Readings 1 John 3:16-24; John 10: 11-18
There is an old story about a student minister who was sent to a small country village to preach a trial sermon. He did so and then decided to take a week off from his studies and have a holiday in that village. A few days later he got a call from one of the Elders asking him could he preach on the following Sunday as the regular minister was ill. His reply was that he had only brought one sermon with him and didn’t have the time or the resources to prepare another one. 'Don’t worry,' said the Elder. 'We can’t remember a word you said last Sunday though everyone enjoyed it.

That story came into my mind when I started preparing for today because exactly three years ago I was here and the readings were the same then as they are for today. I was tempted to repeat the sermon I used then on the grounds that it was very unlikely that anyone remembered it. It was about good and bad shepherds and had a political tinge to it but even though you may not have remembered it I got a bit bored re-reading it and decided to make a new approach. That isn’t all that easy because the idea of Jesus the Good Shepherd has got so deeply imbedded in our minds that it is hard to get away from images of Jesus guarding a flock of sheep,going off to look for the one that is lost and leading them to still waters and green pastures. There isn’t anything wrong with those images even though they don’t have a great deal of visual relevance for our time when the farmer and his dog round up large numbers of sheep, all of whom probably look alike and only identified if they prove to be too stubborn, too wayward or too flyblown.

Because that is the case I sought to find what is the enduring message from this part of John’s gospel – what is just as relevant now as it was in the time of Jesus ? I think that John was trying to highlight aspects of Jesus’ life and ministry in a way that has a timeless quality about it. In a way it is a pity that we didn’t start reading from verse 10 where John has Jesus saying, 'I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly' - that is the agenda that governed his life and that is what led ultimately to his death. Our reading contains a number of striking phrases: V15 'I lay down my life for the sheep'; V17 '..I lay down my life that I may have power to take it again'; V18 'no one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord'. In many ways the theme here is a continuation of what we read from the 12th chapter of John on the last Sunday in March where Jesus refers to his impending death by telling his disciples 'Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit'. 'The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified . . I, when I am lifted up will draw all men to myself'.

There are many ways in which people have interpreted the significance of the words said to have been spoken by Jesus in reference to his impending death – not so much in the time of the New Testament itself, but in later generations it was suggested that humanity was indelibly tainted by the sin of Adam and Eve – like a virus passing from one generation to another – and the only way to bring about abundant life was to forgive the sin produced by the virus. Jesus is presented as the one who offers himself as a payment or ransom on behalf of sinners – something demanded by a righteous God. There have been many variations around this theme which we find imbedded in a number of Hymns:

TIS 344
Blessed through endless ages be the precious stream
Which from endless torment did the world redeem
Abel’s blood for vengeance pleaded to the skies
But the blood of Jesus for our pardon cries.
TIS 350
He died that we might be forgiven, he died to make us good
That we might go at last to heaven, saved by his precious blood
There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin,
He only could unlock the gate of heaven, and let us in.

I believe that there are at least 15 different theories of the atonement but most of them reflect this sort of thinking which I have come to totally reject. One actually suggests that God made a deal with the devil – if I offer up Jesus as a sacrifice will you agree to stop tempting people to sin. The devil agreed but then God tricked him by raising Jesus from the dead. What I want to present is a different explanation arising directly out of our reading from John this morning. It relates to Jesus as the Good Shepherd who seeks abundant life for all but who also knows that everyone needs to be protected from the wolves which make the achievement of that abundant life so difficult. In his own lifetime the wolves could be found among the religious leaders many of whom were far more interested in legalism and ritual observance than in what they pointed to, and who laid these heavy burdens on ordinary people. They were also to be found in the political leaders like Herod whom Jesus is said to have called a fox - or the Roman soldiers known for their cruelty and the constant demand to pay taxes to Caesar. Then there were the diseases which afflicted so many and which brought people over and over again to Jesus seeking a cure. How could people find the abundant life in the midst of so many adverse and often violent pressures?

I believe that Jesus saw that the only way to make a difference was to sow a new seed into the ground so that eventually it would produce an abundant harvest. The seed was to be the voluntary relinquishing of his own life in the knowledge that he would be able to take it up again and thus give to all who were pursued by the wolves the hope that love is stronger even than death. No matter what the Hymns assert and the theologians declare I believe that the death and resurrection of Jesus isn’t fundamentally about the cure of sin but rather about the hope that makes people able to confront and deal with the wolves who prey upon the sheep.

Are there modern wolves that still confront us? I think that there are some things that have about them the threat poses by a real wolf in the midst of sheep – everyone one of us is subject to the uncertainties of life – the unexpected illness, the accident which often leads to crippling injury or death, the natural disasters of flood, fire, earthquake or famine,the collapse of financial and industrial entities on which our prosperity has come to depend. Some of these wolves belong to the natural order of things – they are part and parcel of life itself – others have their origin in human sin or ignorance. I don’t believe that God intervenes to drive away the wolves but he does provide us with the resources to rise above what life brings to us and the hope that there is yet to be found good fruit in the seed that Jesus sowed – in the life that he laid down in order to take it up again. What happened after his death remains a mystery but I believe that the benefits that have flowed from what happened reveal that the world does have a timeless Shepherd capable of leading us from dark valleys to greener pastures. In whatever form the resurrection took I see it as being a validation of the values taught by Jesus as well as a declaration by God that love is stronger than death.

I admit that I don’t really understand what I have been trying to communicate but claim to be in good company with people like St Bernard who declared:
(i) I believe though I do not comprehend, and I hold by faith what I cannot grasp with my mind.