Readings: 1John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
Words can be very helpful and very confusing. My four-year-old grandson was explaining to me, `Pop, me rode my bike yesterday!`

Wanting to be helpful, I said, `Instead of saying, `Me rode my bike,` you should say, `I rode my bike!`` `No Pop! Me rode my bike!`

`Words! Words! Words! Words!`

IN another world, so sang Eliza Doolittle to Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering in her frustration about the need to learn to say many words, `Properly and loverly!`

John too was confronted with many `Words, words, words, words!` when he sat down in Ephesus to write his gospel some sixty years after the death Jesus. His Jewish forebears were masters with words as were his Greek readers. But which words would hit the mark?

In our story today he picked out very familiar words about the shepherd – now called the Good Shepherd. How many Jewish funerals had repeated the shepherd psalm? The image was used often - `He will feed his flock like a shepherd and gently lead those with young.` And again, `All we like sheep have gone astray`, but `he was led like a lamb to the slaughter.`

So Israel`s worship was rich with such words – words and metaphors for God. Picture language and story language was used to plummet mystery! Words to shape our thoughts and inspire our worship! Words to frame our relationship with God or to meditate upon God – like the shepherd who leads beside still waters!

For John Jesus was not only the Good Shepherd, but also the Bread of life, the Light of the world, the Vine of life and more. Words and pictures and stories!

But who was this Jesus with his many stories and many words?

John began his gospel with, `In the beginning was the Word! And the word was with God and the word was God. All things came into being through him.`

Behind all the words ever spoken and all the stories ever told, there is The Word, the ultimate expression of God; God who is beyond all expression and language; the Big Story beyond all our stories; Wisdom behind all the wisest things ever told.

John said this Word is God, the God who in the creation story was pictured speaking all things into being, saying, `Let there be light! And it was so.` Now in another age, there was a new Word speaking to bring a new world and new sort of life into being. It was like a new creation beginning again.

Furthermore, this Word from God now superseded those other ancient words, the commandments of God through Moses. Those words had been like a framework for Israel`s life; a way of ordering life. Now there had come a new Word, ordering life in a way that commandments could not.

But further John knew he was also addressing people of Greek background. For centuries they had spoken words of wisdom to explain the world – words from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and more. But these Greeks also had many gods – the whole Pantheon of gods – gods of war and fertility, of love and of the sea. Many words and many descriptions of gods! Said John to these Greeks, `This Word is behind and beyond all those attempts to describe god and life and wisdom`.

So, when all commands and stories have been told; all wisdom expounded; all little gods given their place – The Word is there. When all words fail, or we search for a source beyond them all, there is The Word, and there is God.

As if that was not mystery enough, then John declared what Jesus` followers had experienced and come to believe, `The Word became flesh and dwelled among us and we have seen his glory, glory as of a father`s only son, full of grace and truth.` Amazing! Now the Word behind all words and commands, wisdom and metaphors and stories, now that Word had taken on human flesh! Those followers, like John, had seen him with their eyes, touched him with their hands, walked with him on the road, eaten bread and wine. Jesus was the new human person, the new commandment, the final wisdom, giving expression to God. There the ultimate statement of God had taken on human flesh; the very glory of God. Jesus was the Word made flesh.

As if that is not enough, John then writes to us all, in every age in the church, `of his fullness we have all received, full of grace and truth.` The newly-formed humanity was found in Jesus Christ, and we are the full recipients of it. This is a new sort of life which John often called `eternal life` - not just life going on forever, but life in the fullness of this Word made flesh.

So this is the Prologue, the introduction to the Gospel of John. It is one of the most profound statements in all of human language. Then everything that follows – all the stories and words of Jesus – are about the God-life in Jesus and about the God-life in us too.

So, we come to the chapter 10, `I am the good shepherd`. The Shepherd God is now seen alive in Jesus. It pictures God to be full of compassion; calling, nurturing and growing; protecting and gathering in; drawing into closely bonded community; personal and intimate like Jesus with the Father. In company with this Good Shepherd we take on these same qualities in relationship with others. The sheep become like the Shepherd of their souls.

