07.05.06 Steve The Good Shepherd and Sheep Who Stray John 10:11-18
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You might know the Larson cartoon..... ....one sheep standing up in the middle of the flock, waving its arms and saying, "We don't all have to be sheep". I have to admit reluctantly that I've always wanted to be that sheep - my instinct has always been not to go with the flow... admittedly sometimes out of habit rather than because of principle. Maybe that's the part of me that decided way back to do something as uncool as to become a committed Christian. On the other hand, if I didn't want to be a sheep, why on earth did I join the church - a self-defined 'flock'. Perhaps I got ordained so as to be some kind of assistant shepherd, rather than a regular sheep.
There's an irony, I think, in the fact that the metaphor of the shepherd and the sheep has become an important part of the church's popular image. This is because the parable and the metaphor that Jesus used is offered to show us something about the shepherd, not the sheep...thus, we're not being encouraged to be like sheep, but to understand something of Christ's concern and care - like a good shepherd. I often observe the sheep when we are down in Dumfriesshire (it's wonderful lambing time just now) - and am always amazed at the deep, deep vacuum behind their eyes....
I don't suppose church folk are any more sheep-like than anyone else - I'm often struck by the herding instinct illustrated in popular culture. Perhaps it's a speedier process in the age of super-fast communication. It is astonishing to me how popular taste can be manipulated so easily by publicists and marketers - i.e....
- how we can honestly accept the idea that plug-in air fresheners will improve our lives... or..
- how crushingly mundane musicians can be 'placed' to a market and how, before you can say 'KT Tunstall's a genius', you see swooningly expansive TV pictures of vast crowds of young people at, say, T-In-The-Park, baying in ecstasy at the latest act that's been successfully promoted in their direction......
- why people want to buy a wee box to live in, amidst countless other wee boxes in faceless housing developments
- or drive monster four-wheel drive vehicles in cities when they are so clearly inappropriate, dangerous and wasteful
I wrote this reflection in Co Durham, having spent a night in a Travelodge - where you eat in a Brewer's Fare - identical reproductions of these are all over the country - (they must come as a kit in a big lorry) - eventually they'll be all over the world, presumably - places carefully designed in every detail to appeal to some version of reality, constructed in response to market research, which is a response to 'what people want'. For these businesses it is precisely the herding instinct that they want to identify, and then promote - 'this is what you want, and you will enjoy it'.
So if we're all subject to the influence of the herding instinct, I propose that:
a) we resist it, especially as Christian people
b) we find inspiration in the Good Shepherd and be prepared to 'get lost'
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a) if we're all subject to the influence of the herding instinct, I propose that: we resist it, especially as Christian people
Let's be clear - it has suited the church to encourage the herding instinct. For the most part, everything we mean by the 'institutional church' is part of a system of control. This is very clear historically, especially in eras when the church was rich and powerful, but also in the present context. The shrinking thing we call the institutional church in the West comprises a variety of expressions of societal, and political control over people - particularly in the realms of religious conservatism.... systems of control, power and influence that are cloaked in virtue - so cloaked in virtue that churches unquestioningly believe that they are somehow the mouthpiece of God - the representatives of God on earth- and so can wield power over people's lives - i.e...in deciding whether someone is acceptable to God because of their sexual orientation, or even because of their gender - or whether millions of people should be 'allowed' to use contraception, even in continents decimated by AIDS/HIV.... Even secular institutions taunt the church by demanding that it live up to its own self-assumed role as the moral-guardian of society.
A few months ago, when we had the awful case of the child trapped alone in a Leith flat for weeks when his mother had died, I was appauled to be called on my mobile at 8am on the Saturday morning (the day after it happened) by BBC Radio 5 Live in London, and asked, as a local clergyman to comment on the moral decay that had allowed such a thing to happen. Luckily I hadn't heard the news so couldn't respond, and to my shame I was unaware enough in my half-awake state not to send the guy away with a flea in his ear.
We don't all have to be sheep - and should resist being swept along by the ways our institutions, esp church ones, that assume we are consumers who will buy into the processes whereby those in positions of power irresistably seek to exercise it.
b) if we're all subject to the influence of the herding instinct, I propose that: we find inspiration in the Good Shepherd and be prepared to 'get lost'
When I was 'instituted ' as Rector of this church, the bit of Bishop Holloway's sermon I remember was when he painted the picture of priest as pastor - like a good shepherd, carrying a sheep around big shoulders. Well, seven years on, I've still got big shoulders.... but I'm not especially aware of having carried members of the flock any more than members of the flock have carried me - and I'm a good deal more convinced now that the Body of Christ only exists where there is a meaningful mutuality - the gathering of the community becomes sacred when Body of Christ is constituted in our nurturing, and sharing and supporting each other as we try and follow our Lord in our lives.
But I still like the image of the shepherd carrying the sheep, because it implies that a sheep has strayed..... the lost sheep. That picture tells us two things about the Good Shepherd:
Firstly - in today's reading, Jesus takes up the shepherd idea that we most easily connect with Psalm 23, but it probably relates more closely to Ezekiel 34, where God denounces the false shepherds and promises personally to be the true shepherd of Israel. Jesus adds the vivid idea of the shepherd laying down his life for the sheep.
This imagery only works if we remember the inhospitable wilderness of the ancient Near East. Sheep were not welcome in settled areas whilst crops were growing, so shepherds had to find them what sustenance they could out in the wilderness. Here flocks were entirely dependent on the skill of their leading shepherd to find fresh pastures and water supplies as searing hot days and freezing nights made survival seem impossible. Here, too, the shepherd had to be more wily than the increasingly hungry packs of wolves. In other words, when we make the choices involved in committing ourselves to the gospel of Christ - and try to walk the Way of Christ, - we can be sure that we can depend on Christ - whose life, words and promises will always be an inspiration and an unmoving cornerstone - however dark a valley of death we might find ourselves in.
Secondly - in the parable of the Lost Sheep - the Good Shepherd expressly prioritises the finding and carrying of the one who has strayed. It's not the end of the world if we stray - We don't all have to be sheep.... if you find yourself drifting from the orthodoxies you have always found yourself at home in - if you find yourself different from other people - if you feel you're starting to get lost in a mist of loss, separation or depression when everyone else seems to have everything - if you don't feel you can be strong anymore and you just want to lay down and leave your responsibilities behind and run away - if you don't believe the same things that you once did with certainty -
.... there are lots of possibilities in our straying, and everybody does it - indeed, in some ways everybody needs to....It's common to worry about young people departing from the fold - but it seems to me that if they've had a positive experience of being part of a Christian community (of knowing that you are loved in heaven and on earth) then it's with the benefit of that experience that they will make their own path as they need to do - and knowing that you are loved in heaven and on earth is something you never forget. We don't all have to be sheep - and we will always find that the Good Shepherd hasn't given up on us.
If we're all subject to the influence of the herding instinct, then maybe we should:
a) resist it, especially as Christian people
b) find inspiration in the Good Shepherd and be prepared to 'get lost'