St
Luke’s,
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.”
In our Anglican tradition today is usually
celebrated as Good Shepherd Sunday. Our gospel reading always comes from John 10
with its sheep – shepherd imagery, which in turn picks up at least a bit on
last week’s theme when we had Jesus telling Peter to feed my sheep., and as you’ll
remember I said last week if you were here, we need to be careful not to hear
these stories as soft and lovely tales.
I’m not a rural person and I don’t come from a
farming background, which is perhaps why to me most stories involving sheep
seem to be about cute and cuddly lambs and lovely fluffy sheep, which is the
opposite of the sort of focus we find in the sheep stories of scripture.
Sheep and shepherds are a big metaphor
throughout the whole of the Bible. Look at David, the shepherd boy, chosen to
be
In the New Testament we find these metaphors
also. In Revelation – as we’ve heard this morning – and elsewhere we get this
description of ‘the Lamb of God’, an image rife with sacrificial meanings and
not an ounce of cuteness. Jesus, of course, uses this imagery extensively, but
again, it’s not about telling nice cuddly stories. When Jesus talks about sheep
and shepherds he’s making hard points about difficult and often controversial
issues, and when we think about what’s in all that for us we need to give some
thought, I believe, to where we stand in the picture.
Last week we were told, ‘feed my sheep’. This
week, though, we’re reminded that before we can feed others, we need to first
be fed ourselves – before we can be shepherds, we have to be the sheep – and I
think it’s often easier to be the shepherd than the sheep.
As I confessed last week, and I’ll gladly
confess again, my experience of sheep is limited to say the best. I have, as I
said, watched the odd episode of Country Calendar, I’ve certainly seen sheep
frolicking in the hills – from a safe distance of course – I’ve eaten the
occasional leg of lamb and now and then I wear wool. In fact my only up close
and personal experience of sheep was on a retreat several years ago, staying in
a shearers quarters, and it just happened to be at that time – I can’t remember
what you call it – when the lambs are taken away from their mothers. So there I
was, in the shearers quarters, with about a gazillion sheep right next door,
and while I remember the awful noise, what I recall most of all was the shifty
look in every sheep’s eyes. From that
day on I’ve been convinced they’re plotting something.
But it’s fair to say I don’t know much about
sheep, and what I’ve heard about them isn’t that flattering. Sheep, I’ve heard,
are stupid, lazy, completely lacking in initiative and creativity, and have a
tendency to get lost or stuck in barbed wire or mud. Lambs are cute, but they
grow up to be these thick, somewhat boring, and just a little scary, sheep.
So given all that, how do I feel about being described
as one of them? I’m not sure it’s a description I like very much, and I suspect
I’m not alone. How many of us really want to be called sheep? How often do you
hear a parent urging their children to take on sheep-like qualities? We live in
a culture that values everything that sheep don’t seem to stand for, so it
seems unlikely that many of us will have as a primary goal to be a good sheep.
Sheep aren’t independent or self-made. Sheep
need to be cared for and, quite often it seems, rescued from dire predicaments.
The sheep-shepherd relationship, it seems to me, isn’t really one built on a
sense of love and sentimentality. It’s based on practical and economic
survival. The sheep can’t live without the shepherd and the shepherd won’t eat
without the sheep.
So why would you bother knowing them by name?
Again, let’s be honest, all sheep look the same
to me. Yes, I know there are black ones and white ones and small ones and big
ones and some with horns and some without, but apart from those basic differences
I couldn’t tell one sheep from the next. But I suspect many of you could. I
suspect most sheep farmers can see a great deal of differences between sheep
and Jesus takes that reality and uses it to represent how the Good Shepherd
knows his sheep as individuals.
This is an important message, a vital message.
It was vital to the small and struggling community that the writer of John’s
gospel belonged to – a community facing struggles both internally and
externally, a community that wasn’t sure where it fitted in the world and
didn’t feel particularly loved or cared for by its wider society. It’s a
message that remains vital today. Here, as Jesus talks about the sheep and the
shepherds, he tries to get across some idea of God’s love for even the least,
the most insignificant, of individuals. The rest of the flock ignores the
scruffy runt that gets lost and into trouble, but the shepherd rejoices as he
carries it home.
I think we find it easy to turn people into
sheep. We find catch-all phrases to describe whole groups of people as ‘the
poor’ or ‘the sick’ or ‘the lonely’. We talk about ethnic populations as if
they were just one single mass of homogeneous humanity rather than starkly
different individuals. I know I watch the television ads for World Vision and
Child Fund and all the starving children look alike, as do their mothers and
their villages. And somehow, having them all look the same makes it easier –
easier to ignore their situation, easier not to feel their pain, easier to deny
any similarities between them and me, easier to forget that I’m really a sheep
as well.
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them.” There is,
I believe, this almost constant tension within us – we desperately yearn to be
known, but at the same time we fear it. That’s why sometimes, often, despite
the challenges and the struggles and the costs, it’s actually easier to be the
shepherd than the sheep. It’s easier to focus on feeding the hungry than it is
to recognise and admit that we’re hungry too, that we need to be fed and comforted
and acknowledged also. And we need to be known.
It’s very rare, if not unheard of, for us to
really know or be known. Most of us most of the time only let people know as
much of us as we want them to know, and we do the same when it comes to knowing
others. In my position I get to hear perhaps a bit more than some people. I
hear a number of secrets and confessions, but I know I’m not hearing the whole
story. There’s no one I know completely, just as there’s no one who knows me
completely, except the Good Shepherd.
It may be impossible to be fully known in our
human relationships, but it forms the basis of our relationship with God. There
are things I don’t want seen or known about me. To recognise and accept that I
am known – completely known – is a potentially painful realisation. To accept
that I am both fully known, and yet still completely loved is profoundly
comforting.
In our society, which celebrates creativity and
ingenuity and expects us to aim for greatness rather than settle for
mediocrity, it can be hard to accept that we are sheep. Yet to let our defences
drop, to put aside our striving for independence and to allow ourselves to be
known and supported and carried upon the shepherd’s shoulders can be the most
transformative experience of all. To experience the care and comfort and love
of someone who knows us more intimately than anyone else ever can in turn makes
us better at caring for and comforting and loving others. To experience life as
a sheep makes us better people, but more importantly – most importantly – it
brings us closer to the shepherd.
Thanks be to God.