Image from thekingdomofgracelutheranchurch.org
View devo: https://bit.ly/3QiMiv4
Hear devo: https://bit.ly/4cxgPN4
1 "Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers." 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. 7 So again Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10: 1-10 NRSV)
I was blessed to grow up in a different time and place. I was born in Kingsville, Texas, during the days when most moms and dads allowed their children to roam freely outside. There was a command I yearned to hear, "¡Salganse pa' fuera!" which is "Go (play) outside!" And having a best friend named Alex, whose mom also gave that command, and Alex having a bike like me, we could ride almost anywhere in the city limits of Kingsville, and we did. My legs in those days did not yet "kill" me with every mile I tried to pedal; I could ride for hours and it would not bother me. And to this day I believe that anywhere within the city limits of some 26,000 residents of Kingsville, if Mom so yelled my name, I would know it was her and it was me that was being summoned home. Something about her voice that I knew was for me.
In a culture where shepherding was a way of life, Jesus speaks to crowds who knew exactly what He was saying. They knew that Jesus knew, that a good shepherd leads, or goes ahead of, his sheep. It is he who can open and close the sheep gate or if there is a gatekeeper, the gatekeeper opens the gate for him. The key is that the sheep know the voice of the shepherd and when they hear his voice, they know it is he whom they are following and not some other person, especially not a thief who may have come to steal some sheep. The good shepherd knows the name of each lamb and so when they hear their name and in the voice of their shepherd they know they are in good hands and in the company of he who leads them and provides all they need for their own good. Sheep are smart enough not to follow a stranger but will in fact, run from a stranger.
There is a detail in this passage that becomes electrifying when read through the lens of Easter: the shepherd goes ahead of the sheep. He does not drive them from behind. He does not manage them from a distance. He leads them out of the fold and then walks on before them, and they follow because they know the one whose footprints they are stepping into.
This is exactly what Jesus did at Easter. He went ahead. He entered death before us — not because He had to, but because He was leading. He walked into the darkest place a human being can go and He came out the other side, and He did it first, so that every one of His sheep could know: the Shepherd has already been where we are afraid to go. The path through death is not unwalked. There are footprints ahead of us, and they belong to the risen Christ.
Whatever terrain you are facing in this season — illness, grief, uncertainty, exhaustion, a future that feels more frightening than hopeful — the Easter proclamation is that your Shepherd has gone on ahead. He is not watching from safety while you struggle. He has already been there. Follow the voice. Follow the footprints. He knows the way through.
John’s Gospel is careful with its details, and this one deserves to be lingered over: the shepherd “calls his own sheep by name.” Not by category. Not by number. Not by general summons broadcast over the whole flock. By name. Your name. The name that belongs to you alone, the name that carries the whole weight of your particular history, your particular struggles, your particular hopes.
There is a moment in the Easter story that perfectly illustrates this. On the morning of the resurrection, Mary Magdalene stands outside the empty tomb weeping, and a figure she takes for the gardener asks her why she is weeping. She does not recognize Him. And then He says one word: “Mary.” Just her name. And she knows. Not because of an argument or a proof. Because He called her by name, and she recognized the voice of the one who knew her.
The risen Shepherd knows your name with the same specificity. You are not anonymous to God. You are not lost in the crowd of human history, one more anonymous soul among billions. You are known — named, called, led. In a world that so often reduces us to data points or demographic categories, the Easter gospel insists on something radical: the God of the universe knows your name and has called it.
We live in a world absolutely saturated with voices. Every hour of every day, voices compete for our attention, our allegiance, our sense of self. Some of those voices are subtle. They do not announce themselves as thieves. They speak the language of comfort, of comparison, of fear, of ambition — and they lead us, quietly and incrementally, away from the pasture and toward the kind of exhausted, depleted living that looks nothing like the abundant life Jesus describes.
The Easter season is a gift precisely here. It invites us to return — to the Word, to prayer, to worship, to the community of faith — and to re-tune our hearing to the Shepherd’s frequency. The more time we spend near Jesus, the more quickly we recognize when a voice is leading us somewhere He would not go. Discernment is not a spiritual gift reserved for a few. It is the natural result of a sheep who has spent enough time near the Shepherd to know the sound of His voice.
When Jesus shifts the metaphor and declares “I am the gate,” He is not narrowing the picture — He is clarifying the architecture of salvation. A gate is the threshold between danger and safety, between exposure and shelter, between wandering and home. And Jesus says: I am that threshold. Whoever passes through me will be saved. They will come in and go out and find pasture.
Notice the freedom embedded in that phrase: “come in and go out.” The sheep are not locked inside. They are not imprisoned in the fold. The gate opens both ways — inward to shelter and rest, outward to pasture and mission. The Christian life is not a retreat from the world into safe religious enclosure. It is a rhythmic movement between gathering and sending, between being fed and going out to serve. The risen Christ is the gate for both movements.
And then the declaration that gathers everything together: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” This is the Easter sentence. The thief — death, sin, fear, the powers of this age — came to steal and kill and destroy. And for a time, on Good Friday, it looked as though the thief had won. But Easter morning is God’s final, decisive, unanswerable word: the thief does not get the last say. The Shepherd does. And what He says is life. Abundant life. Life that overflows its banks, that cannot be contained by a sealed tomb or a rolled stone or the worst that human cruelty and cosmic darkness can devise.
This abundant life is not a promise for some distant future alone — it begins now, in the present tense, in the ordinary Tuesday of your week and the quiet morning of your prayers. Every moment lived in the knowledge that the Shepherd has gone ahead, that He knows your name, that His voice is trustworthy and His gate is open — that is abundant life taking root. Easter has already happened. The life has already been given. The only question left is whether we will receive it.
PRAYER: Good Shepherd, risen Lord, We confess how easily we are drawn away by unfamiliar voices — voices that promise much and deliver depletion, voices that speak our fears back to us and call it wisdom, voices that lead us away from pasture and toward exhaustion. Forgive us for the times we have followed the wrong sound. Remind us that You have gone ahead — through suffering, through death, through the sealed and silent tomb — and that Your resurrection is the guarantee that You know the way through every darkness we will ever face. Call us by name today, the way You called Mary in the garden. Let us recognize You and follow. Open the gate of abundant life wider in us than we have yet allowed. May we come in and go out through You — rested in Your shelter, sent out to Your pasture, always and only following the voice we have come to love. In Your risen and life-giving name. Amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: This week, take one deliberate step toward learning the Shepherd’s voice more deeply. Set aside fifteen minutes each morning to read slowly in John’s Gospel — not for information, but for familiarity. Listen for the voice beneath the words. Pay attention to what stirs in you, what convicts you, what comforts you. The sheep follow because they know the voice. Knowing takes time. Give it the time it deserves.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
