Live long enough and people will disappoint you. Maybe it’s a teacher you looked up to who spirals out of control. Or a parent who raised you turns away from the faith. In our current moment, many are reeling from disappointment from pastors, church leaders, or spiritual mentors. Where do you turn when people turn from you—or from God?
I’ve heard it said on numerous occasions: “the best of men are men at best.” If you’ve been on the receiving end of men (or women) acting like the human beings they are, then you’re in good company. We’re all broken people living in a broken world. Live long enough and you will be disappointed—and you will disappoint someone.
Thankfully, Jesus knows this and has a response. There’s a famous passage in John’s Gospel where Jesus tells his followers that he’s the Good Shepherd, and then tells them what that looks like (John 10). He pits himself against the bad shepherds to highlight the fact that he’s the good one. He’s the shepherd who always looks after his sheep. He’s the shepherd who cares so much he lays his life down for the sheep. He’s the shepherd who doesn’t turn his back on you. He’s the shepherd who stays.
But what we need to see is the scene that comes before this discourse. In John 9, Jesus has just healed a man born blind. A miracle that should have made everyone rejoice. This man once was blind, and now he sees! Instead, it made them all angry. Their hatred of Jesus spread all the way to the people he healed. It was so invasive that they couldn’t even rejoice with a blind man seeing.
They bring the man forward for questioning. They question his parents. His parents are afraid of what these religious leaders will do to him, so they back away from him. So the leaders turn to the man and he simply tells them what he knows. He was blind, now he sees. But this was more than they could handle. They hated Jesus, but this once-blind man was collateral damage for their rage.
And they kick him out of the synagogue.
Imagine the scene. A man born blind, seen as an outcast his entire life, suddenly sees and is cast out for being healed. It’s shocking, really. It’s a lifetime of suffering righted, only to enter a different type of suffering—societal isolation.
This is the backdrop for that glorious passage in John 10.
John 9-10 is all one scene. The man is healed and follows Jesus. He gets kicked out of the religious establishment, and Jesus begins a discourse. These two chapters hold important truths for even our day. The man is healed by Jesus, but he is rejected by the religious leaders of his day. He’s canceled. And Jesus says, within earshot of this man: “I am the good shepherd.”
These other shepherds, they don’t care about him. They turn on a dime. They reject him. They rage against the healing Jesus brings because they would prefer power to purification. They would prefer blindness to sight. They would prefer hatred to love.
Jesus as the Good Shepherd is a comfort to us. When we sit in the rubble of “shepherds” who disappoint us or hurt us he reminds us that there is a shepherd we can trust. There is a Savior who won’t ever disappoint us.
But it was also a comfort to the man in John 9 who needed to see that Jesus didn’t just heal him. He also wouldn’t leave him. These other leaders might reject him, but not Jesus—not the good shepherd.
This man is healed, but for what? A life of rejection by the religious leaders. He lost one mark of the curse only to gain another. He once was blind, now he sees. But in seeing, he’s bound to the one who gave him sight. He’s part of that company now. He’s rejected. Cast out. Despised.
Don’t you think this man needed to know that Jesus wasn’t going to leave him too? This is how personal of a Savior he is. He doesn’t just heal, he stays. He doesn’t just display power, he shelters us under his wings. He doesn’t just perform miracles, he encourages. In the ruin of rejection by the only religious leaders he’d ever known, Jesus shows up and speaks a better word.
The world has its share of bad shepherds. But Jesus reminds us that he’s not one of them.