Gentle politics

Today's readings: Acts 4, 8-12; 1 John 3, 1-2; John 10, 11-18.

Gentleness is usually the last thing most would associate with the world of politics. Politics is about conflict and satisfying interests. Gentleness has to do with personal relationships.

Today, the risen Lord is presented as the good shepherd, the one who rules with gentleness over our often disoriented hearts. The shepherd whose major concern is what ultimately gives us peace of heart.

In the ancient Near East, it was customary for kings to style themselves as shepherds of their people. This was an image of power because their subjects were like sheep to them, who they could dispose of as they wished. But when the Lord Jesus himself became a lamb, he stood on the side of the lambs, with those who are downtrodden and killed. Jesus reveals himself to be the true shepherd because he lays down his life for the sheep. It is not power, but love that redeems us.

It would narrow down the rich meaning of the imagery of the shepherd and sheep if we took it as only applicable to the Church's internal governance. At the sight of crowds of people in search of him, Jesus took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. The focus here is not leadership within the Church, but the leadership which the Church collectively is called to provide in the deserts of life.

The focus of today's Gospel is the genuine concern for the sheep, a reassurance that the Lord cannot abandon humanity. The connection with the image of the lamb, so central in the Book of Revelation, points to the deepest meaning of the shepherd discourse whose focus is Jesus' act of laying down his life. The point the discourse is making is that Jesus, being the incarnate Word of God, is not just the shepherd, but also the food, the true 'pasture'. He gives life by giving himself, for he is life.

In the Gospels, faced with the murmuring of the Pharisees and scribes over his friendship with sinners and outcasts, Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep. The shepherd leaves behind the 99 to go after one lost sheep to bring it home. In today's Gospel, what John is mostly emphasising is that the shepherd knows his sheep, that he lays down his life for them, and that they will listen to his voice.

The most beautiful and popular expression of the shepherd image in the Old Testament scriptures is probably that in Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd... Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me." What are we afraid of today? In this day and age our lives are heavily marked with the fear of rejection, abandonment, failure, losing a job, not being loved, old age.

The desert stands for the loneliness, the existence that has lost meaning, the loss of hope, for all the darkness in life that many experience. The good shepherd is moved by all this and is not indifferent to what makes people's lives miserable in this desert. As Pope Benedict once said: "The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast." We need leadership in our external deserts of life. But what we mostly need is the light that leads us kindly "amid the encircling gloom, when the night is dark and I am far from home"(Cardinal John Henry Newman, The Pillar of the Cloud).

The good shepherd is concerned about the 'wolves' that attack and scatter the sheep, and about the sheep "that are not of this fold". This is not a 'churchly' concern. It seems to have been Jesus's utopia for humanity. It continues to be his project for a more humane and civilised world.