Village Shepherd

In the winter gales in Norfolk earlier this year, a young boy was out walking the dog with his brother and sister. They were walking in a wood, when to his horror the boy noticed a huge tree about to topple onto his brother. Screaming a warning, the boy rushed over to his brother and thrust him out of the way. But the tree fell, pinning the boy and the dog beneath its great weight. Both were instantly killed.

That boy gave his life for his brother in every sense of the words. He acted instinctively, and from what people said afterwards, his instinct was a reflection of his life. He had been well loved, full of fun, and someone who cared about others.

Life is full of stories of courage. Stories of people who give their lives for others and often, who give their lives for complete strangers. In war, service men and women daily lay their lives on the line not only for others, but for an ideal. Those young service man and women who died in the Iraq war, died to save a whole people from an appalling tyranny, the extent of which is only beginning to become really clear since Saddam Hussein was deposed.

Perhaps human beings are born with noble instincts which enable some of them to make extravagant and courageous gestures when the necessity arises, although it's clear that this isn't always the case. For there are also many stories of people walking by on the other side when they see a situation involving pain to a fellow human being and danger to themselves.

What, if anything, makes Jesus' gesture of giving up his life on the cross, any different? And how can Jesus be said to have given his life for all human beings?

It's clear from the gospel accounts that Jesus chose to die. He chose to go to Jerusalem to his suffering and death (Matthew 16:21) and actually said, " I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem." (Luke 13:33). According to the gospel accounts, the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, gave Jesus the opportunity to defend himself and seemed to be looking for ways to save him from death (Matthew 27:11-24), but Jesus refused to cooperate with him, leaving Pilate no option but to have Jesus crucified.

So Jesus chose to die, because at the least he believed himself to be a prophet - perhaps the Messiah - and his death would fulfill all the Biblical prophecies and follow the pattern of the prophets of old. But how could his death benefit humanity?

It was certainly an amazing example of courage, but plenty of people since have shown similar courage in dying for others. Was Jesus any different?

One way in which he was different was that his was not a sudden response to a crisis but a pre-calculated act. Jesus had time to think about what he was going to do, and still went ahead and did it. It was also different in that Jesus showed tremendous faith in God throughout his ordeal, although at the very end of his life in his cry of, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" there's a suggestion that even Jesus might have hoped for a different outcome to his ordeal.

But perhaps the real key is that Jesus never wavered in his love for human beings, even those who had subjected him to crucifixion. He forgave them fully and completely with no strings attached (Luke 23:34) and thus acted out under the most gruelling of conditions, his own instruction to love your enemies. And it was this love which proved to be so transforming, even as love like that continues to be transforming today.

Most of us fall far short of such love, although we might find it in our hearts to love and forgive our nearest and dearest in such a way. Some people even find that impossible! But few of us love anyone else to anything like the extent that Jesus loved. We might go out of our way to care for people we like, and to help out people who are struggling in some way, but it's very difficult indeed to even care for those we don't like. Most of us avoid those we dislike or those we fear for some reason, so that they become invisible and we don't have to face either loving them or not loving them.

Many people have given their lives for others and those acts are always courageous and magnificent. In those acts we see humanity at its best. But it's only through the act of Jesus on the cross that we see what unconditional love in action really looks like. And it's through that act of love on the cross that we see the end result of unconditional love in action; the end result of a glorious and unexpected resurrection which opens to us the kingdom of God and which brings us into that kingdom.

Jesus showed us how to love and he showed us what love could accomplish. He showed us this most profoundly on the cross, by dying without any anger or resentment or retaliation or hatred. He died full of love and forgiveness and care and concern, which stretched not only to his own family, but also to the soldiers who nailed him to the cross, to the authorities who put him there and to the thieves who were crucified with him. Because his love was undiminished throughout his ordeal, the end result was resurrection which he "won" on behalf of all humanity.

He was indeed the Good Shepherd who gave his life for the sheep, so that they might flourish and reach nourishing pastures.