Most people who know me find out very quickly that I am a dog person. And not only am I completely crazy about my own dog, I’m nuts about dogs in general. So one thing I have been doing these past few weeks of isolation is spending way too much time watching dog videos. (I’m not ashamed, we’re all doing what we need to do to cope.) What I’ve become particularly addicted to is watching a couple of sheep farms in England that each have a pack of working sheepdogs, and not only have I learned things about dogs, my picture of sheep has been turned upside down.
Most of us here in this parish are not rural people, so our mental image of sheep is that they have a peaceful life. Maybe the 23rd Psalm that we all know has given us this idea, that sheep lie down in green pastures, they repose, there is food and water, and not much need to exert themselves about anything. But seeing a real sheep farm up close has called the 23rd Psalm into question for me. I mean, maybe some of a sheep’s life is like that, but at the very least, there is another side to it. It turns out sheep have a life of constant motion, and much of it isn’t motion they are eager for. Those dogs are there to protect the sheep, but what they’re really good at is moving them, making a kind of scary eye contact that takes a stubborn sheep not interested in moving on and forces it to get with the shepherd’s program.
And if you thought that a shepherd was someone whose job at best was keeping an eye out for the occasional wolf, and that there was a lot of standing around for the shepherd too, that’s not true either. The shepherd is constantly making decisions and plans about where the sheep need to get to next, watching out for the spots the sheep have no idea are bad for them. There’s a lot of yelling and literal dragging of sheep who are being pushed and prodded along to the next place they need to be. Even that long staff that shepherds carry around, the one with the big curve at the end of it? That’s for latching onto a sheep who might have flipped itself over, or as a last resort for dragging a particularly reluctant sheep on to where the shepherd wants it.
So here on what we call Good Shepherd Sunday, what does this all mean for us? If Jesus is a shepherd, what kind of a shepherd is he? He tells us today in this gospel that the reason he is working as a shepherd is to give us life in abundance. And that is what we all want. But that process of giving us life in abundance isn’t always an easy one for those of us who want it. That shepherd wants us to follow where he’s going, and as a result there’s movement in this gospel, and movement, for us, is sometimes very hard. But movement, at certain moments in our lives, is what this good shepherd is trying to get us to want.
So we’re all in a lockdown right now, and what is it we all think we want? What we want is for everything to get back to normal, to the way things were before this virus came along. And of course in some ways that is what we should want, we all miss people terribly we can’t see, we’re worried about people who are sick and who might get sick, some of the people we know and love are out of work, and we’re tired of it all. But here’s the thing about a time like this: There is never a time when God isn’t putting the chance for abundant life in front of us, even now, and maybe the abundant life you are looking for isn’t where it has been in the past. We’ve all been slowed down for a few months, and it’s as if God might be asking some of us to take a moment and listen to our heart to discern where, really, we’re headed next. Maybe you have felt a hint in these few weeks, that in your heart how you have chosen to live until now hasn’t necessarily given you everything life has to offer, and everything life has to offer, that abundant life, is what Jesus wants us to have.
What does that abundant life look like? How do we know where we’ll find it? Without that shepherd, someone to draw us out, or as this gospel says, drive us out of where we are, without him our focus is always inward. What life in abundance means is trusting a voice that is calling us somewhere else, somewhere outward. Life in abundance means hearing Jesus’s voice telling us that we can have the courage to embrace something that seems difficult, trying to be closer to others’ lives, doing what others need done, and then seeing God’s love come with even greater richness in our own life. What amazes us about people who genuinely live life to the fullest is their fearlessness, not worrying about risks or difficulties, because they seem to know that they are where they were meant to be.
So if you are looking for something to pray about during these beautiful spring days when you are being so unfairly tied down away from normal life, you can pray for insight into where, under the surface, where you are moving, asking yourself what voice you are listening to as you look toward the future. It may be that that shepherd is pushing you and prodding you away from whatever is confining you and towards something that offers love and freedom and a sense of rightness. So if you are feeling courageous, ask for Jesus the good shepherd to reveal where it is that you’re done with, and where it is he wants you to go next.