[Note: If you have the time, begin reading John’s Gospel at 9:40 and go all the way to 10:21. This will help you to understand WHY Saint John tells the story ... and why he tells it this way.]
 
            One of my family’s dogs was a Shetland sheep dog and Border collie mix. “Collie” speaks for itself; but unlike Lassie, they are smaller, more agile and less “hyper.”  The “border” is the mountainous meadows forming the boundary between Scotland and England. The “Shetland” refers to a group of islands between Scotland and Norway.  Even in these days of ubiquitous synthetic fabrics, the wool of Shetland sheep still is prized for being warm, soft, strong and durable. The sheep dogs of the Shetland Islands, like their cousins the Border Collies, are vital to wool industries. Trained to herd sheep as skillfully as any human being; they are determined, resourceful and courageous.
 
            However, when they have no sheep to herd, they try, often humorous results, to herd their humans. If we were out walking, our Sandy (his very name a tribute to his heritage!) would lean himself against our legs, trying to ward us off from some perceived danger - an oncoming car; a downed branch; a wily squirrel. He was ferocious to strangers at the door but a perfect host to anyone welcomed into our home. And when we were all gathered in the parlor, watching TV, he would position himself between us and the door ... just in case! During one of our Village parades, he was on our porch watching the passing show when, for the first time in his life, he saw a horse!! He barked the alarm: “Big dog, mommy!! Big, big dog!!” One fateful midnight, vandals fire-bombed the building that used to be on the lot where the Red Dot Vegetarian Kitchen now stands quite near our home. Before the first flames rose, he had awakened the whole household. A “good shepherd,” for sure!!
 
            The basic storyline of “The Godfather (Part 1)” traces the evolution of Michael Corleone from WW II hero, unsullied by the criminal enterprise of his family, to his ascendency as a ruthless mob boss. He embraces evil in order to preserve his family, shaken by their father’s death and their brother’s brutal murder.
 
            Following his assassination of the rival mob boss who had attempted to kill his aging father, Don Corleone, the camera lingers on the scene of his carnage. Michael, meanwhile, has been whisked off to hide out in the family’s native Sicily.  The graphic murder scene slowly dissolves into a one of pastoral serenity.  The camera pulls back to take in a bucolic hillside. In the distance, a shepherd guides his flock through pasturage. After the horror of Michael’s committing a double homicide, the scene is arresting in its peaceful beauty. Abruptly, into the foreground come men carrying rifles, dark against the blue sky and green grass, guarding Michael. We realize with a start that soon the evil at the heart of this family will lay waste even this serenity.
 
            The “good shepherd” is “bad shepherd” in order to shepherd his people. It is at once both the Original Sin and the sin of Cain, played out on the big screen. It is the paradox contained in the words, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” To drive home this mystery of sin, the climax of the movie contrasts each of the ritual questions asked of Michael at his nephew’s Baptism (“Do you renounce Satan?  And all his works? And all his empty promises?”) with the rubbing out of each remaining enemy of the Corleone family.
 
            I’ve begun with these stories because we are conditioned by our culture - both religious and secular - to hear today’s Gospel incorrectly. “Mary had a little lamb” and “Bah! Bah! Black sheep” set the tone for children’s acceptance of sheep as lovable little creatures. Walt Disney solidified this sentiment with his now forgotten, but once immensely popular, movie “So Dear to My Heart.” Still, sheep are not nearly as lovable as dogs and cats. They are not as intelligent or responsive. They don’t play with a Frisbee or a ball of yarn.
 
            Shepherds, too, have benefited from centuries of softening. In Christ’s own time, they were considered somewhat disreputable. Not unlike migrant farm-workers here in contemporary America, they were thought of as a necessary inconvenience. Their work provided a staple of the Israelite economy and diet; yet, they themselves were very low on an already shaky social and economic totem pole.
 
            “The Lord is my shepherd,” has become the cinematic epitome of Christian prayer. Whenever a graveyard scene, a stormy sea or impending danger call for innocuous dialogue by clergy, script writers tend to trot out Psalm 23. Shepherds are worshipful figures in a crèche or your little boy dressed up like one for the Christmas pageant. Mawkish religious art portrays an enervated Christ caressing impossibly clean and groomed lambs. Even contrasting images of Jesus as Himself a lamb have been domesticated. Saint John the Baptist identified Him as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Likening Jesus to the sheep butchered on the Eve of Passover offered an image horrific in its brutality. The Book of Revelation presents the contradictory image of a militant lamb, bloodied but victorious. Yet somehow we now have a diluted, anemic Shepherd and a gentle, harmless Lamb. The Lord has become “our shepherd” in ways that trivialize both Him and us.
 
            On the other hand, Psalm 23, and especially comparable passages in both Ezekiel and Jeremiah, were staples of Israelite faith. The two prophets contain passages in which God, enraged by the self-serving behavior of Israel’s religious and political leaders, vows to unseat them and much more: “I Myself shall pasture my sheep!” Therefore, when Jesus uses shepherding imagery, the contexts in which he does so are calculated to throw his listeners off stride and rattle their cages. He identifies Himself with God’s promised shepherding.
 
