“Let me set this before you as plainly as I can. If a person climbs
over or through the fence of a sheep pen instead of going through the
gate, you know he’s up to no good—a sheep rustler! The shepherd walks
right up to the gate. The gatekeeper opens the gate to him and the sheep
recognize his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When he gets them all out, he leads them and they follow because they
are familiar with his voice. They won’t follow a stranger’s voice but
will scatter because they aren’t used to the sound of it.”
Jesus told this simple story, but they had no idea what he was talking
about. So he tried again. “I’ll be explicit, then. I am the Gate for the
sheep. All those others are up to no good—sheep stealers, every one of
them. But the sheep didn’t listen to them. I am the Gate. Anyone who
goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find
pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so
they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever
dreamed.
****************************************************************************
In our Australia days, Norio and I had a small hobby farm, on which we
kept an assortment of chickens, ducks, dogs, cats, sheep and goats. We
had no idea what we were doing in many ways, but we did know that when
blowflies got into the sheep’s wool, she had to be sheared or she could
become seriously ill. Our neighbour volunteered to shear her for us, if
we caught her. The appointment was made, he came over with the shears,
and the sheep disappeared into the depths of the back shed. “OK”, I said
to Norio “I’ll go in and chase her out, you grab her on the way by.”
Right. Sheep came tearing out of the shed, Norio grabbed two good
handfuls of wool – and kept on going for a couple of hundred yards
before she came to a halt. There were two deep trenches in the ground
from Norio’s shoes, and he was completely covered in grass, mud, poop
from a frightened sheep, and heavy lanolin and grease from the wool. Our
neighbour was almost on the ground laughing, and – well – so were we.
This is Good Shepherd Sunday, and I have to tell you that like many
other clergy, I cringed at first, looking at the text. Into my mind came
the picture of Jesus holding the lamb. I suppose there’s nothing
inherently wrong with it, but just that it’s everywhere – one colleague
says it’s even on sale in the Holy Land. Over the centuries, this image
of Jesus as the good shepherd and his followers as sheep has been
staggering - the number of sermons, articles, hymns, retreats,
paintings, stained glass. So, it’s with great trepidation that any
preacher wanders into this particular pasture and tackles these
particular critters.
This Jesus, and the lamb I might add, look surprisingly clean – and I
think that’s the first thing which doesn’t quite ring true. I’ve raised
sheep, and I can tell you that working with sheep means you aren’t going
to be clean. Just the act of catching and holding a sheep will leave you
covered in grass, dirt, smelly grease….whatever.
Now look at the picture. Does this man look like he smells like lanolin
and dirt, dung, and body odor. Does he look like he’s been out in the
fields with the sheep, sleeping on the ground? If he came to ask for
work, would I hire him as a shepherd? As someone who has worked with
sheep – I’d probably be a bit concerned that he couldn’t do the hard
work. Sheep are not stupid, and they are quite strong when they
For me this is another example of taking something from the Bible, and
sanitising it to the point where it means little, other than we feel
good. This is the ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ kind of Jesus we like
having around. We might have Psalm 23 in mind, never wanting for
anything, of having a banquet table all set up for us so we can gloat at
those who we call enemy, of perfect still waters and thick green
pastures with no weeds of any kind. It’s an image of someone who can
control the uncontrollable in our world, tame the things we cannot
manage, those things we fear, solve all the unsolvables and
unanswerables with nice, comfy, pat answers to everything so we don’t
have to think or grapple.
The life of a shepherd, especially in the time of Jesus, was anything
but soft or picturesque. It was dangerous, risky, dirty and often lonely
work. Shepherds didn’t hang out in polite society; they ate, slept and
worked outside.The ‘sheep hold’ was an area built up of rock walls –
with an opening for sheep to get in and out. In a good sheep hold there
might be an actual gate and a gatekeeper. In most sheep holds there was
just a space for going in and out, and the shepherd would sleep across
the opening at night to protect the sheep from wolves and other things.
When morning came the shepherd called the sheep out from the sheep hold
again, into the fields where there might be snakes, animals, dangers.
There’s another side to this text. It’s translated as “good” shepherd
and we think it opposite of ‘evil’, but that’s not it at all. In modern
terms it might be more appropriate to say “I am the good migrant
worker.” For Jesus to call himself the ‘good’ shepherd, sets up a
comparison with the thieves. It would have been an affront to the
religious elite; it’s an allusion to false leaders who run away at the
first hint of danger, who are more interested in protecting themselves.
