Jesus, the Gate to the sheepfold of God, walked about the temple area in the Portico of Solomon, the wise king of old, on the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple: yet “there is something greater than Solomon here” (Matthew 12:42). This feast celebrates the rededication of the Temple during the Maccabean Revolt over a century earlier; we know it today as Hanukkah. During the festival of lights the Light of the World (John 8:12) walked in the dark of winter, and the people asked Him for illumination, to tell them plainly whether He was the Christ. He replies, “I told you and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep.”
To be a member of Christ’s flock is both His choosing and calling us first (John 15:16) and us responding to that call; we hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and follow Him. These people asking Him to speak plainly have been listening, but they have only done so with their ears and not their hearts. They have seen the things He’s done, heard the things He’s said and taught, and yet they do not follow Him; they do not enter the sheepfold. They will not pass through the Gate.
But, as He said in Sunday’s Gospel, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice…” (John 10:16), and so He speaks to them, hoping that their hearts will hear the call of the Shepherd. For to tell them, explicitly, “Yes, I am the Son of God,” may provoke their thought, but their love? It is love, not comprehension, that makes us sheep of the Shepherd, for trust is the fruit of love rather than understanding. So He says, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.”Could He give such life were He not the Christ? “No one can take them out of my hand.” Could a mere human claim such a thing? On the Feast of the Dedication the people recalled how, for a time, that everything had been taken from them, until by strength of arms it was taken back. “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.” Who but the Christ could claim to have a Father above all, whose power was such that no one could take a single “lamb” from him?
But here Jesus speaks with the plain clarity they desire: “The Father and I are one.”We do not read it today, but Scripture tells us in the following verse that the people picked up rocks with which to stone Him; His meaning was quite plain indeed. In this act they show they will not and cannot be members of His flock; their hearts are as hard as the stones in their hands and, truly, the stones would have wounded Christ less than their hearts already did.
He says, of His sheep, that the Father has given them to Him: we have been given to our Good Shepherd. Will we follow Him? Will we love Him, allowing Him to grasp us in an embrace of love that can only be opened by our own desire to leave it? Even that prowling lion that is our great adversary—Satan—has not the power to take us from our Shepherd: we cannot be taken away. We can only leave His hand willingly, freely. Let this be an assurance to you as He leads you through the wilderness and dangers of this world: come snare, come wolf, come storm and plague, you cannot be taken from Him. Your Good Shepherd will never let you go.