Back when I was growing up, one of my favorite video games was the Ultima series on the PC. On the surface, the game seemed to be the usual sword-and-sorcery stuff that you’d find in any game store today, but Ultima was different. Ultima was the first real attempt at integrating a moral framework into the story of the game. In order to be the hero and win, you also had to be “good.”

Good was defined by seven virtues: truth, compassion, valor, honor, etc. Each character class represented a specific virtue; the knight represented honor, the magician truth, and so forth. To master the virtues, you had to collect teachers and guides from each of these classes to help you. It was an innovative storyline and the Ultima games gained accolades for trying to do something more than just “hero-fights-dragon-and-saves-the-day.”

The hardest virtue to master was humility. You had to search far and wide across only to discover that your teacher of the virtue humility was a simple shepherd named Katrina.

A shepherd? That seems a bit odd, even after playing through these games all those years ago. A shepherd isn’t exactly what you expect to see standing beside a wizard, and a knight, and an archer, and all these other fantasy tropes. But the more I think about it, the more I can’t help but wonder if Richard Garriott, who designed these games, didn’t draw upon our Scriptures for his inspiration.

After all, the Bible is full of shepherd heroes. Moses, after he flees Egypt, comes upon the lands of Jethro of Midian. He marries his host’s daughter and settles into a comfortable life as a shepherd of his father-in-law’s flocks. At least until he has an encounter with flaming plant life and then is send forth to liberate God’s people from bondage.

King David wasn’t always royalty. When the prophet Samuel comes to his father Jesse’s house to anoint the new king, David is absent. He is out in the fields tending the sheep. Of course, it is not much later that this shepherd boy makes his public debut in one of the most famous stories of the Bible. The Ultima series may have taken the story of David and Goliath as its inspiration, because David faces down the giant without armor or weapons, but only with humble faith. His taunt of the giant proves this out: You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand. David takes no credit for his victory over Goliath, but humbly points to God as the true victor.

Not only do the shepherds act as heroes, but they are common image in prophecy and poetry. Most of us have memorized the 23^rd Psalm. God often speaks through his prophets of being shepherd to his people. Jesus himself uses the image of shepherd in his parables: “Which of you having 100 sheep and losing one…”

Why is the shepherd so upheld as a paragon in our Scriptures? So much so that when Jesus settles on an image and a metaphor to describe himself, he says he is the “good shepherd.” We hear these images a lot, but do we really think about what message Jesus is trying to get across here? Why a shepherd?

Maybe the Ultima series may be onto something when it figures the shepherd in its games as a paragon of humility. What is humility anyway? Seeing others as more important that yourself. Placing others before yourself. The shepherd does just that, for he places the lives of his flock before himself. He has to, in order to do his job.

Sheep are not exactly the smartest animal on this planet. Nor are they particular powerful or fast or anything else that might spare them from the belly of a hungry predator. The only thing standing between them and a devouring wolf is the shepherd. And think about the armaments here. The wolf with his ferocious speed, sharp fangs, and claws versus the shepherd with a staff of wood and a sling. Doesn’t look like a fair fight in a lot of ways. Odds are good that if it really comes down to it, the shepherd is going to get hurt or even killed to protect those sheep.

You had to be dedicated to do that sort of work. You had to be willing to risk life and limb to protect those sheep. You had to put that flock before yourself and be willing to die for it if need be. That’s humility, humility enough to die for the flock.

Jesus therefore is saying that he will do the same. That he will place us, his flock, before himself, and that he lay down his life for us.

Now wrap your brain around that one for a second. Jesus is God incarnate. He was present in the very creation of the universe. It was he who fired up that burning bush that sent the shepherd Moses forth to liberate his people. It was he who guided David’s stones to the temple of the giant. It was he who healed the sick, made the lame to walk. It was he who was perfectly obedient to the will of the Father. If anyone in the world has entitled to be top dog, to be the one for whom we should give our all, it is Jesus. He’s earned it. He is the best there is. We should rightly bow down before him and yet his attitude toward us is not to lord over us his superiority, but instead to lay down his life for us. To be willing to die to save us. To be humble before us, even unto death.

That is what the Good Shepherd does for his flock. What Jesus does for us.

The creator of the universe gives of himself for the sake of his creation. The shepherd gives of himself for his flock. The Christ dies on a cross for his people. This is the simple message Jesus seeks give to us, that in his mind we are worth more than he. That we are worth dying for. That is the reason he came, to give up his very life so that we foolish sheep can live forever. That is what the Good Shepherd does. Christ lays down his life for us. Amen.