Jesus the good shepherd: the door of the sheep

Jesus the Good Shepherd: door of the sheep

When I worked in the Holy Land with St George’s College, Jerusalem, we often took groups to the Sinai desert to camp overnight under the stars on the way down to St Catherine’s monastery. It was an amazing experience. Quite often I would be awoken at sunrise by the tinkling of small bells around the necks of sheep and goats being led by their shepherd through the cove where we were camping. Seeing them reminded me of Jesus the good shepherd—a rich and ancient image used of Jesus by Christians down the ages. Most of us are familiar with it from stained-glass windows, from statues showing Jesus carrying a lamb around his neck, and from Handel’s Messiah or Bach’s cantatas in which Old Testament passages about sheep are set to music…