Delivered on Sunday 22 April 2007 in St George's Chapel

John 10:1-19

According to tradition those of us who have trouble getting to sleep should try the well-known method, counting sheep. Apparently the idea comes from the practice of northern English shepherds and their use of an ancient numbering system. Well, wherever it came from it has never worked for me. I find myself having to concentrate ever harder as the numbers get larger and larger; I find my mind wanders onto something else and then get anxious about the sheep I've missed counting; or I start to think not about the sheep but the numbers. The interesting thing about counting, whether sheep or anything, is that it's a bit like ironing, it's never done. No matter what number you think of, there is always another one. Counting can go on for ever. When you start thinking about numbers going on for ever, you are now setting your mind on a very tricky concept: infinity. Not only is 'infinity' hard to get your head around but it also produces some extraordinary results.

At the turn of the twentieth century the East Prussian mathematician David Hilbert gave us an interesting example of the peculiar nature of 'infinity'. It goes something like this. In France there is the proud owner of a very special hotel, called Hotel Infinity. And as you might guess, it has the name Hotel Infinity because it has an infinite number of guest rooms. On one particular evening the owner is sitting behind the reception desk feeling especially pleased with himself because for the first time ever his hotel is full. As he basks in the light of his success the front door opens and in walks an Irish tourist. The lady approaches the desk and asks the owner for a room.

'I'm terribly sorry', he replies, 'but we're full'.

'But you can't be full', she answers, 'this is Hotel Infinity, and you have an infinite number of rooms'.

The owner knows she's right but which room is free, how will he know which room to give her? Then he has a bright idea. If he asks the person in Room number 1 to move to room number 2, and the person in room number 2 to move to room number 3 and so on and so forth he will be able to house the Irish tourist. And so he does.

He sits down again, even more pleased with himself, and fully confident that his hotel is full. But just as he's about to turn in for the night, up turns an enormous number of German tourists, in fact so large that the number is infinite. What will the owner do now? Well, while he's thinking hard, Mr Hilbert, one of the party approaches the desk and explains that even though the Hotel is full, if the owner would ask every resident to move into the room with the number twice that of the one they currently occupy, then the all the odd numbered rooms would become free. If the person in room 1 moves to 2, in room 2 to 4, in 3 to 6 in 4 to 8 and so on, the rooms 1, 3, 5, 7 and so on will all become free, and as there are an infinite number of odd numbers, there will be just enough space for every one of the German tourists. Even though the hotel was full it was still capable of receiving an infinite number of additional guests.

And if that's where counting sheep gets me to, I can't see much chance of falling asleep. Strangely enough sheep seem to have a particular fascination for the writer of the fourth gospel; he makes mention of them some twenty times, and this morning's reading is a fine example. Here the sheep represent those whom Jesus has called, the sheep are Jesus followers. Jesus himself is the good shepherd. As he puts it 'I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ... I know my own and my own know me'. In describing himself as a shepherd Jesus is plugging into the history of our forebears. Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David and Amos were all shepherds. To be a shepherd in ancient Israel was quite a task. It wasn't like today when the sheep are fenced in and pretty much left to fend for themselves. In those days the sheep were entirely dependent on the shepherds for protection, grazing, watering shelter and first aid. At night the shepherd would lead his sheep to a sheepfold for some additional shelter; in the morning he would them out to find places to graze and water. And lead them they did. In the west we are used to seeing farmers driving a flock of sheep, walking at the back of the group urging them forward. In the east, shepherds lead from the front and the sheep follow.

It's a good image for a manual on leadership. Indeed H. Gordon Selfridge, of the famous department stores, once wrote 'The boss drives his people, a leader coaches them'. He went on to say: 'The boss depends upon authority; the leader on good will. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says "I"; the leader, "we." The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss knows how it is done; the leader shows how. The boss says "Go"; the leader says "Let's go!"' Selfridge, along with Mintzberg and Kotter are all well known exponents of the theory of leadership, the art of urban shepherding. And in the congregation this morning we have large number of scout leaders, practitioners of the art of leadership. In the face of such collective experience I have no wise words about leading a scout pack, or even about leading a major corporation. Instead I want to return to the one who called himself the good shepherd. How does this shepherd lead? By his own account this shepherd protects his sheep and - as I've said before - he knows his sheep by name. These are the sort of things that we might also read in one of those leadership manuals, but not the next; he says 'I lay down my life for the sheep'. Not many manuals will tell you do that, and not many leaders will be willing to do it. I say not many, but there have been some; only last week Professor Liviu Librescu blocked a doorway with his body giving students time to flee from the Virginia Tech gunman, and is doing he laid down his life for his sheep. You can only be humbled by such action. Yet, Jesus' claim is even more extraordinary: it is not only that he lays down his life for his sheep, but he tells us 'I lay down my life in order to take in up again'. He is speaking, of course, of his death and resurrection.

This good shepherd dies and rises again. And in doing so he opens up for us pastures new; he leads us towards the pathway of total obedience and away from the worship of idols. He beckons us away from modern idolatry, from power, from wealth, from learning and directs us towards God the father. We never quite get there but discipleship is about trying to get there, about experiencing eternal life in the here and now (as John would have it).

And that quality of life in the here and now is important. But he also leads us on to life beyond the grave. We spoke earlier of Hotel Infinity, a purely conceptual notion but there is one who makes sense of such conundrums, whose dwelling place has no limits. John records that Jesus, the good shepherd, promised us 'In my Father's house there are many rooms. ... I go to prepare a place for you.' There will come a time when we will follow Christ through the gate of death and into the heavenly kingdom of God. May we learn to follow the Good Shepherd.