1 “I tell you the solemn truth, the one who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2 The one who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The doorkeeper opens the door for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought all his own sheep out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they recognize his voice. 5 They will never follow a stranger, but will run away from him because they do not recognize the stranger’s voice.” 6 Jesus told them this parable, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

7 So Jesus said again, “I tell you the solemn truth, I am the door for the sheep. 8 All who came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved, and will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come so that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.

11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand, who is not a shepherd and does not own sheep, sees the wolf coming and abandons the sheep and runs away. So the wolf attacks the sheep and scatters them. 13 Because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep, he runs away.

14 “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me— 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that do not come from this sheepfold. I must bring them too, and they will listen to my voice, so that there will be one flock and one shepherd. 17 This is why the Father loves me—because I lay down my life, so that I may take it back again. 18 No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down of my own free will. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it back again. This commandment I received from my Father.”

19 Another sharp division took place among the Jewish people because of these words. 20 Many of them were saying, “He is possessed by a demon and has lost his mind! Why do you listen to him?” 21 Others said, “These are not the words of someone possessed by a demon. A demon cannot cause the blind to see, can it?”

22 Then came the feast of the Dedication in Jerusalem. 23 It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple area in Solomon’s Portico. 24 The Jewish leaders surrounded him and asked, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus replied, “I told you and you do not believe. The deeds I do in my Father’s name testify about me. 26 But you refuse to believe because you are not my sheep. 27 My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; no one will snatch them from my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them from my Father’s hand. 30 The Father and I are one.”

31 The Jewish leaders picked up rocks again to stone him to death. 32 Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many good deeds from the Father. For which one of them are you going to stone me?” 33 The Jewish leaders replied, “We are not going to stone you for a good deed but for blasphemy because you, a man, are claiming to be God.”

34 Jesus answered, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If those people to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’ (and the scripture cannot be broken), 36 do you say about the one whom the Father set apart and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? 37 If I do not perform the deeds of my Father, do not believe me. 38 But if I do them, even if you do not believe me, believe the deeds, so that you may come to know and understand that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” 39 Then they attempted again to seize him, but he escaped their clutches.

40 Jesus went back across the Jordan River again to the place where John had been baptizing at an earlier time, and he stayed there. 41 Many came to him and began to say, “John performed no miraculous sign, but everything John said about this man was true!” 42 And many believed in Jesus there (John 10, NET).

The last couple hundred years have seen something of a change in our default thinking; where once everyone just had something of a baseline of belief in God—and you still see this baseline in very young children who intuitively recognize the pattern of the universe, that someone higher is in authority—our enforced educational system has allowed for skepticism and anger at God to become taught institutionally and deliberately from a younger age. I think our educators will have a lot to account for before the judgement throne of God in terms of pushing away the little children.

The job of the church, as the body of Christ, was, and is, to pick up the job Jesus had started, of helping people to understand just who Jesus was, that He is the Good Shepherd, that He is the Door, that He and the Father are one. The great institution of first-century Judea, the Sanhedrin, called in this translation “the Jewish leaders” who would have been the greater piece (though not all) of this body, were already showing that they’d given in to the horrible temptation we see at work in our educational systems today. It’s too convenient, too tempting, when you get the ear of an attentive and listening people, to try to stake your own claims to credibility, to say you are the authority, to claim ultimate understanding. Is this not what happens in the science or philosophy or literature classroom with the atheist teacher who ridicules the faith of a young man or young woman and claims that they and the field they represent have disproven those old superstitions? Is this not what “the Jewish leaders” were guilty of doing when they went to stone that rustic carpenter/rabbi who had shown his credibility through eyewitness testimony, a very potent point of proof in first-century Jewish (and indeed in our own) legal culture, and even with things they had seen Jesus doing? The problem was that Jesus did not fit into their categories and so had to be discarded. So often, I think that’s the problem in the academic world as well. I have or I ascribe to a theory, and I can’t abide having a transcendent God who might sit above me and my theory, so I guess I better discard God. What hubris!

But, then as now and for all times, a person’s belief in God does nothing to change God’s existence. The Bible thoroughly makes the case throughout its many books that everything that we see, experience, touch, taste and feel, not just the physical things but even the notions of right and wrong, even the ability to know anything in the first place, is not something that has come about as a cosmic accident. God is the basis of the universe. In Genesis we read “In the beginning, God” and in John’s gospel, the book we get this pair of stories today from, we get “In the beginning was the Word” identifying John as one of those “sheep” who recognized the eternal truth, the transcendent fact that Jesus and the Father were one. John’s belief made no difference on the fact of Jesus’s claims being true. But they made all the difference in John’s life.

And that’s what Jesus is getting at in the first story. His place in humankind, in our history, is to be both Door and Shepherd. It’s through Him we enter God’s kingdom, that is into a relationship with the higher authority that doesn’t break us. It’s by heeding his voice and following Him, obeying him, that we show our recognition that God precedes us and will go on Being regardless of whether we think He’s there or not. When we make that intuitive leap of faith to trusting the transcendent God and trusting that Jesus is the One who came to make Him immanent in our experience, we find the new life (John 3), the ‘living water’ (John 4), salvation, forgiveness, cleanness of conscience, all the other benefits Jesus talks about throughout His ministry. That’s why I try to walk in faith; because that’s the way reality is.

Jesus recognizes that there is difficulty though, and I think relevantly for our society today, especially for those who have been educated into a position of believing that they’re in some sort of place of authority. It’s easy enough to take offense at the gospel, that Jesus is the Door and the Good Shepherd. It’s easy enough to dismiss it as happening long ago or to question His exclusive claims or to get offended that a man would make that divine claim. Jesus tells those enraged protectors of their own position to take a step back and look at the fruit. What is it that Jesus has been doing? Verse 21 shows us the sheep’s, and John’s, answer: “A demon cannot cause the blind to see, can it?”

My prayer for you this week is that you’d find ways to show the skeptics, the doubters, the arrogant people who look down on you for your faith the deeds of Christ, the fruit, the sight that you now have, the victory over sin that you’ve experienced, the cleansing of your conscience through repentance, the hope of salvation and a life eternal following our Good Shepherd who, for love’s sake, bravely took on our condition and laid down His life that we might be included in His Resurrection. Only a transcendent God could achieve such a thing; only an immanent God would bother to be concerned. In Jesus Christ, we see the fulness of God’s love and will expressed.  Even if they don’t believe in Him, they might yet believe in His deeds and come to know Him.