The Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 26, 2026
The gospel reading we just heard, the first ten verses of John 10, is Jesus’ introduction to one of his “I am” statements. He is teaching his disciples, using the metaphor of a sheepfold and its gate, which is the legitimate way to enter the sheepfold, and he says that he is the gate. They don’t understand, so he continues. I’m going to read verses 9 through 14, from the New International Version.
9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14 I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.
I used to teach a Sunday School curriculum called Godly Play. Some of you are familiar with it, and a few months ago I presented here the Godly Play version of the Parable of the Mustard Seed.
Godly Play was developed by the Reverand Jerome Berryman, as his interpretation of Montessori religious education. It is an approach designed to support, challenge, and guide the spiritual quest of children. Godly play assumes that children experience the mystery of the presence of God in their lives but they lack the language, permission, and understanding to express and enjoy that in our culture.
In the Godly Play curriculum, the Parable of the Good Shepherd is a core presentation – it could be considered the core presentation. It was first developed by Maria Montessori herself, and it is the first story that Jerome Berryman and his wife, Thea, created when they began their work with children in the 1970s. Jerome did much of the testing of the story in his work with children in the hospitals of the Texas Medical Center in Houston.
This story introduces the Good Shepherd as the primary image of Jesus for children. It is the first Godly Play story that I presented – to a small group of 2- to 5-year-olds, including my own two children, in Sunday School at First Baptist Church in Silver Spring. I had been arguing with myself about it for weeks after being given the book by a young woman minister. I was intrigued by the material and the method, yet hesitant, thinking, “Can I really do this?” Finally I just did it. I made the figures out of cardboard – probably on Saturday night – and nervously presented the Parable of the Good Shepherd the next day.
These little preschoolers, who normally acted like preschoolers, with a typical attention span of seconds – they were riveted. They all sat quietly, focused on the materials I laid out on the floor and moved around as I told the parable. I was impressed, and I spent the next 15 years learning to teach and teaching Godly Play.
The sheep and shepherd parable that Jesus tells, in Matthew 18:12-14 and Luke 15:1-7, is the shepherd who searches for the one sheep that is lost, leaving the other 99 while he searches. The Good Shepherd parable that is presented to children contains elements of Jesus’ parable, along with Psalm 23 and Jesus’ “I am” statement from John 10. This statement and others like it – “I am the Bread of Life . . . I am the Light of the World” – and so on, throughout the gospel of John, are not generally in narrative form, so they aren’t parables in the true sense of the word. But they share many of the same characteristics and therefore can be considered “parabolic.” They point to something true about Jesus that can be explored in ever deepening layers throughout a person’s lifetime.
The materials are contained in a gold colored box, about the size of a box of business envelopes. In fact, you can use such a box and cover it with gold paper – and you have your parable box. The storyteller first takes a large, green felt underlay from the box and wonders, what could this be? There are many possibilities – the top of a tree, or maybe one of those things frogs sit on in a pond. The children will offer their own guesses. In this way, the storyteller leads the wondering about each of the items laid out: next, a roundish blue piece of felt for the water, then three smaller, dark pieces that represent the places of danger.
Several strips of brown felt are laid out in a square that is built up to a depth of three strips on each side, while the storyteller wonders what this might be. Finally the sheep are taken out, one at a time, and placed into what we now know is a sheepfold.
Then the parable begins:
There was once someone who said such amazing things and did such wonderful
things that people followed him. They couldn’t help it. They wanted to know who
he was, so they just had to ask him.
Once when they asked him who he was, he said, “I am the Good Shepherd. I
know each one of the sheep by name. When I take them from the sheepfold they
follow me. I walk in front of the sheep to show them the way.
“I show them the way to the good grass and I show them the way to the cool, still,
fresh water. When there are places of danger I show them how to go through.
“I count each one of the sheep when they come back and go inside the
sheepfold. If one of the sheep is missing I would go anywhere to look for
the lost sheep—in the grass, by the water, even in places of danger.
“And when the lost sheep is found I would put it on my back, even if it is
heavy, and carry it back safely to the sheepfold.
“When all the sheep are safe inside I am so happy that I can’t be happy just
by myself, so I invite all of my friends and we have a great feast.”
For young children, that is where the parable ends. For older children, this next part is added, with two additional figures: another shepherd and the wolf.
The storyteller continues:
This is the ordinary shepherd. When the ordinary shepherd takes the sheep from the sheepfold, he does not always show the way. The sheep wander.
When the wolf comes . . . the ordinary shepherd runs away.
But the Good Shepherd stays between the wolf and the
sheep . . . and would even give his life for the sheep, so they
can come back safely to the sheepfold.
Over the years that I studied and taught Godly Play stories, I gradually grew in my capacity to think more like a child, to wonder, to not know the answers. I wish that, in my childhood, there had been an adult who modeled this for me. Instead, the adults in my life thought it was their job to make sure the kids learned all the right answers. I was an obedient and somewhat fearful child, so I dutifully learned the “right” answers.
Now I know that there are very few right answers. Through telling parables and other stories from the scriptures to children, I learned something of how to enter with wonder and live the questions. When you take the green felt underlay out of the gold box and lay it down and wonder about it, sometimes you turn it over and ask, what’s on the the other side? There’s always another side.
In Diana Butler Bass’s latest book, A Beautiful Year, there is a chapter on Psalm 23 in which she lays out another view of the psalm, based on an interpretation common in churches of the Global South, in contrast to those of North America and Western Europe. For Christians in Africa and Asia, the Bible speaks to the issues of their everyday lives: poverty and debt, famine and urban crisis, racial and gender oppression, state brutality and persecution.
Without going into the details of her research, I’ll just say that the pivotal line in the psalm is, “He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.” That’s from the New Revised Standard Version. It is often interpreted in a comforting way, meaning that God guides us when we are lost, so we can’t ultimately go astray on our life’s journey. And that interpretation isn’t wrong.
But in Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew bible – a modern translation noted by scholars for its precision – the line reads, “My life he brings back. He leads me on pathways of justice for his name’s sake.”
And in the newsletter Butler Bass sent yesterday, she describes the reality of the life of a shepherd in ancient Israel: “Few grown men were shepherds or wanted to be shepherds. It was a job for women, children, the enslaved, or the elderly — all people who were socially marginalized and considered to have less worth than the sheep they tended! . . .”
She continues:
“They were expendable people in menial but necessary jobs.
“Not that different from many jobs today:
I am the good migrant farm laborer.
I am the good dishwasher.
I am the good night security guard.
I am the good housekeeper.
I am the good sanitation worker.
I am the good meat packer.
I am the good day laborer.
I am the good shepherd.
I leave you with a poem that Butler Bass quotes at the end of her newsletter.
Good Paths
By Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Resurrection is not just comfort,
it’s courage. It’s a signpost.
It points to the victory
of love and nonviolence
over evil, death and injustice.
It indicates the good path
where our good shepherd leads us,
through the shadowed valley of suffering,
to bring to the table of grace
even our enemies.
For, dying, love endures.
Failing, love wins.
So we follow good paths
with courage to live gently,
to serve humbly, to forgive freely,
to risk boldly for the sake of the vulnerable.
Such is the path to life
that can’t be taken from us, even by death,
an abundantly fruiting tree,
rooted in the eternal heart of God.
So nourished in this peculiar green pasture
of dying and rising,
and so gently led
by our dying and rising shepherd,
with love and courage we go.
May it be so.