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“Part of God’s Herd”

The Reverend Canon Elizabeth Knowlton
April 13, 2008
Easter 4
Acts 2: 42-47 and John 10:1-10

I have a confession to make.  I don’t like sheep.  Well, that may be too strong.  I should say that I am not drawn to sheep.  I am, in fact, indifferent to them.  Not that I’ve really had much contact with them, so my judgment may be unfair. 

My limited experience of them has mainly been in the petting zoos I’ve frequented in recent years.  These interactions have not done anything to change my mind.  Their main positive quality seems to be that they will stand still.  This makes them good candidates for brushing by the children.  This makes them rank slightly higher than the average prancing and biting goat. 

But, my children usually were done with them in about two minutes.  They were bored by them.  They had no distinguishing characteristics and there were certainly no favorites that emerged through the years.  One seemed pretty much like the other.  The idea of someone even taking the time to name one seems a stretch.  Pickles the Pig at least warranted a wave from the train at Zoo Atlanta, but did the engineer ever tell you to wave to the sheep?

I also have never met a real shepherd.  So while this well developed analogy in the Gospel of John clearly worked for first century Christians, it is a little harder for us city folk to get inside of.  If anything, it tempts us to get carried away with pastoral imagery and green rolling hills.  If we linger for an instant on the notion of Jesus as the good Shepherd, what image pops into your mind?  A childhood painting?  An elegant Jesus with a creamy white lamb draped over his shoulders?

But, I really think the stumbling block is not Jesus as the Shepherd.  We can get beyond saccharine and idyllic renderings and feel the care and nurturing that is embodied in it.  Our imagination allows us to know how much we long to be known by name.  We may not be experts in sheep herding, but we know how any mother can recognize her child’s cry among many.  We long for that same recognition from God.  And we want to hear God calling to us. We strain and when we do sense it, we eagerly follow it to safety and comfort. 

Yes, we can get comfortable with the shepherd.  No, our problem is the sheep.  The sheep confront us.  Are we really like that?  Are we ordinary?  Even boring?  What if we are unknown, unnamed?  What if we’re not all that distinguishable from one another?  What if while we are striving to stand out, waving our hands to get God’s attention, we might be overlooked?  Or seen as just one in the group? Nope, we don’t really get excited by the idea of being sheep.

We’re also not fond of the flock.  It yields close living quarters.  We don’t like being brushed up against by another sheep, or being held up by that one that is always going astray, or at least running late.  No the idea of being jammed into a sheepfold together, even with a good caretaker can chafe at our peacock-like notions of grandeur and glory.  We don’t want to be herded along with everyone else.  We’d really prefer a private pasture, with our own special path, plenty of leg room and complimentary beverages.

But while we all need time as individuals, we need to be wary of being too distanced from our community of fellow sheep.  We need their ongoing companionship and sustenance to remember who and whose we are.  When we are distant, we become disconnected. 

Our distancing happens in a myriad of ways.  It may be the subtle distinctions we never voice audibly.  We may be standing with the herd, but thinking ourselves better than that sheep we passed on the way to our favorite patch of grass.  That disheveled and unkempt specimen we averted our eyes from. 

We may subdivide the flock.  Clinging to the familiar sheep and assuming the others aren’t knowable, or enlightened like us.  We may fail to recognize sheep that don’t look or behave in expected ways.   

Beware, because if we lose our identity and affinity with the herd, we have drifted far away from the voice of the Shepherd.  And then we are in dangerous territory.  We are likely to hear other voices.  The voices of the thieves and bandits. They may subtly tell us that we really are better than most of the herd--we can be better off without it.

But, the thieves and bandits do not only work with our pride.  They will access us any way but the straightforward call of the Shepherd.  Sometimes they tell us we are even worse than the herd---that we are separated by our own mistakes or inadequacies.  We are outside the range of the flock and the Shepherd won’t be bothered to go and look for us.  We don’t deserve to answer the call to come in to the place of safety and respite.  We need to get our act together before we would dream of rejoining the herd or showing up on a Sunday morning. 

Whether through pride or shame, the distance has been established and we are vulnerable.  So, despite its obvious downsides, we really do need the flock to keep our connection with the Shepherd. 

But, what about our fear of being overlooked?  The real concern around losing our unique nature?  To just be ordinary.  Commonplace. 

I think we need to realize that God sees differently than we do.  Jesus is able to be Shepherd, Gate, and Lamb of God.  Our God can somehow be present to each of us individually and still herd us as a flock.

When my daughter Rebecca was three years old, she was placed in the typical, ordinary role that all three year olds at St. Bede’s got in the Christmas pageant.  She was a sheep.  And yet even though there were twenty other fellow sheep standing with her, my eyes lit up when I saw her.  I noticed the other children, but the one who I felt connected to was my precious daughter.  She was anything but commonplace.  She was mine.

Mysteriously, God comes each day to witness each one of us in that way.  God’s gaze somehow encompasses the herd, but has those special eyes of love for each of our lives.  We are not ordinary and commonplace in the sense we would fear.  We are ordinary in the extraordinary way that God is able to love each and every one of us.  God sees our common pains and joys and knows we are all of God’s flock.  What appears to us as sameness is a deep and eternal connectedness that comes from our identity as beloved children of God.

The more we can see ourselves as linked through that love, the less we will need to worry about ourselves as individuals.  We will start to enact the kind of communities that take the needs of all as a common concern.  We will still be our own unique selves, but it will be the selfhood of humility.  We will not take ourselves too seriously or too lightly.  We will be grounded in the certainty of a deep connection between God and ourselves and our fellow sheep.  I think this is the vision that Luke paints for us in Acts when he says, “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”  Their deep sense of the Risen Christ in their midst, allowed extraordinary sharing and love.  The people in their communities were no longer other, but wonderful ordinary companions on the road.  May we all find ourselves surprised at the beauty and ordinariness of our fellow sheep.

Amen

Comments? Contact Beth Knowlton at: BKnowlton@stphilipscathedral.org

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