One of my first roles in the church was as a shepherd. I don't mean that in a pastoral sense, but rather in a Christmas pageant sense. In Junior High, for our church's live nativity, I was one of the three guys chosen to play shepherds. I had the headgear (one of mom's tea towels wrapped around my head), a staff (a stick with a bent clothes hanger duct taped to one end), and an old bathrobe. The only thing I didn't have—that none of us shepherds had—was sheep.
We looked the part, but without sheep, we were just three guys standing to the side of the manger, waving at passing cars. We were as useless as the fake frankincense among the three Magi's gifts.
A shepherd simply isn't a shepherd without sheep. So, when Jesus describes himself in John 10:11 by saying, "I am the good shepherd," what he tells us is as much about his followers as it is himself. "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."
Jesus as the Good Shepherd defines who we are together as much as it describes Jesus. Dad's old bathrobe and mom's tea towel do not make a shepherd. A shepherd needs sheep, and sheep need each other to be the flock.
