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God’s Sheep: The Ones Who Sleep Outside the Gate

God’s Sheep: The Ones Who Sleep Outside the Gate

Last updated on: September 26, 2026 at 12:28 pm by Jeff Hood

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God’s Sheep: The Ones Who Sleep Outside the Gate 2026-09-26T12:28:27-06:00 Jeff Hood

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God's Sheep

God’s Sheep

John 10:27 (NRSV): “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”

God’s Sheep Who Sleep Outside the Gate

I have heard this verse used as a wall. My sheep hear my voice. Fundamentalists lean on the word my. They want you to understand that some sheep belong to Jesus. They want you to understand that others do not. Then they tell you how to be one of the ones who belong. Pray this prayer. Believe this doctrine. Sit in this pew. Give to this fund. The verse becomes a door with a lock on it. Fundamentalists hold the key.

Our church has no building. We meet online. Nobody has to walk past a locked door to get in. But I know the sidewalks outside those doors. I have spent enough Sunday mornings on them.

God’s Sheep on the Sidewalk

The people out there come for breakfast. They come from under bridges. They come from cars that no longer run. They come from the woods behind the shopping center. Some of them have not slept. Some of them have slept too much because there was nothing else to do. Their clothes carry the week on them. Their hands shake around the coffee. They eat fast because they have learned that food gets taken away. They ask what day it is. They ask if the bathroom is open. Then most of them are gone before the service starts. They know the building is not for them. Nobody has to say it. They can read a building. They have been reading buildings their whole lives.

Read the sentence again. My sheep hear my voice. I know them. They follow me. The order is everything. The voice comes first. Nobody in this sentence does anything before the shepherd speaks. Hearing is a response. Following is a response. The sheep do not fill out an application. The sheep do not need an address. The sheep do not need a reference.

Then the middle clause. I know them. Look at who is doing the knowing. The verse does not say the sheep know the shepherd. It does not say the sheep are sober. It does not say the sheep have showered. It does not say the sheep have never done anything terrible. The knowing runs one direction. A sheep is a sheep because the shepherd knows it. There is no second test. There is no probation period.

The Shepherd Knows

So who does the shepherd know?

The man who sleeps on the church steps because the steps are covered. The shepherd knows him. The woman who talks to people who are not there. The shepherd knows her. The kid who aged out of foster care into nothing. The shepherd knows him. The veteran who came home to a country that had no room for what he brought back. The shepherd knows him. The ones who sit in the sanctuary every week and step over the sleeping bodies on their way in. The shepherd knows them too. He knows what they are stepping over. He knows what they tell themselves as they step.

This week the shepherd knows two more.

On Tuesday, Florida plans to kill Curtis Beasley. He is seventy-seven years old. He was sentenced for beating Carolyn Monfort to death in her own home in 1995. He had been staying there. She had given him a place. On Wednesday, Tennessee plans to kill Christa Pike. She was eighteen when she took part in torturing Colleen Slemmer to death in the woods outside Knoxville. She is fifty now. Two crimes from the same year. Two states with the same idea about what to do with them.

I will not pretty up what either of them did. Carolyn Monfort had a daughter who found her body in the laundry room. Colleen Slemmer was nineteen. She had a life that ended in the dirt with people she thought were her friends standing over her. The dead are the shepherd’s sheep too. He knows them. He has never once let go of them. Any theology that forgets the dead in order to save the killer is a theology that has stopped listening to the voice.

But the state has decided that Curtis and Christa are not sheep. The state has decided they are something else. Something to be put down. The state has a building with a locked door too. It is called a death chamber. It has a gurney inside instead of pews. The logic is the same logic that empties the sidewalk before the service starts. Some people are ours. Some people are not. We get to decide which. We get to decide when the deciding is over.

I have stood on that sidewalk long enough to know that the people inside the building believe the people outside are lost. I have stood in enough prisons to know the people inside the walls believe the same thing about themselves. Shelters with rules that send you back out. Hospitals that discharge you to the curb. Police who tell you to keep moving. Courts that sentence you to die. Every one of those systems has a way of saying you are not ours. Hear it enough times and you start saying it to yourself. Hear it enough times and you stop looking up when someone calls your name.

No One Will Snatch God’s Sheep

Earlier in this same chapter, Jesus talks about the thief. The thief comes to steal, to kill, to destroy. He talks about the hired hand who sees the wolf coming and runs. The hired hand runs because the sheep are not his. He does not care about them. I think about that every time a warrant gets signed. I think about it every time a city council votes to clear a camp. The hired hands are running. They were never going to stay.

Keep reading. Jesus says he has other sheep. Not of this fold. He says he must bring them also. Must. Not if they get housed. Not if they get clean. Not if they get clemency. Not if they say the right prayer in the right building. Must. Then he says the thing that undoes every lock the church has ever hung on this text. No one will snatch them out of my hand.

No one.

Not the landlord. Not the addiction. Not the cold. Not the governor. Not the warrant. Not the crime. Not the hammer or the knife. Not the needle. Not the thirty years of waiting. Not the people who have stopped writing. Not even the person themselves, on the worst night, when they decide they are not worth anyone’s trouble. Nothing gets a sheep out of that hand. The grip belongs to the shepherd. The grip does not depend on the sheep.

We are all God’s sheep. Every one of us. The word my is not a boundary. It is a claim. Jesus is claiming everyone the city sweeps off its sidewalks. He is claiming everyone the state straps to a table. He is claiming the ones who no longer expect to be claimed. He is claiming the woman in the laundry room. He is claiming the girl in the woods. My sheep. Mine. Not yours to sort. Not yours to move along. Not yours to kill.

Some of us hear the voice in a pew. Some of us hear it over a styrofoam plate of eggs. Some of us hear it strapped down, with a curtain about to open. The voice does not check where you are sleeping. The voice does not check what you have done. Hearing is not the price of belonging. Hearing is what happens to those who already belong.

The bells ring. The doors open. The people inside file in to hear about the shepherd. The people outside fold up their plates. On Tuesday a door in Florida will open. On Wednesday a door in Tennessee.

He is out there with all of them, calling the ones we said were never his.

Catholic

Politics and Religion

About The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a Catholic priest (Old Catholic), theologian, and nationally recognized activist based in North Little Rock, Arkansas. A spiritual advisor to death row inmates across the country, Dr. Hood has accompanied more people to their executions than any other advisor in the U.S., including the first-ever nitrogen hypoxia execution in 2024. His work sits at the intersection of justice, radical compassion, and public theology. Dr. Hood holds advanced degrees from Auburn, Emory, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, University of Alabama, Creighton, and Brite Divinity School, among others. He also earned a PhD in metaphysical theology and founded The New Theology School, where he serves as Dean and Professor of Prophetic Theology. Author of over 100 books—including the award-winning The Courage to Be Queer—Dr. Hood’s writings and activism have been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, CNN, and more. A frequent collaborator with men on death row, he sees theology as a shared, liberative act. Dr. Hood has served on the leadership teams of organizations like the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. His activism has earned multiple awards, including recognition from PFLAG and the Next Generation Action Network. On July 7, 2016, Dr. Hood led the Dallas protest against police brutality that ended in tragedy. His actions that night saved lives, and his story is now archived in the Dallas Public Library. A father of five, husband to Emily, and friend to the incarcerated, Dr. Hood rejects institutionalism in favor of a theology rooted in people, presence, and prophetic witness. You can read more about the author here.

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