This parable is like some movies. The first scene (1) starts telling a story in the middle, then we get a flashback to the beginning (2); yet the story doesn't fully make sense until we watch the final scene (3). When Jesus speaks of ‘anyone’ entering a ‘sheepfold’ through him as ‘the Gate’ (scene 1), he is envisioning the time when his disciples will be the ‘shepherds’ through whom he, ‘the Good Shepherd’ will call the ‘other sheep’, of sheepfolds other than their own, into a single flock[ii] (3). In the middle scene (2), the flashback, the disciples are still ‘sheep’—in their own ‘sheepfold’—when Jesus (the Good Shepherd) comes in to bring them life.

Thus the ‘flock’, being led by Jesus, represents the church; and it is comprised of ‘sheep’ from various ‘sheepfolds’, which represent the family and tribal groups in Israel and all the other nations. The parable is challenging us, Jesus' disciples, to become shepherds who are like him and not like the ‘gatekeepers’ and ‘hired hands’ under whom we grew up in our families and ethnic groups. This is why he speaks of himself first as the Gate. For his audience includes both his disciples and some local Judean Pharisees, religious leaders whose colleagues have just been abusing a healed blind man and intimidating his parents (Jn.9:22-34).

So how do we, as followers of Jesus (sheep), become spiritual leaders (shepherds) like him? First, we need to approach individuals with the Gospel the way Jesus did, by showing respect for their social group (sheepfold). Jesus wants us to be welcomed and listened to, not ignored and avoided like a ‘stranger’ or a ‘thief’ (who avoids the ‘gatekeeper’ by ‘jumping over the fence’ to ‘steal and destroy’), because the promised blessing he came to bring is for whole families and nations, not just for individuals (Gen.22:18; Gal.3:8ff). As ‘the Gate’, he is also the one through whom God made every family and nation, and their ‘rulers and authorities’. And ‘in him’ all social structures are still ‘held together’ (Acts 17:26; Col.1:15-17, Med.#31). Consequently, there are people Jesus considers his ‘own’ (sheep) within each nation (sheepfold); because, though ‘lost’, they are nevertheless seeking to fear God, follow their consciences and do what is right (Act.10:34-35; Rom.2:6-15).

An inner-city pastor in Chicago observed that there were many dysfunctional and broken families in his neighborhood. And he realized that if he wanted individual converts to ‘grow up and form (healthy) Christian households’ he needed to focus ‘not only on one person, but on three generations’. When women and children from such families began following Jesus and coming to the church and to the Sunday school, he ‘made himself accountable to the fathers’ who weren’t coming to church. Going to visit these household heads, he asked them for their input: what changes in the children’s behavior would they like to see? Agreeing to preach on such issues, he returned later to see whether the ‘father could report any improvements’. As a result, these family ‘gatekeepers’ not only welcomed his influence, but many of them began coming to church as well.[iii]

If we regard Jesus as ‘the Gate’ we will also follow his lead in the way we ‘call’ people, and then ‘travel in front of them’ as they learn to follow him. Yet the opening of Jesus' parable implies that this doesn't happen automatically. We might unconsciously reproduce many of the familiar behavioral patterns of the leaders under whom we grew up in our social groups—those that God appointed to be our ‘guardians’ (‘hired hands’) until Jesus came (Med.#4). The way we become shepherds like Jesus is by learning to choose to do what he did: maintain a close relationship with the Father, through knowing him and being known by him. We too become his adult sons and daughters when Jesus leads us out to ‘pasture’. No longer subject to the boundaries of a sheepfold, we can safely go in and out of any sheepfold (including our own) with him, without coming under the guardianship power of gatekeepers. This is the abundant life in the Holy Spirit that Jesus came to bring. And through the Spirit of Jesus, we can ask our Father for understanding: to know what he is doing in the lives of the people he leads us to, and how to show respect for their group culture like he did[iv]—as we call them, lead them and empower them so that they too become shepherds under him, the ‘Chief Shepherd’ (1 Pet.5:2-3).

It was also through spending time with his Father that Jesus embraced his plan for dealing with the Enemy (the wolf). He was not crucified because human powers decided to take his life from him, but because as an adult Son he chose to lay it down for us. And when he took it up again, he was also exercising his authority—to empower his disciples into their own adult relationship with the Father by the Spirit, so they could go with him to other nations and disciple them. Like Jesus, we too are called to ‘lay down our lives’ for our brothers and sisters (Med.#54). But from my family and church culture, I learned to be something of a rescuer and a ‘help-a-holic’. Maybe you can identify with me. So I've come to recognize my need to spend time alongside my Father, like Jesus did, in order to be sure I'm responding to his command, with authority as his son, and not just coming under pressure from other people or from my own tendencies. And I'm seeing more clearly how important it is: to exercise my authority also in taking up my own life again with the Father after I have helped someone—so I don't find my identity in being a helper. And the one I helped doesn't become dependent on me.

How were you taught to approach, call and lead people to Jesus? Whose example are you following? Are you growing up into a shepherd like him? Or are you still thinking of yourself as only his sheep?