Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, April 21, 2002, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.Nehemiah 9:6-15; Acts 2:42-47; John 10:1-10 You led them by day with a pillar of cloud, and by night with a pillar of fire to give them light on the way in which they should go.
-Nehemiah 9:12
God led. They followed. That is how it was. And this was true in every aspect of their existence, not just their geographical journey from Egypt to Canaan. God made the rules of their lives, such as the Commandments, and they obeyed. They followed. Mostly. And when they didn't follow, such as in the unfortunate episode of the Golden Calf, they were in big trouble. That is how it worked. We all know this.
But think for a moment: This was the Exodus! These people were escaped slaves! Exodus is the great festival of liberation - that's why African-American spiritual music is so full of Exodus images, Pharaoh's army got drownded and all that. Yet here are these Exodus people traipsing through the desert, tagging along like, well, sheep! What's the point of getting your freedom if that's how you're going to behave?
That's the dilemma we're up against every Easter season when Good Shepherd Sunday rolls around again. If Jesus is the Good Shepherd, we're the sheep. And in fact the whole Bible is full of that shepherd-and-sheep talk, so if we're going to belong to a Biblical faith community, we're just going to have to find a way of getting over whatever issues we have with thinking of ourselves as sheep.
In order to demonstrate how difficult it is to live with the sort of limitations that sheep have to live with, I offer an illustration taken, I believe, from the very first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. With deep apologies to the original performers.
(We are in England. A tourist approaches a shepherd. The sounds of sheep and the outdoors are heard.)Tourist: Good afternoon.
Shepherd: Eh, 'tis that.
Tourist: You here on holiday?
Shepherd: Nope, I live 'ere.
Tourist: Oh, good for you. Uh...those ARE sheep aren't they?
Shepherd: Yeh.
Tourist: Hmm, thought they were. Only, what are they doing up in the trees?
Shepherd: A fair question and one that in recent weeks 'as been much on my mind. It's my considered opinion that they're nestin'.
Tourist: Nesting?
Shepherd: Aye.
Tourist: Like birds?
Shepherd: Exactly. It's my belief that these sheep are laborin' under the misapprehension that they're birds. Observe their be'avior. Take for a start the sheeps' tendency to 'op about the field on their 'ind legs. Now witness their attempts to fly from tree to tree. Notice that they do not so much fly as...plummet.
(Sound effects: Baaa baaa... flap flap flap ... whoosh ... thud.)
Tourist: Yes, but why do they think they're birds?
Shepherd: Another fair question. One thing is for sure, the sheep is not a creature of the air. They have enormous difficulty in the comparatively simple act of perchin'.
(Sound effects: Baaa baaa... flap flap flap ... whoosh ... thud.)
Shepherd: Trouble is, sheep are very dim. Once they get an idea in their 'eads, there's no shiftin' it.
Tourist: But where did they get the idea?
Shepherd: From Harold. He's that most dangerous of creatures, a clever sheep. 'e's realized that a sheep's life consists of standin' around for a few months and then bein' eaten. And that's a depressing prospect for an ambitious sheep.
Tourist: Well why don't you just remove Harold?
Shepherd: Because of the enormous commercial possibilities if 'e succeeds.
Well, folks, we are Harold. We are the most dangerous of all creatures, clever sheep. And what are we going to do about it?
We like the whole Good Shepherd thing up to a point, don't we? The 23rd Psalm, The Lord is my shepherd. The 100th Psalm, We are God's people and the sheep of God's pasture. We love the story of Samuel plucking young David from being a shepherd boy to being the Shepherd King of Israel, and we call Jesus the Son of David. We call our ministers Pastor, which is Latin for shepherd. The word congregation is from the Latin for a flock, such as a flock of sheep. It's comforting. It offers security. It tells us that we are cared for. We need all this.
But we are also smart enough, like Harold, to find it demeaning and terribly limited. Harold's downfall began when he looked around at his situation and the situation of all his fellow ship, you stand around for a few months and then you get eaten, and he asked the question, "Is this all there is?" And once you put it that way, the answer is always no, this is not all there is. And you begin spreading your wings for flight. And you might be disinclined to follow a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night through the wilderness of this world.
You might be in for a big thud, too. But that's un-American! The embattled farmers at Lexington and Concord on the 19th of April in '75 were not sheep. The West was not won by sheep.
And that's not all. In the newborn church in Jerusalem, as we learn from the Acts of the Apostles, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers, and awe came upon everyone because of the signs and wonders that they were seeing, and they all were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. They sound like Communists, don't they? Which only confirms what we've always thought: That only sheep would put up with Communism, and that's why it never got a foothold here in live-free-or-die land.
So having said all this, how can I rehabilitate for us the prospect of being sheep, being obedient, being good followers? I can think of a few ways to try.
First, obedience is always selective. In order to obey one shepherd's voice you have to disobey many voices. In the pastoral society of the ancient Middle East, a village would have one big sheepfold, one pen where everybody's sheep would go at night, and everybody's sheep would be all mixed together in the sheepfold. In the morning the shepherds would come and each one would call his sheep and the sheep would recognize the voice of their own shepherd and follow that voice, and they would separate themselves and reconstitute their flocks and each flock would go off to graze in the pasture. So every single sheep was actually obeying one voice and ignoring several others. And that obedience was based, of course, on a continuity of care and trustworthiness. So give sheep credit for tuning out what cannot be trusted, and ask yourself if you can do that. These days more than ever before, the welfare of our souls depends on our ability to ignore many voices.
Second, obedience cannot be blind. Some shepherds are thieves and bandits or other sorts of exploiters and abusers. The sheep who obeys them is doomed. Witness the unfolding calamity among our Catholic brothers and sisters - and recognize, please, that our proud Protestant feistiness does not make us immune to exploitation, either.
Third, community life isn't quite the same thing as communist oppression, and it wouldn't hurt us to get clearer about the difference. Much as I admire John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis, they are after all actors in an imaginary universe. We cannot make a world real by imagining it. Only God can do that, and in the real world created by God's imagination, rugged individualism has a pretty big downside. For one thing, it doesn't work if you're not rich. That apostolic church in Jerusalem where they held all things in common was not rich at all. That's why Paul was always taking up a collection for it from the other churches.
But wealth isn't what the Good Shepherd intends for us. The Good Shepherd seems to assume that there's enough stuff to go around if folks would let everybody have a share, and that's pretty much all the Good Shepherd has to say about wealth. The Good Shepherd can therefore concentrate on other things, such as giving us life, and life abundantly. If we are willing to have it.
Amen