Have you ever wondered why our church’s dedication is to the Good Shepherd, rather than just the Church of the Shepherd? The Psalmist felt no need to qualify the title in that way.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”

The obvious answer to my question is that our dedication is based on one of the seven “I am” statements in St John’s Gospel.

“I am the Good Shepherd”.

And today’s Gospel contains another of the “I am” statements:

“I am the gate for the sheep”

St John portrays Jesus as a man with a mastery of metaphors who offered a rich and varied range of them, each providing an insight into his nature and therefore the nature of God. In that sense he was a supreme poet and, intriguingly, our word “poet” has a common ancestry with the classical Greek word for shepherd and that common ancestor’s original meaning was “maker” – a truth reflected in the fact that our national poet in Scotland, Kathleen Jamie, has the title Makar.

The metaphor of the Good Shepherd is a particularly striking one. Shepherds in that time and place were generally considered to be a rough and unreliable lot, living on the margins of society. That’s what makes the angels’ proclamation of the birth of Jesus to the shepherds in St Luke’s Gospel so striking. When people thought about shepherds in those days, the adjective “good” didn’t always spring to mind. But the main reason that Jesus chose it was to make the point that not all those who claim leadership are good. The previous chapter in John’s Gospel illustrates that. The Pharisees have criticised Jesus for restoring the sight of a blind man on the sabbath, interrogated the man who was healed and then expelled him from the community for saying of Jesus:

“If this man were not from God, he could do nothing”.

In identifying himself as the Good Shepherd, Jesus is not only and perhaps not mainly making a point about morality, for the Greek word that is translated as Good also means beautiful. William Temple daringly but accurately translated this saying as:

“I am the shepherd, the beautiful one.”

This is a beauty which is both compelling and costly, for the Good Shepherd, the beautiful poet, the bonnie makar

“…lays down his life for the sheep”.

And that’s the key to discerning the character of our politicians, of those in our culture who clamour for our attention or insist that we adopt certain points of view. Are they doing this from self-giving, creative love like the Good Shepherd or are they motivated by the desire for power, whether it’s the power that comes from elected office or the power that is exercised by shaming individuals or groups with whom they disagree?

It is also, of course, the key to discerning and reshaping our own motives, to reflecting on what shapes our attitudes and actions. And this is where that other I am statement, “I am the gate for the sheep” becomes so important. The gate is a way in, a way into church, a way into the safe and congenial company of the like-minded, of people whose values and ideals we share. It is also the way out into the world and that is where we spend most of our time and where, whether we are in paid work or not, we do much the same things as our non-believing contemporaries, including cleaning, cooking, shopping, walking the dog and watching television. We do much the same things but because we’re the sheep who go out into the world through the gate that is Jesus, we are called to do them in different ways, for different reasons and in a different spirit.

That’s a point that one of our greatest shepherds of words, George Herbert, made very clearly in verses that have become well-known because they have found their way into many hymn books. The poem is called The Elixir and an elixir is a powerful medicine. It begins:

“Teach me, my God and King

In all things thee to see

And what I do in anything

To do it as for thee.”

There’s a second verse which didn’t make it into the hymn books, partly because it wouldn’t easily fit any musical metre but also because the language is rather obscure. It begins with words which clearly suggest sheep rushing through the gate of a sheepfold:

“Not rudely as a beast

To run into action…”

And then, in archaic language, suggests that our actions should be informed by our knowledge of God in Jesus Christ.

“But still to make Thee prepossest

And give it his perfection.”

The meaning becomes clearer as the poem develops and Herbert suggests that all our actions can and should be done for the sake of God.

“A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine:

Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,

Makes that and the action fine.”

If Christ is the gate through whom we move into the weekday world, we will bring to that world something of which it is in dire need – the self-giving love of the Good Shepherd to whom this church is dedicated and to whom we seek to dedicate our lives.