jesus is saved from arrest, somehow. It’s still not his time. There’s a few months before Passover, and it’s not safe to teach at the Temple anymore. Jesus returns to the wilderness where his ministry began: across the Jordan to where John had been baptizing (before King Herod caught up to him). There is still light in the day and work to do, “and many there had faith in him.” (John 10:42) He has a short respite before his seventh and greatest sign, and before the endgame is set in motion.
IMAGE: Stained-glass roundel of the Annunciation to the Shepherds made in 13th-century France. Glencairn Museum, Bryn Athyn, PA, 03.SG.240.
