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| Summary: Most of us have carried into adult life our childhood pictures of Jesus as the tender shepherd. But shepherds are a tough breed. They have to be. Jesus demonstrates as much in this passage from John’s Gospel. |
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| Summary: The good shepherd reigns in Christian imagination as the ideal pastor, though pastoral leaders are human, with human frailties. The Good Shepherd offers an opportunity to be in community together, in spite of our differences and divisions.
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| Summary: Jesus gave us an analogy to help us understand how to discern the voice of God. As sheep recognized the voice of the shepherd, so we too can recognize the Lord’s voice when we hear it. Many other voices are also clamoring for our attention - the sources of which only intend to steal, rob and destroy. So we must keep our spirits in tune with the Lord’s voice, so that we might not be wooed away from the path God intends for us. |
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| Summary: To the people who heard him, sometimes Jesus seemed to speak in riddles they just didn’t understand. But even if Jesus’ listeners were metaphor-challenged, we don’t have to be. We can figure out the message of grace, love and abundant life that Jesus wants us to grasp. |
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| Summary: There’s no question the sheep of God’s flock recognize the Good Shepherd. But do the sheep recognize each other? |
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| Summary: Even though Jesus says in the farewell discourse that disciples will experience trouble, he offers abundant life. That abundant life takes place in the new community of the church that anticipates the resurrection and celebrates joy and peace now. |
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| Summary: Just because we’re used to church doesn’t mean that our words, our songs and our symbols are signs of security to those who seek Jesus. Remembering that real shepherds look at the world through the eyes of their sheep, let us see church through the eyes of someone searching for the gateway to safety, sanctuary and home. |
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| Summary: Jesus’ image of “the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep” calls us to an ideal of sacrifice. While sacrifice is an idea currently out of fashion in our increasingly self-centered culture, it is an ideal we need to recover if we are to remain a healthy society. |
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| Summary: The voices and directions to which we listen will determine where we will go. Which voices, or better, to whose voice do we choose to listen? There is no better indication of our ultimate destination. |
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| Summary: Christ called himself the Good Shepherd. As his followers, we can count on his concern for each of us just as a dependable shepherd is for his sheep. He seeks us out, he knows us personally and calls us by name. He will never leave us or forsake us. He will walk with us “through the valley of the shadow of death.” And never leave us alone in trouble and sorrow. |
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| Summary: God’s love can shine through us when we are willing to act without thinking about ourselves. |
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| Summary: The risen Lord is our good shepherd, protecting us with self-giving love and gathering an expansive community into his one flock.
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| Summary: Jesus said, “I know my own and my own know me ....” What does it mean to say that Jesus knows us? How are we able to know Jesus? When we know Jesus, we invite others into the fellowship of believers. We live with the assurance that Jesus will never leave us. |
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| Summary: The hired hand as a heroic, perhaps mythic figure, is ingrained into the fabric of American’s history, especially in the West. Often, hired hands were nomadic, working on a ranch in Wyoming in the summer and Arizona in the winter. Jesus mentions the hired hand in today’s gospel reading, so the concept is worth another look. What we find out is that possibly Jesus himself was a hired hand. Or does he really fit this definition? Perhaps there is, as Jesus suggests, a crucial difference between himself as the “Good Shepherd” and a hired hand. |
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| Summary: In the love of Christ, we are never alone. |
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| Summary: The voice of our Good Shepherd leads to eternal and abundant life. |
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| Summary: There’s no question that those who encounter Jesus in the Gospel of John are transformed, but the gospel also seems to show that Jesus, God’s presence on Earth, is transformed as he comes to understand what it means to be human. Say what you like, but this is good news! |
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| Summary: If the world is to recognize the voice of Jesus as the shepherd, we must make it possible for them to trust and recognize us as members of the flock. |
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| There are 18 sermons in your results. |
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