            The Gospels of both Saint Matthew and Saint Luke contain parables about one lost sheep whose welfare draws the owner into the desert on a desperate and ultimately successful rescue mission. The focus in this story is twofold: on the intensity of the search and the joy of the community in the wanderer’s safe return. The goodness of the shepherd is only implied ... or left for us to infer. Saint Luke tells us that Jesus told this parable after facing criticism from the religious authorities for His having spent time with society’s ne’er-do-wells. They are the “lost” who need someone to go out and bring them home. The fulfillment of those vindicating Shepherd / God prophesies is the obvious implication.
 
            The same kind of confrontation underlies the tenth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel. Just before this morning’s reading, Jesus had cured a blind man. Because the man vigorously defended Jesus before the Sanhedrin, he was barred from the Temple. The episode concludes with a showdown between Jesus and “those Pharisees who were in His entourage.”  It is important to note that this is a singular group of Pharisees, different from the ones who had maligned the cured blind man. They are Jesus’ supporters!! Yet the Lord says to them, “If you actually were blind, there would be no sin in that. But you claim to ‘see,’ [i.e. to have insight and understanding] and so your sin remains!”
 
            This confrontation was both contemporary to Jesus’ ministry and symbolic of a crisis in the Gospel writer’s own time and community. What follows, therefore, is a homily which - while retaining dominant elements traceable directly to the words of Our Lord - bears the marks of John’s editing skill and genius.
 
            We usually think first of Jesus’ dramatic claim, “I am the Good Shepherd.” But that line comes only later in Chapter 10 and is all but absent from today’s reading. (It will be the Gospel in a different year of the three-year Cycle.) The “I Am” statements in Saint John’s Gospel are deliberately meant to evoke memories of God’s revelation of His name to Moses at the burning bush.  It is the first half of the Sacred Tetragrammaton:
 “Y-H-W-H”: “I - Am - Who - Am.” Among other images, Jesus says “I Am the Way,” “I Am the Bread ...” and “I Am the Vine.”
 
            In today’s Gospel, Jesus presents Himself in several ways, only one of which is an “I Am” testimony. By contrasting the behavior of thieves and shepherds, He indirectly suggests that He is the one who “cares for His sheep.” The mutual identification of sheep and shepherd is based on naming and voice recognition. Naming, of course, recalls both Jesus’ giving nicknames to various Apostles (Peter the “Rock”; James and John the “Sons of Thunder,” etc.) and the custom of taking a new name at Baptism. Voice recognition can refer equally to Jesus’ teaching and apostolic preaching.
 
            But here, “I Am” is only “the Gate.” Shepherds often bedded down right across the entry to the sheepfold, forming a human barrier against thieves. No one enters the Church except through Christ; no one, once entered, escapes His protection. Such is the work of each generation of the Church’s ministers.
 
            Today’s Mass provides two keys to interpreting this metaphor. In the first reading, from The Acts of the Apostles, the plea of the crowds echoes across the centuries: “What are we to do?!” Saint Peter tells them to repent and be baptized in order to receive the Holy Spirit. There are two directives here. To repent does not mean to regret some foible but rather to reorient one’s life by centering on Christ. The gift of the Holy Spirit not only makes such transformation possible, it also both prompts and empowers creative responses to life’s challenges.
 
            The second reading, from the First Letter of Peter, says something similar: “You have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” This as the impetus for “following in the footsteps” of a patient Jesus who “did not return insult for insult” but, instead, “bore our sins” so that “we might live for righteousness.” Both readings, then, prepare us for Jesus’ use of the image to chastise the narrow-minded Pharisees. John recalls it in order to upbraid similar prejudicial behavior among the Church’s leaders at the end of the First Century. They are to guard the Church, governing entry and preventing apostasy; they are to follow where the Risen Lord and the Apostolic teaching lead; they are to call others “by name,” as they themselves are called.
 
            Commercial interests have co-opted the current epidemic. TV and radio ads keep telling us to keep our distance, keep others safe. And, of course, they and their products are “there for us”! These sales pitches cloaked as “concern” are as self-serving as the behaviors they encourage in us. Not that there’s anything wrong with a little enlightened self-interest!! The Gospels themselves occasionally teach the same thing - “Do unto others” and “Whoever does for the least of these has done for Me.”
 
            But today’s readings invite a deeper response, rooted not in self-preservation but in our Baptismal grace. By that grace, the suffering caused by this disease and the inconvenience of our distancing can be united with the sufferings of the Shepherd. While we continue to do as our authorities require, with that grace, our obedience becomes an “act of righteousness.” Saint Thomas Aquinas called it “Commutative Justice” - giving everyone their due - the basis for our Church’s teaching on the “Common Good.”
 
            We become, in imitation of the “shepherd of our souls,” “gatekeepers,” preventing infection in others and caring for those in our households and communities - good shepherds all!!