So, what is this Shepherd like and what are we to be? Let me tell of three qualities.

Firstly, the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. That is the Easter story of the life laid down. This is a key to life at its very best. This week we commemorated Anzac Day with those biblical words, `Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down life for a friend.` In some ways it captures a nation`s heart-land. Sacrificially serving something greater than the self! The very non-religious ethicist Peter Singer, concluded that the highest ethical life is characterised by the generous self-giving life. Has this Good Shepherd quality seeped into human life over the last two millennia? It would seem so. Giving life away!

A family member will donate a kidney to a sister. I heard of someone who donated a kidney to an unknown compatible recipient on the understanding that someone from that recipient`s family donated a kidney to another unknown sufferer. Laying down life!

Someone will forfeit personal and leisure time to tend the needs of a family bereft of a father. A daughter give up a career or personal comforts to care for her ageing parents! Some trusted seniors give quality time to nurture a small group of children in an after-school club! The Good Shepherd is alive and well. He still lays down his life for others.

But this Good Shepherding is not done on the basis of rewards. It is done because that is the character of the Shepherd, his character in us, regardless of reward or not. This Shepherd-pattern, this Word is implanted in us – not just words but a living reality; a whole new ordering of life; self-less love. And the epitome of it all was when the Good Shepherd lay down his life for the sheep.

The second quality of the Good Shepherd is `I know my own sheep and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.`

How should we describe such a `knowing` of the shepherd-heart? How do we know God or are known by God?

On the one hand it seems that God knows us only too well. As the Psalmist says, `O Lord you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar…… such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot grasp it! Where can I go from your spirit or where can I flee from your presence…..` To be known by the Shepherd-God is both amazing and un-nerving at the same time. Perhaps we run away or pretend when it comes to God. Is it that God might not like us, or not want to hear our grumblings about life`s unfairness? God is bigger than all that! God`s love is as big as `laying down his life for the sheep.`

On the other hand we have such a limited knowing of God – the God who knows us fully! As Paul wrote in his great chapter on love, `Now I know only in part; then I will fully know, even as I have been fully known.` In spite of all our words and this Word made flesh, there is so much mystery surrounding God; many seeming contradictions; much that goes against our ways of reason. So it is well that we be content that this sort of knowing is a `work in progress`; incomplete; more chapters to come; being patient with anticipation!

Nevertheless, at the heart of this knowing and being known by God, there is the sense of belonging. `I know my sheep and my sheep know me.` I know God in the sense that God is where I belong; where I am at home; where I am accepted; where purpose and order come from; where the door is always open. And I am happy that that goes both ways between God and I (or should that be `me`) myself.

Finally, Jesus said, `I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to me.`

The fold of Christ the Good Shepherd is not a closed club. The sheep in the fold are not the only sheep that the Good Shepherd has. There are many more sheep who might be lost or hurting, lonely or scattered or snatched by some evil force, for there are wolves around! Some of the sheep don`t actually know they are sheep at all and they certainly don`t know how to listen to the Shepherd`s voice. But they are sheep nevertheless and the Shepherd is always seeking to `bring them in`. The Shepherd is bigger than the fold, just as God is bigger than the church.

So we have this word or image, `Good Shepherd`! It`s very liveable language. It describes our bonds with God. It makes us feel at home with God as with the Good Shepherd. We know not just who we are but whose we are.

So with this liveable language, `the Word has become flesh and makes his home with us full of grace and truth. And of his fullness we have all received.` So these verses urge us: Be glad to let his fullness emerge each day. Be contented as sheep and as those called to be shepherds. Lay aside life irrespective of the rewards. Find a new way of knowing and being known with this Jesus. Enjoy the company of other sheep and shepherds wherever you find them, well past this very open door to this part of Christ`s fold. Each time we do, the Christ, the Good Shepherd is near at hand with a welcoming word. For he is the Word of God!