RCL - Easter 4 B - Sun 03 May 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Adam D. McCoy, OHC
RCL - Easter 4 B - Sunday 03 May 2009


Acts 4: 5-12
Psalm 23
1 John 3: 16-24
John 10: 11-18


There is something profoundly attractive in the image of the shepherd when it is applied to God. In the scores of funerals I did as a parish priest I suppose there may have been a few that did not use the 23rd Psalm, but I am hard pressed to remember them. It is one of those Biblical texts that unites the faithful in a family with their friends and relatives who are not so faithful, and I have seen more than a few hard cases tear up as they read the King James version in the presence of the body of their friend or relative now called home.

And the image of the Good Shepherd: Something about the Lord seeking after you until he finds you, standing guard over you, laying down his life for you, when you are hardly conscious of your need, simply because you are one of the sheep, lost, alone and needy, something about that image draws people of all sorts powerfully as well.

What is this attraction? What is this power? Put very simply, its power is that we all, deep down, want to be part of the flock. When we are in over our heads, in trouble, wandering in the wastes, lost, we all want to be brought back to safety by that kindly Shepherd ..

At about this point in sermons about the shepherd and the sheep it is customary to point out the unfortunate side of the sheep image: Sheep, we are told, are easily led, easily distracted, not too careful about their surroundings, largely incapable of finding what they need for themselves, heedless of danger until it is upon them, in fact, none too bright. In fact, rather stupid. And so the preacher will be at pains to assure his people that they are not really comparable in every regard. to sheep, that it is just an image. But the truth is that the image of sheep for God’s people is deeply embedded in Scripture, too frequently used in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures to be so easily brushed off. If the Good Shepherd is an appropriate image for the Lord, then the comparison of God’s people to sheep is probably appropriate too. The truth of that image is borne out by its instant and universal appeal.

There is a lot we could say about the Shepherd in our readings this morning, not least in the Paschal character of the Shepherd’s self-sacrifice. But I would like to dwell on the sheep instead. I think it says something profound to us in our situation today.

The old story about the 23rd Psalm is that David wrote it when he was at the lowest point of his early life, when he was in flight from both Saul and the Philistines, hiding in the cave of Adullam in Judah. He was desperate and the way forward was not clear. But in his desperation, and perhaps because of it, David finds trust in God’s providence, such trust that he turns the image of Saul and the Philistines pursuing him to goodness and mercy following him in a pursuit that will not end. God is aggressively, militarily active in pouring out goodness and mercy, preparing the banquet, giving him a place in the divine House forever.

No wonder this psalm is so popular! It turns what looks like disaster – the world on our tail – to blessing, making God the aggressive giver of grace and good to his people in trouble. Your worst is the occasion for God’s best. The sheep is not only rescued in the 23rd Psalm. The sheep is saved, cherished, lifted up, brought home in triumph. And what is the sheep’s role? To come to understand its true position in reality: It is closest to God when it is most beleaguered, safest when most in danger, most honored when it is lowest, most securely alive when it is in the valley of the shadow of death. What can we do except step back in wonder and amazement and gratitude at such a God? What can we do but trust?

The sheep in the Gospel story are similarly served, saved by their Shepherd who risks himself to the point of death for their danger. We understand this rightly as a job description for Christian leadership, and anyone contemplating ordination or other office in the Church might well ponder its possible personal application. But what is the job description for the sheep?

Some of us, taking the cynical view of ourselves as sheep, might consider that it is our job to do what sheep do so well: to get into trouble so that the Shepherd can do what he does so well: save us. So we wander off so that he can put us on his shoulder and gently carry us home. We get into trouble, we get to the point that our enemies are pursuing us. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death, sometimes deliberately. As though our straying ways are part of His plan. This is a comfort to more than a few of us, and particularly to the mighty sinners we all know and perhaps ourselves are from time to time. We sin that grace may abound. It’s our job to be bad sheep. Baa-aa-aa-aad. Or in the words of that great song of sin and redemption, “Bad boys, bad boys, what ya gonna do? What ya gonna do when they come for you?” I’m not entirely sure that this is quite Christ’s idea, but often enough it is ours.

