One Flock

As a new pastor, I haven’t been doing this long enough to have learned the various “in-jokes” common among pastors, but pastors definitely have their own culture of jokes and funnies, which leads to wall-hangings and knick-knacks that appeal primarily to pastors while leaving others scratching their heads. I particularly remember one I saw in the office of a former pastor. It had a picture of a sheep on it, with the words, “Get your sheep together.” I sometimes had the feeling that perhaps this was the church-approved version of what people tell me to do when I’m being more disorganized and scatterbrained than usual. Regardless of what that knick-knack may have meant, in the Gospel reading for May 3 (John 10:11-18) we see Jesus in the process of getting his sheep together. Here Jesus compares himself to a shepherd willing to lay down his life for the sheep entrusted to his care, as compared to the hireling who will run away at the first sign of trouble in order to live to fight another day.

If Jesus is comparing himself to a shepherd, then He is comparing we who follow Christ to sheep. And that’s a metaphor that does not play well in our culture. Our culture prizes individuality, strength, speed, charismatic leadership – and sheep have none of that. I did a quick internet search to see if I could find any sports team using the sheep as their mascot. While there are some teams with rams as mascots, I was almost ready to say I found none with a sheep mascot – even internationally – but I did find one - a children’s rugby team in the UK whose mascot is “Shaggy the Sheep”. The word “sheep” is used for both singular and plural – there isn’t even a separate singular form for the word sheep; when we hear the word, we automatically think of the plural – a flock of sheep. Sheep are prey animals, not predators – their instinct when threatened is to run, not fight. You likely won’t see a show on the Animal Planet channel titled “When Sheep Attack.” They also tend to herd together for safety They have very keen senses and can see or hear predators that are far away. And they have a high tolerance for pain.

Using the metaphor of sheep for the Christian community points to the fact that Christians are most healthy spiritually in community. John Wesley and Karl Barth are both quoted as saying that there’s no such thing as a solitary Christian. In the life of the early church, it was group activities – listening in community to the teaching of the apostles, fellowship, breaking of bread, prayers – that sustained a group that was frequently beset by persecution. Jesus calls himself the “good shepherd”, who knows his sheep and whose sheep know him. So while to those outside the flock, the sheep all look alike, the good shepherd knows each of his sheep, will protect his flock from harm, knows when one is missing, and indeed will go in search of the stray sheep until it is found. Of course, we frequently read these days about present-day pastors or shepherds who are not so good, about pastors who harm their flock. Some of these “bad shepherds” are like the hireling in Jesus’ comparison, only out to fleece their flocks, to take financial advantage of their gullibility – as in the case of some of the exposes of televangelists years back, when the prayer requests of the faithful were carelessly tossed into the dumpsters in back of the offices, while the checks were diligently cashed. And then there are the wolves in shepherds’ clothing, those who abuse or take advantage of their parishioners – or their children, those who through emotional abuse create division and disharmony in their congregations, even those who lead their flock to destruction, as Jim Jones did back in the ‘70’s.

Even aside from those within the church who mislead, we are drowning in voices from the wider culture trying to lead us in any number of directions. Buy this! Wear that! Vote for him! Support her charity! Our culture calls us in all sorts of directions, tries to get us to base our identity on all sorts of things – our possessions, our careers, our politics. Part of a faithful follower of Jesus then, is being able to sort through all the cultural noise to listen to the voice of the good shepherd, to gain our deepest, most basic sense of identity, not from possessions that’ll wear out or careers that will end some day or political parties that will disappoint, not even from our positions on controversial issues that some day will be resolved and personalities within the church who will someday go to be with their Lord, but from our relationship to Jesus, the Good Shepherd – our identity as part of the flock.

There’s that intriguing line in verse 16 – “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Here Jesus, in the words of my former pastor’s knick-knack, is getting his sheep together. In the context of John’s Gospel, this line would have been speaking of the Gentiles, those non-Jews who responded to Jesus, and indeed were responding to the teaching of the early church at the time John’s Gospel was written. For us today, the specific question that tied the early church up in knots – can Gentiles become Christians without first becoming Jews - is long-since resolved, but the broader issue of inclusion is very much with us, as it is with every generation. Who is welcome with us in church? Who is welcome with us at the Communion table? Do those who are different from us have to give themselves a sort of “extreme makeover” in order to look or act just like us before they can worship with us? We can read the reference to “other sheep” as a reference to any of the out-groups that are on the margins of our society, those who are beat like piñatas and blamed for America’s problems during every election cycle. Jesus has called and continues to call these “other sheep” to be part of the one flock, calls us to be hospitable to those who may not look like us, dress like us, talk like us, even worship like us, but nonetheless are beloved of God.

So our sense of who we are as Christians – our baptismal identity – child of God, disciple of Christ, member of Christ’s church – must be firm enough that we won’t forsake it for the other identities with which the culture will try to saddle us, and yet expansive enough to recognize those who are very different from us as fellow Christians – as children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church – as members of the one flock that Jesus continues to form. Whom Jesus calls into the flock, may we welcome, and where Jesus leads, may we follow.