Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
That concept is such an antidote to the sense of terminal uniqueness that characterizes so much of my life. And that, I suspect, characterizes the lives of many—perhaps even most—of us. It’s inherent in consciousness. We all know our own experiences, our own fears and desires and buttons from the inside. And we only see those of others from the outside, a vantage point that necessarily privileges the particular contours of our own struggles and joys.
But to become a worker among workers—what a relief. Just like everyone else, no better and no worse. What a horror, too, for those of us who like, at least on some level, our specialness, either as saviors or as sinners or as both.
Try as I might, I couldn’t make this morning’s gospel reading into some beautiful tale about contemplative union with God in Christ and, through Christ, with the whole creation. I couldn’t find the thread to weave some glorious poetry from the fleece of all these sheep.
The message of this morning’s reading is a simple one, simple enough perhaps to be trite, but so very essential that we often pass it by. There is one gate. There is one shepherd. There is one way to the life that really is life: Jesus.
I don’t mean this as an assertion of the primacy of Christianity over other religious outlooks. Rather, I mean that for the Christian the only way to wholeness of life is the full surrender of ourselves in and through Jesus Christ.
I don’t know about you, but I try to find any way I can over the rails of the sheepfold so that I can come and go at my leisure. I don’t want to be pinned down. I not only don’t want to be like all the other sheep—I don’t want to be a sheep at all! I’d much rather some lithe and intelligent animal, a lynx or leopard or fox. Why not a crow? And, of course, I’m free to metaphorically model my life on any or all of those animals. But if I want the abundant life of which Jesus is talking, I have to become a sheep and I have to come in through the gate.
To be a sheep means letting go of all of our strategies for happiness and salvation on our own terms. All the little games we play to get our way and to trick God and other people into believing the lies we tell about ourselves.
One of our brothers once famously said to another, “You know, you’re not as nice as everyone thinks you are. You’re not even as nice as you think you are.” God already knows exactly how nice we are, and exactly how nice we aren’t. The jig is up. Why do we keep pretending?
And yet, so often we try to hop the fence anyway we can. We all have our tricks—self-righteousness and judgmentalism are high on the list for a lot of us. Or—and this is especially true for us church types—the diligent and hard worker, the good boy or girl, the little angel. Maybe we use our intelligence, or our looks, or our oh-so-evolved spiritual nature.
In the end, to use Jesus’ phrase, these tricks are all thieves and bandits. Let’s take in that language. Think of your own favorite method of puffing yourself up, of thinking that you’ve got this spirituality thing down. Whatever that method is, whatever self-image comes to mind—thieves and bandits all. We constantly rob ourselves of the life that really is life so that we can maintain our illusions of independence, power, and control.
Did you know that sheep are so helpless, that the shepherd has to come through her fields to remove any plants that would poison her flock, because they will eat whatever they find in front of them. They have absolutely no idea how to choose the good. Sounds depressingly familiar, doesn’t it?
They say that someone finally comes into recovery from addiction because the pain got to be too much for them. It’s a sad reality that most of us can stand a lot more pain than we’d like to believe. Like the sheep, most of eat the poison put in front of us, crying out all the while for God to help us and take away our pain.
Only when we drop the sham of our own power can we surrender to the abundant life of God in Christ. The gate through Jesus’ flesh is always open, and we can find it anywhere and everywhere. We need only embrace our own poverty and emptiness and need. We need only ask to be relieved of the bondage of self so that we can be absorbed into the freedom of the children God.
I think most of us know deep down that the sheepfold is the better option. To be one with all of God’s people, protected and guided by the one shepherd, fed and nourished by his body and blood, comforted by his voice, called sweetly by name. From the inside, we know this place to be the kingdom.
And when we wander out of the fold, as we will do again and again, when we find ourselves lost on the mountainside, we need only remember that the gate of heaven—the gate that is Jesus Christ—is always standing open waiting for our return. And not only waiting for our own initiative to kick in, but the good shepherd himself wanders the hillsides in search of our stubborn selves to carry us home again on his shoulders. Until we hop the fence once more and the whole process starts up again.
Fortunately, God’s patience and mercy are as wide as God’s goodness.
