FROM OBLIGATION TO LOVING COMMITMENT
Acts 4:8-12; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18
A missionary society wrote to David Livingstone and asked: “Have you found a good road to where you are? If so, we want to know how to send some men to join you.” Livingstone replied: “If you have men who will come only if they know there is a good road, I don’t want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.”
There is a big difference between those who seek the easy path and those who act out of love and commitment. That is the point Jesus makes in the gospel. He contrasts the attitudes of a good shepherd and a false one:
A real shepherd is born to his task; it is a vocation. He loves his sheep and they love him; he knows them and calls them by name; he thinks of them before he thinks of himself; he does not abandon them even, and perhaps especially, in the face of danger.
For hired hands, to whom Jesus likens the Pharisees, it is a “job”; they are in it solely for the pay; they care nothing for the sheep and so they run away in the face of danger.
The bottom-line: One who works out of loving commitment thinks of the people one is serving. One who works out of a sense of obligation thinks chiefly about oneself and recompense.
Jesus was the good shepherd – when he had compassion on the crowds and satiated their hunger; when he reached out to the sick and the sinner, to the Samaritan woman, to the Canaanite woman, to the woman caught in adultery, to Zacchaeus, to Martha and Mary. As he moves towards the cross, Jesus holds up this model of the good shepherd.
Jesus, the good shepherd, invites us to be good shepherds. He challenges us to move from obligation to loving commitment, to be a faithful presence to people in need.
Who, in my life, needs “good shepherding”? How will I “be with” those in need?
May we be shepherds to one another, especially to those in need. May we move from obligation to loving commitment.
