WE ARE HIS BELOVED AND CARED-FOR SHEEP

The sheep follow him because they recognize his voice.

John 10

Most of us may have seen sheep at the State Fair or maybe at a petting zoo, but most of us have very little in depth or practical experience of herding sheep.

I do not have any personal experience with sheep, but I do have a very clear memory of sheep from my childhood. Father Johnson, our country pastor, raised sheep in the church cemetery. Many times, I can remember driving past the church and catching a glimpse of him in his coveralls, buckets of feed in his hands, with his flock walking eagerly behind him. It was not lost of me, even as a child, that the word “pastor” meant a “shepherd.” Our pastor was a shepherd in more ways than one – he had his sheep grazing in the church cemetery and he had his sheep sitting in the church pews on Sundays.

I didn’t realize it as a child, but raising sheep was not just a hobby he engaged in just for fun or because they were pets. It was more practical than that! He raised sheep so that he would not have to pay for mowing the cemetery. He raised sheep so that he could sell mutton dinners to make money for the upkeep of the church at our annual picnic every August. Looking back, I have to admit that he was indeed a very wise and industrious country pastor for doing that!

To understand the gospel today and get at the teaching Jesus wanted to impart to his followers, we may need a brief crash course in Palestinian sheep herding at the time of Jesus.

A shepherd’s equipment was very simple. He carried a bag made of animal skin. In it he carried his food: bread, dried fruit, some olives and some cheese. He carried a sling to ward off predators and sometimes to get the attention of a wayward sheep. He had a club that hung on his belt to defend himself and his flock from wild animals and robbers. He had his shepherd’s crook that he used to catch and pull a sheep back from straying.

Palestinian shepherds spent so much time with their sheep that they would give each of them an individual name like “brown foot” or “black ear.” Because the shepherds knew the individual names of their sheep and the sheep knew their shepherd’s voice, unlike Australian shepherds who have dogs trained to bark and snap from behind, all a Palestinian shepherd had to do was to walk in front of his sheep, call their names and they would run to follow him. Even when several flocks got all mixed together at a watering hole, the only thing a shepherd had to do was to call out to his flock and his sheep would recognize his voice and come running to him. They were scared of anyone else’s voice and would typically run away from it.

Jesus calls himself the “good shepherd” who not only knows all his sheep by name, who not only leads them to green pastures and restful waters, but who also seeks them out when they get lost and brings them home in celebration.                    

Many people do not know what the point of the good shepherd image is! They do not know the incredible things Jesus is saying about God in this image!

Many people actually think, that before God will give them the time of day, they have to be perfect! They believe that if you want God to love you, you have to do enough good deeds and avoid enough bad deeds, to earn that love!  Nothing could be further from the truth!

I have always liked the words of the II Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation. We will use it tonight. In “good shepherd” style, we will pray: “When we were lost and could not find our way to you, you loved us even more.” That truth is, of course, the message of today’s gospel. That beautiful line, “When we were lost and could not find our way to you, you loved us more than ever,” reminds me of a story from India in which God holds each of us by a string. When we sin, we cut the string. God reaches down to tie it up again, making a knot – and thereby bringing us a little closer to him. Again and again our sins cut the string – and with each additional knot, God draws us closer and closer to himself!”

Many well-meaning religious teachers and preachers, scandalized by people’s behaviors today, believe that the best was to assure change in people is to “put the fear of the Lord into them” by delivering stinging fire and brimstone messages. It doesn’t seem to be working! Maybe that’s because that isn’t God’s message after all!

What changes people’s hearts is not fear and condemnation, but the love-message of the image we just read about! This unconditional love-message brought people to Jesus and caused their lives to be transformed. They did not come to God out of fear. They came to God out of love.

For a while, our church moved away from delivering a harsh, condemning religious message. These days, there are some who think all this “love stuff” was a mistake – a mistake that gave people permission to do whatever they damned well please! The truth of the matter is simply this – God’s love triggers change in us, but change in us does not trigger God’s love! God loves us no matter what, and when we really “get” that fact, we willingly change our behaviors out of love, not fear. Even Pope Benedict agreed when he told his audience in Brazil that Church grows by attraction, not heavy-handed conversion tactics, just as Christ draws all to himself by the power of his love.

I am convinced that the message of God’s unconditional love is not a mistake that we ought to back away from, but a truth that has not been heard about enough! If a mistake has been made, it is that we have abandoned preaching this message and started preaching “church-ianity.”  Our core message is being neglected sometimes, in favor of an obsession over liturgical minutiae, pelvic orthodoxy and other important, but secondary, concerns.

St. Paul put it well when he said of us, the church: “We are “earthenware jars that hold a great treasure.” We need the “earthenware jar” of the Church to transport the “treasure” of good news from one generation to another, but we also need to remember that the “earthenware jar” can never become more important than “the treasure” itself.  If people do not hear the good news, then what good is the Church? The Church exists in order to preach the good news and we need to get out there and deliver the message that we belong to the Good Shepherd and he loves us without condition.