1 Peter 2:24-25 (NRSV Updated Edition)
He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
John 10:1-10 (NRSV Updated Edition)
“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
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"The text says, “The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice.” In Jerusalem the gate through which the sheep were driven when they were to be sacrificed was the Sheep Gate and it had a gatekeeper. When the priests were ready for more sheep the gatekeeper would open the gate and the sheep would be driven in.
"In the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And here it seems the figure of speech suggests the gatekeeper opens the gate for the Lamb of God to go into the sacrificial chambers. Suddenly the metaphor has changed and for a moment the shepherd becomes the lamb. Could this be how we know his voice? He is the one willing to die as an act of communication and forgiveness that shows us what we do to each other in our distorted quest for peace.
"This is the gentle voice; forgiving, merciful, long suffering and self-sacrificial that is like the perfect mother we all wish for in the recesses of our hearts. We will follow this voice. It has no harsh overtones. This voice will save us from our own destructive quest for an inner peace at the expense of our neighbor and in its place shows us a love so deep and complete that no one is forsaken."
- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on May 11th, 2014 (http://girardianlectionary.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Easter4-2014-Mothers-Day-This-Abundant-Life.doc)
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"There are several rather extraordinary features of John’s Good Shepherd text, which I suspect can only be brought to life by the eucharistic Christ. Jesus says that he is the door — and of course it is the purpose of the door that it defines what is in and what is out. But he is a very special sort of door, because it is by entering through him, which means following him through a certain sort of death, that the sheep will be able to go in and out and find pasture. Now what is extraordinary about this is the freedom involved. The Good Shepherd enables people to go in and out and find pasture — it is a strange sort of door which does not seek to define people, but gives access to a temporary shelter which exists for the benefit of the sheep without wishing to confine the sheep therein.
"There is no definitive inside and outside for the Good Shepherd, there are places of shelter and of feeding, different places to which the door gives access, and which presuppose movement, non-fixity, and confidence in being neither in nor out. It is assumed that the best feeding place might not be one that seems to be “in,” yet the good shepherd is able to make that place available to his sheep.
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"The sheep hear the voice of the good shepherd, and he calls them by name and leads them out. The sheep are ones who have entered by the door. That is, they have learned that it is only by undergoing a certain sort of death, which we celebrate in baptism, that they are able to become part of the fold. ... Those who have died can hear the voice of the one who died, because they are able to recognise the true voice of God, who knows not death, and who calls into being, and loves. Other voices are not to be followed, because they show themselves not to be of God since they are scandalised by death.
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"The sheep who have learned not to be scandalised by death can go in and out, and in their very doing so, have become themselves shepherds, leaders in tranquil imitation of other sheep, co-creators of a great rejoicing. We can hear the voice of such shepherds if we are on our way to becoming such shepherds ourselves. For the one who went before us did so not so as to be superior to and apart from us, but so as to be himself in each of us, each one called by name."
- James Alison, from "The Good Shepherd", lecture delivered in Santiago de Chile, October 1999 (http://girardianlectionary.net/learn/alison-good-shepherd/)
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"[H]e calls us by name. In his calling us we discover who we are and we can walk freely and without fear. This I think is part of the continuation of the message we've been getting over these Easter weeks - of the oddness of the voice of the One who speaks to us, the oddness of the one who spoke to Mary Magdalene, who spoke to Thomas, who spoke to the disciples at Emmaus. And now rather than speaking to us from a position of great haughtiness or great apparent leadership, he's speaking to us as one who has been through death, is not frightened by it, is not scandalized by it, and knows that as we are able to relax into hearing his voice, so we will be able to live abundantly."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fourth Sunday of Easter 2020 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHkEqYwK91Y)
[Source of links to Thomas L. Truby sermon and James Alison lecture: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter4a]
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