But for an alternative she eply job description, let’s look again at our Gospel passage. There seem to be three main requirements for the sheep:

First, the sheep belong to the Shepherd, who is not working for pay but because Shepherd is his nature, his identity: he IS the Shepherd for those sheep.

Second, the Shepherd knows his own and his own know him.

Third, the sheep listen to the shepherd’s voice, and their unity as a flock stems from knowing the Shepherd’s voice.

Belonging, knowing, listening. This is the job description of the sheep.

To be a sheep in God’s flock, you first of all need to be part of the flock. This is not too hard to do, since the Shepherd is actively recruiting sheep and is not too particular about where they come from. That delightful phrase “other sheep not of this fold” has always given hope to gentiles, pagans, schismatics, heretics, people cut off from the larger life of the community of all kinds, as well as all-but unredeemable sinners. It puts those of us already in the Christian community on notice that we are not the sole object of the Lord’s concern. But it also puts us on notice that if we want the Lord as our Shepherd, we do have to become his sheep. We need consciously to place ourselves in the Christian community and then stay there. And the essence of belonging to20the flock is to follow the Shepherd, since it is his job to lead us to the next place that has what we need. Belonging is following.

The Shepherd knows his sheep. In fact, he knows them better than they know themselves, which is why he leads them to good pasture, beside the still waters, to restore their souls. But the sheep are to know Him as well. This relationship requires knowledge. And here is the absolute necessity, the primacy of the life of prayer, of the mind fixed on God, of steadfast, persevering contemplation. What is the first and greatest commandment? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, which then leads to the second, which is to love your neighbor as yourself. All followers of Christ are pointed in this direction. All need to know the Shepherd. If we wonder what good monks are for in the greater scheme of things, this should tell us.

The sheep listen to the Shepherd’s voice, which leads to unity. In our day the sheep claim to be listening to the Shepherd’s voice, but unity is not what is happening. Actually, listening is not always what seems to be going on. Different sheep claim they hear different Shepherd messages. Actually, there is a lot of proclaiming going on, and perhaps not so much listening. Have you ever listened to a flock of sheep? They ar e always bleating. They never shut up. I wonder if the Lord understood this about his followers all those years ago. Perhaps we need to put the stress in this story back onto the word listen. The job of the flock is to listen. And here I think might be the key to the phrase “one flock, one shepherd” – not a prefiguring of the ministry of the successors of St. Peter, as admirable as they may be, but an understanding that, as a class, Christian leaders talk a lot more than they listen. It may be a reminder to those folks in particular that they are part of the flock, servants of the servants, as much in need of listening as those they lead, if not more so. There is one Shepherd, and it is Christ.

Interestingly, the Rule of Benedict begins with this word: Listen. Listening is the key to salvation for monks. It is our job. There is a whole monastic technology to enable listening: silence, the twelve steps of the ladder of humility, obedience to the monastery’s leader as a father who stands for us in the place of Christ, and whose job it is to shepherd the flock safely through our trials unmolested. But for this to happen, the flock must do its part. Benedict does not like monks who talk too much, monks who put themselves first, monks who stand up against their leaders, because these behaviors, and the attitudes behind them, get in the way of belonging to, knowing and liste ning to Christ. In this the Benedictine path is profoundly counter-cultural to us, who are trained from infancy in the arts of positive self-image, self-regard, self-assertion, independence, and the whole contemporary workshop of tools to build up our self-esteem and individuality.

The Good Shepherd calls us to belong, to follow, rather than to lead, or to follow so that we might be able to lead if called to do so. The Good Shepherd call us to know so that we might be known, before we begin teaching. The Good Shepherd calls us to listen so that we might be one, before we start bleating on, daring to include and exclude as though we were the Shepherd and not the flock. Monks and our monastic life are deeply important to the work of the flock. We obey and follow in order that we might belong. We study and pray and contemplate in order to know. We are silent so that we might listen.

So, let us be good monks and follow the Lord’s job description for us. Let us be good Christians. Let us be good sheep. Let us trust Him in our dangers, in our valleys of the shadow of death, and find in that trust more than we ever dreamed possible. Let us be worthy of the Shepherd, who asks of us what we are in fact capable of: belonging, knowing, listening. And who gives his life for us in return.

Amen.