We have to admit it up front that there are problems with the image of sheep and shepherd. Despite the fact that the 23rd Psalm, ‘The Lord is My Shepherd,” is everyone’s favorite, of course it makes us sheep, and if we think about it a little too long, even city kids know what that means. On a sheep behavior Web site I found called Sheep 101, one of the first things it says is this: “When one sheep moves, the rest will follow, even if it is not a good idea.” It illustrates this with an incident just last year in Turkey when 400 sheep plunged over a steep cliff just because one of them, whose opinion was apparently respected and influential, went over first. It then goes on to try to explain how sheep are actually a little smarter than this implies, but it’s pretty hard to make that case, isn’t it, once you’ve told this story.
But the gospel today is about shepherds more than sheep, what about them and their talents? This is also relevant to us for many reasons, one of them being that of course the Latin word for shepherd is what? Pastor. Well, this same site has some news about the Shepherd of the Year competition in England, and here are some of the categories of judging in the competition: administering vaccinations, skills at shearing their flock, and a lot of very involved duties related to what the competition calls husbandry that I don’t think we want to spend a lot of time on this morning.
But in the gospel today none of this is what matters when it comes to shepherds, What matters is how Jesus describes the relationship that shepherds and sheep have. In Jesus’ mind it is a relationship of great intimacy. Never mind the vaccinations, the sheep and the shepherd know one another and understand one another, and since they have a relationship this close, it can’t be broken the way other relationships can. The shepherd won’t run off when things get hard or when sheep are lost, because each sheep matters, each sheep is remembered and counted on, other sheep won’t do, it’s these sheep the shepherd wants.
Jesus is the good shepherd of course, and if we think about it, what really makes him that it is that unlike any other shepherd, he is a shepherd who has been a sheep. He is the Lamb of God, a sacrificial lamb, who was here on this earth only to show us God’s love by being one of us, who faced everything we face, and who was willing to plunge over a cliff, not out of a herd instinct, but so that he could truly face everything that we face and release us from fear. We have someone as our shepherd who understands and sympathizes with everything that we are, and this makes all the difference. In our more mundane world, it’s like the company CEO who started out selling door to door and still remembers what it’s like to struggle, or those former prisoners who end up becoming the most powerful helpers to those who are trying to find their own way out. People are drawn to them. “They’ve been there,” we say, “they understand what it’s like, how hard it is.” That’s the feeling that we should allow ourselves to have about God. Not a God who distantly tolerates our imperfections as if we are some not very bright sheep, but who embraces us without our even asking, because he knows everything.
What does it matter to us, practically, if we believe God is like that? Here’s one thing, if we believe that God truly knows us, and not only knows us but welcomes us as we are, it means prayer is a totally different experience, since we would realize that we do not have to convince God of anything, don’t have to approach God with our act entirely together, words perfectly shaped and our faults all catalogued and solutions in place. We’d realize that all the initiative in prayer is God’s, God is the one looking for us and waiting for us and wanting us, not the other way around. God is seeking us much more constantly than we are seeking him. Like a shepherd, his only desire is to have all of us together, as we are. We don’t have do the talking. The seeking is all God’s.
But just as important as our prayer life, if we believed in this kind of a relationship with God, we might be less paralyzed in life by thoughts that we’re not smart enough or good enough or strong enough. We all tend to get frozen by imperfection, it leads us to do and not do things in ways we don’t even notice — like disengaging from service because we don’t think we’re generous enough, or losing ourselves in work because it’s a place we feel safe, afraid to take a new step with our lives because it would require something we just aren’t sure we have inside us. And yet we are the people God has singled out, the ones God loves enough to have died for us, and with that love comes strength.
Because of that love we are not weak people, we are strong, we are protected, we are God’s children now, says that second reading from the letter of John — now, not at some point in the future when we prove ourselves or achieve perfection, but right now, we’re not only sheep but God’s children, the children of a king. And just as God knows us and embraces us, it’s within our power to know others completely, to understand their lives, to be able to embrace them, to identify with them. If we could do that, all God’s calls to us to serve others would be second nature, in helping the poor we would not be helping strangers, but people in whom we can see ourselves, we can understand what it might feel like to be them, as God knows what it is to be us. We would be able to know and embrace others in something of the same way that our God understands us and touches us.
So let’s not leave today with the image of docile and accepting sheep. Instead we are sheep who have been changed by their shepherd, loved so deeply that we have the power to love others. We are sheep who at times have the remarkable power to find that we have become shepherds ourselves.