NOTES for Joh 9:39-10:9

Christ often “calls” Himself some inanimate object. At one time He is a stone, at another bread, then water; today He is a door. Each time He compares Himself with an object with which we deal almost constantly. Living without regular “contact” with a door is quite difficult nowadays: anyone who enters a building through an opening not intended for the purpose is a thief and a robber. Our Lord Jesus Christ is precisely the door through which we can enter the house of our heavenly Father. The way to God passes only through Him: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me,” the Lord will say a little later (John 14:6).

One can try to climb through windows or a chimney, or dig a tunnel—but why? Perhaps one can take roundabout ways to God, chase after some “special grace,” try to make oneself out to be something, and pretend that we ourselves can do at least something for our own salvation—but why? Why, when the way is straight? “Make His paths straight” (Matt. 3:3).

Straight does not mean easy. Everything will not instantly become better as if by the wave of a magic wand. But the essential thing is that the Lord “calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out” (John 10:3). He will lead us, blind sheep, “by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them” (Isa. 42:16).

Today the evangelist passes on to us Christ's words, exceptional and most important for our life. These are the words that He is the Good Shepherd and the Door of the sheep.

Here it is useful to remember that in ancient Palestine sheep were not pastured the way cows were pastured in Russia. We imagine a shepherd as a scruffy little peasant walking behind the herd and driving the animals on with a heavy whip. Barking dogs biting at the heels of those trying to dodge them complete the unattractive picture. Alas, instinctively we understand Christ's words that He is the Shepherd in the way more familiar to our culture. A shepherd of sheep in the East, on the contrary, walks ahead of his flock, choosing the road among rocks and cliffs. Often he has to stop in a narrow place and let the sheep pass one by one, because for them there is no other road than the place where the shepherd stands.

This is exactly what the Good Shepherd is for us, the One who leads us to life. We follow Him, and on the narrow way it is possible for us to get through only by pressing close to Him, by cleaving to God, as the Bible says. Therefore the shepherding of Christ is a great gift for us. And in order to receive any gift of God, it is necessary to ask for it and thirst for it, to use it and thank Him for it. So too, in order for the Lord to be our Shepherd, we must desire this with all our strength, listen to His voice, and give thanks that He shepherds us.

Today Jesus tells us that He is the shepherd and the door for His sheep. The image of the shepherd is clear and familiar. But why does Jesus connect two things that seem different: "I am the door of the sheep" and "all who came before Me are thieves and robbers"? What do thieves and robbers have to do with a door?

Apparently, a direct connection after all. "All who came" before Jesus are people who claimed the role of leaders of the people. Like leaders generally do, they promised to lead the people to a "bright future." The people of Israel still remembered that the only bright future can be in the Kingdom of God. But Jesus says that the only door into this Kingdom is He Himself. It is impossible to enter it by another way, through a back door. That is why all who promise to bring people into the Kingdom while bypassing Jesus are thieves and robbers, for they are trying to steal the Lord's sheep by luring them with promises they know are false.

Why climb over the fence when the door is open? Perhaps for fear of being turned away at the door—but then, even after “climbing over,” you will be asked to leave. Or perhaps out of mischief, as in childhood, when it was fun to climb through a window rather than obey tiresome rules of conduct. But mischief is out of place here: matters of the utmost seriousness are at stake.

Behind the denial of Christ there usually lurks a desire to manage without Him, as well as the self-confident notion that one’s own strength is sufficient for a righteous life. If we succumb to the temptation of self-sufficiency, we may fail to notice that what seemed to be “our own strength and resources” is in fact neither our own nor strength at all, but a delusion breathed upon us from a murky source.

Therefore, however harsh the words about the thieves and robbers who came before may seem—and they may also be applied to many who came later—they are just. Leaders and false prophets for whom people are merely a means of carrying out their own plans constantly send them to their deaths, and for now there is no end in sight.

But the good shepherd leads the flock not in order to shear and slaughter it, but to bring it to good pasture. Every comparison has its limits, including the comparison of people to a flock; yet let us not forget that each of us is unique to the Good Shepherd and that He knows each one by name.

Jesus usually did not speak directly about His messiahship. But He hinted at it often. His words about Himself as the good shepherd are also a hint. In those days there were many claimants to the role of Messiah. As early as the time of the Maccabees, roughly a century and a half before the Savior's coming, a new wave of messianism begins. Political messianism. The Messiah is awaited as a liberator, first from the power of a secular dynasty, and then from the power of the Romans. He is awaited as a great earthly King.

And traditional Jewish ideas about the Messiah did not require at all that one had to be born the Messiah. One could become the Messiah in the same way that those whom God calls to prophetic ministry become prophets. That is why false messiahs appeared in the same way as false prophets. Everything ended, at best, in nothing, and at worst, in tragedy. The Roman authorities did not encourage political messianism at all, and they suppressed any mass movement quickly and mercilessly. It often happened that the newly appeared "messiah" disappeared while the reprisals fell on the ordinary participants in the movement. Yet this did not stop zealots and adventurers of messianism. It is no accident that Jesus calls them "thieves and robbers": they certainly were not true shepherds of their flock.

And that is no surprise, since these people did not consider these flocks their own. The issue is not only that they were impostors. The issue is also the very character of political messianism. It lies in the idea of the Kingdom, which to the supporters of such messianism appeared to be a purely political reality, and therefore an entirely earthly one. Such an earthly kingdom could not be built without victims. The inevitable war and the following upheavals, political and social, were impossible without victims. Of course, everything was justified by the greatness of the goal. But that did not make things easier for those who died.

Only Jesus brought into the world a Kingdom that did not have to be established by force. A Kingdom for which one did not have to wage war against the authorities of this world. It also required a sacrifice, but the Savior Himself became that sacrifice. Therefore He had the right to speak of Himself as the true shepherd of His flock, for He became the door into the Kingdom for everyone who seeks it and did not destroy any one of them.

What is most striking in the attacks on the man who was healed is the hardness of heart of those assailing him, who demand that he betray the One who showed him mercy. And what legalistic logic: we do not know where He is from, so He should not have healed you (even though just moments earlier this “ignorance” did not prevent them from calling the Healer a sinner). One could apply to the accusers the saying about people who mistake the edge of their horizon for the edge of the world. But matters are far more tragic: the Pharisees, and those close to them in spirit, truly have no intention of acknowledging anything that does not fit their habitual picture of the world; their own level of knowledge of the Law is almost absolute truth to them. The healed man does not know the fullness of truth either, but he bears witness to the part of it that has been revealed to him. And whereas the disciples merely raised as one possibility the question of whether the man born blind had sinned or his parents, those interrogating him, as they cast him out, confidently pronounce him sinful: a judgment logical within their limited system of ideas, but unfounded even on its own terms.

Rejected by people, the man born blind proved to be one of those whom Christ received.

How is faith born, and how does it grow? Today we see a man who gains sight not only physically but spiritually as well—though not all at once. Difficult circumstances help bring this about. The Pharisees questioning him force him to articulate his faith, which without them—who knows—he might never have expressed or “brought forth.” There are several interrogations, and after each one a new definition is born: “healer,” “prophet,” “man from God,” “Son of God,” and then comes a meeting face to face!

We often regard trials of faith as something painful and highly undesirable. But sometimes, as in today’s passage, the Lord leads us through these trials toward the most important encounter of all, when at last we gain true sight.