Canter Bridge

The Johannine presentation is not shy about making exalted claims on Jesus’ behalf. The categories are large: he is light, he is life, he is the way, he is truth. One anticipates apotheosis rather than degradation of the gospel’s central figure. Indeed, apotheosis might be considered a guest too late for this party, since Jesus is presented from the outset in categories so fulsome and pristine that in the history of interpretation they’ve (mostly unhelpfully) been explained against a Platonic rather than a Hebraic background.

Yet one finds neither pristinization, re-pristinization, apotheosis, or an untroubled crescendo of recognition of Jesus’ glory and celestial origins.

Rather one finds self-abnegation and the embrace of a violent death:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.

Jesus’ rhetoric probes at the strongest possible identification on both poles of verticality. He is one with his Father, inscrutably united to his being in spite of the space-time distinction from Him that is patent in Jesus’ presence on earth. He is at the same time linked by an insoluble bond to his little band of human followers, with hints that there will be more and others who will find themselves similarly attached.

It is this double connection, an asymmetrical union both with what is above and what is below (Jesus’ uses the former positional adjective but seems reluctant to employ the latter) that seems to undergird the logic of effective death which drives the Johannine Jesus to his destiny. This shepherd will die for these sheep. What is more, he will lay down his life for them. If there is no eagerness about the fact, there is at the least embrace.

Things unfold naturally, organically, as though they must be as they are: Jesus converses intimately and comfortably with his Father. His sheep recognize his voice and come to him.

Nothing is forced. Yet everything is necessary. In this matrix of supervised determinacy, Jesus makes a choice. It will cost him nearly everything, yet gain for his sheep all that is worthwhile.