April 26, 2015
Jesus talks about sheep and shepherds in the Gospel.
What are some facts about these woolly creatures we call sheep?
Start with a comparison.
Maybe you and I remember our childhood when we turned various
insects on their backs.
Childishly, we watched them struggle and never achieve their
proper leg-side down position unless we had mercy on them.
An unshorn sheep is the same way, shepherds tell us: completely
stranded if it gets turned on its back.
In order to turn it right-side up when it needs it, the shepherd
carries a crook.
He hooks the sheep and turns it right.
He is kind and careful with his flock.
That is why they follow him.
History tells us that the many shepherds all brought their small
herds down to Jerusalem, and that these various flocks were kept together in
one big sheepfold.
There were no brands, no markings of any kind, just a fuzzy mob.
How, you might ask, does each shepherd retrieve the sheep that
belong to him (or to his boss)?
The first way is by calling each of his sheep by name.
He has been with them on the hillsides to the point that they are
no longer strangers to him.
The one with the nick in its ear, the one with the pretty face,
the one that limps.
He has a name for each because they each have a personality that
is special, just like we do.
When they hear their names they come and follow.
Second, the sheep recognizes not only its name but the actual
voice of the shepherd.
This is a much loved sound to it.
It belongs to the one who flipped them back on their feet, the one
who shielded them from wolves, the one who led them to fresh pastures instead
of ones they had eaten down to nubs.
A stranger's voice could not have the gentle consonance of their
master and friend. His sheep flocked to him.
Why does Jesus use such imagery on the Fourth Sunday of Easter?
I suppose you know the answer already, but, if you will pardon the
comparison, you and I are much like sheep.
The shepherd calls sheep by name and the magnificent God of the
universe calls each of us by name.
Through Jesus, God knows each and every one of us better than we
know ourselves.
The name he confirms for each of us finds its way down to the
deepest interior of our souls.
Through it he calls us to be most truly who we are, in our own
self and in God.
We may misunderstand the voice of God, the shepherd, ignore it,
resist it, button our ears to it, but in our moments of sane and solitary
wholeness—or maybe in our times of trouble—our spirits pulse to the rhythm of
that voice.
It resounds within us.
Like the shepherd with his sheep, this call is safe, in spite of
wolves and wildness all around.
Christ's call lets our fear drop away, turns us right: side up,
lets us follow our master and friend around rocks and even through dark
valleys.
Sometimes the phrase, "people are sheep," is deemed an
insult. This Sunday it is the greatest compliment we could get.
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