dangerous blindness

In AD 30 Jerusalem, a blind-from-birth beggar has received sight from Jesus. Some members of the Pharisee religio-political party – a highly discerning fraternity – have not accepted it and have thrown him out of the Temple. They say, “we ourselves are not blind.” How can Jesus now reverse their own blindness? He attempts that with two parallels.

In the parallel there are “sheep”.  There is an “enclosure” and a “door” into the “enclosure”.  There are “stealers” (covert) and “robbers” (overt) within the “enclosure” who have got into it other than by the “door”. ‘Anti-sheep’ are therefore with the “sheep” in the “enclosure. “Truly, truly…”

Jesus states that someone else is “coming in” into the “enclosure” - “through the door”. This one “is shepherd of the sheep”. 

 

Jesus brought a new person into this first parallel – “the doorkeeper”. Whoever this is, he “opens up” for the “shepherd”. It seems that the “doorkeeper” and the “shepherd” know one another. There is ambiguity in what John the biographer has carefully recorded about Jesus’ statement to the Pharisees and others. The Father and Jesus?

“The sheep hear his call, and he calls his own sheep by name and he brings them out.” Is that the call of the “doorkeeper” or of the “shepherd”? Is it both? Has the “doorkeeper” of the “enclosure” admitted the “shepherd” because both have the same purpose in mind? Are they one and the same, perhaps? What would be their purpose?

That “doorkeeper” and/or “shepherd” “calls his own sheep by name and he brings them out.” He “brings them out”, out of the “enclosure”. Could it be that the “enclosure” was religion and its Temple? 

Jesus had used the verb “he brings out” with regard to “my sheep” and “the enclosure”.  Then he noticeably changed the verb (above) to “thrown out”. The blind-from-birth-but-now-seeing beggar had, in fact, just been “thrown out” of the Temple by the Pharisees. Was Jesus teaching that “his own sheep” were at that time in a hostile “enclosure” and that when they “hear his call”, they will no longer be tolerated within it?

If that is so, he was also teaching that the “sheep” would not be alone when "thrown out" of the “enclosure” but the “shepherd of the sheep” (and, maybe, the “door-keeper” as well) would “journey out before them” – before those who “follow him”.

 

Jesus’ parallel closed with a report about certain ones within the “enclosure” whom he described as “belonging-to-another”. “The sheep” who have heard the call of the “shepherd” when he called “them by name” will not listen to or follow those others. To whom did those others belong?

“They” – the religious leaders – didn’t discern who they were in the "parallel". So Jesus spoke another parallel - to follow next week…