I want to go back to the text from John, because I think we’ve mis-read
it, or perhaps overlooked some of what it says – and that has skewed our
understanding.
Look at the text. It doesn’t say the shepherd comes and calls the sheep
IN, it says the shepherd comes and calls the sheep OUT. We have
traditionally seen and read this as the shepherd calling the sheep to
safety, but it isn’t – it’s quite the opposite. The shepherd arrives at
the sheepfold and calls the sheep away from the safety of the pen. And
they follow the shepherd. Not to safety, but to the open wilderness,
because that’s where the shepherd always is. The shepherd comes to take
the sheep from a protected place, into an unprotected pasture where
there is abundant life.
Rev. Daniel Henson, in the sermon “The Shepherd Who Calls Us Out” says
“Abundant life is not necessarily a safe life, mind you. Out beyond the
sheep pen, there is most certainly green pasture and still waters, but
there are also roaming predators, wolves and bandits. There is also a
valley shadowed by death.”
He goes on to say that not only have we sanitised the image of the
shepherd, but we’ve sanitised the text. Our version says that Jesus
“brings out all his own” from the sheep pen, but the Greek verb is the
one used in the Gospels for the violent casting out of demons. So the
shepherd casts out the sheep from safety and they are now literally
“out-cast”.
In the Gospels Jesus breaks bread with the outcasts, and sinners. They
are held up as as examples of profound faith, of how Jesus chose the
despised to befriend. I kept thinking about how Jesus says that whenever
we see the hungry, the poor, the lonely, the disenfranchised — the
outcast — we are seeing Jesus himself.
And then I began to wonder if when we hear the voices of those outcasts
in our society, those disenfranchised and marginalized, if we hear that
voice for what it is. The voice of Jesus - the voice of the shepherd-
calling us out from the safety of the sheepfold to be a flock of the
cast-out.
Here’s another side of this. Being a shepherd and taking care of sheep,
and being a sheep and having a shepherd, are sooner or later going to
have something to do with wool and with mutton. Now sheep have a
reputation of being a bit dull and stupid – so if we are compared to a
flock of sheep, does that mean we should be passive, stupid,
unimaginative, docile and dull. If we are the sheep of our Lord’s
pasture, does that mean we just hang around, not doing much, looking cute?
No, it doesn’t. Sheep are useful, they are important, indeed they are
necessary. If the sheep don’t produce, the shepherd has no livelihood.
Which brings us back to wool and mutton. Sheep have a purpose too, and
there are some expectations of the sheep.
Well, analogies are fun and we could probably take this one into all
kinds of different directions. But let’s work with the point of being
cast out from the safety of the sheep pen. Should we all sell our
possessions and give them to the poor? Or hold our possessions and money
in common so that none among us will be in need, though Acts suggests
it? Do we need to spend more time among the outcast and marginalized
because it makes us good people and better Christians to serve those in
need or to lend a helping hand?
I think that misses the point of being cast out from the safety of the
sheep pen. The point is to be where the shepherd is; not in the sheep
pen safe and surrounded and protected, but out in the fields – we follow
the shepherd, which means we go where the shepherd goes.
Many years ago, I sat in a car in the pouring rain, with Rev. Alf
Dumont, a United Church minister who is also of the Anishnabe peoples.
We were talking about very concrete and real issues of colonialism, and
my own guilt for those things done to aboriginal peoples in Canada.
Alf’s words have never left me. “We don’t need you to carry the white
man’s burden, or tell us how to do things; we need to you to walk with
us in our experience and learn to understand.”
That is the point I think. Our liberation - our salvation if you will -
as people of this faith, is inextricably tied into the salvation and
liberation of all people. We cannot be liberated if we remain inside the
sheep hold. The shepherd comes to the sheep hold to call us out, into
the wild pasture, on turbulent waters, those places in the world where
abundant life is waiting. May it be so.
Sources:
1.“The Shepherd Who Calls Us Out” A sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday
Easter 4B – Rev. David R. Henson, April 2015
2.“Wool and Mutton” by Rev. James Liggett, Episcopal Church USA. A
sermon for Easter 4B 2015.
3.Feasting on the Word, Lectionary Series. Easter 4B
