Sheep Seeking A Shepherd

I think we’ve all been in this situation at one time or another – we’ve had a long day at work, or a long day of housework. By the end of it, we’re satisfied at what we’ve accomplished, but we’re tired. We’re looking forward to sitting down, propping our feet up, maybe watching a little television. But the phone rings. A close friend or family member needs our help, and wants us to go and meet them. Our long day has just become yet longer, and it’ll be a while before we have a chance to catch our breath, let alone put our feet up. We heave a sigh, put our shoes on, and prepare for our mission of mercy.

This is somewhat the situation Jesus and the disciples found themselves in. The disciples had just returned from their first mission, excited at what they’d accomplished; Jesus had just finished feeding the multitudes – and they were played out. They hadn’t even had time to eat. It was long past time for some serious downtime. So they pile into a boat and paddle off to a deserted place.

Or at least it was deserted when they set out. Mark’s Gospel tells us that the crowds apparently figured out where Jesus was planning to land, and by the time Jesus landed, crowds were lined up along the shore to greet Jesus. Or, more like, ask Jesus to do things for them. For Jesus and the disciples, a long, exhausting mission trip had just gotten longer and more exhausting. Mark’s Gospel tells us that, when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he taught them many things, and did many healings.

Mark’s words about Jesus also hark back to our reading from Jeremiah today. Jeremiah is chastising society’s leaders – the political and the religious establishment – for being bad shepherds, scattering the sheep, caring for their own welfare rather than those in their charge. God promises that he will raise up shepherds who will care for the sheep. And in today’s reading from Mark, we see Jesus beginning to gather the flock that had been scattered.

Sheep without a shepherd. What a picture of our society. As we’ve heard from time to time, sheep are not the brightest animals on earth, nor the most aggressive. Basically, in order to thrive, they need to be kept together, and they need to be led. Absent these factors of togetherness and leadership, they are vulnerable to wolves and other predators.

The phrase “sheep without a shepherd” may grind on our ears as Americans. After all, “rugged individualism” is our American creed. The romantic picture of a pioneer blazing a trail through the wilderness resonates strongly with us, even though the closest we may see to that today is a commercial about an SUV driving off-road. We tell ourselves that we are the masters of our destiny and the captains of our fate. Nobody tells us what to do.

And yet, we’re more easily led than we think. While our society recoils at anything like central planning and grumbles about regulation, still we’re led in other ways by the wiles of the marketing industry. Far from being sheep without a shepherd, all too often we meet all manner of folks auditioning to be our shepherds. Marketers have us, the public, sliced and diced, by age, gender, race, residence, buying habits, and other signifiers. They know how to play on our fears, our hopes, our vanity, our dreams to get us to buy their wares. It may be funny to watch teenagers assert their individuality and differentiation from their parents by their choice of hairstyle and clothes – which turn out to be the same as what all their friends are doing – so much for individualism - but as adults, marketers play on our individual hopes and fears to induce us to make choices that seem very conformist. Marketers play on our desires for security and love to convince us to spend ever more money on cars and homes and electronic and networking gadgets that we can’t live without. When is enough ever enough? Where exactly are these shepherds leading us?

We’re also more easily scattered than we may think. We have more diversity in media than ever before. When I was growing up, you had the radio – AM - with a limited number of stations, and you had one or two city or small down newspapers. You had 3 TV channels – ABC, CBS and NBC – in black and white - - that everyone with a TV watched. During the years when the Fairness Doctrine was in effect, broadcasters endorsing a political point of view had to allow time for the opposing view to be presented. Now our TV stations are slanted to particular viewpoints – Republicans watch Fox TV; Democrats watch Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. (And if you want to know what’s really going on, go over to Comedy Central and watch Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.) You have cable stations for every demographic – Spike TV for the guys, Lifetime for the ladies, the Military channel, the History channel, National Geographic – and internet sites for every demographic. When I was growing up, everybody heard pretty much the same news – everyone heard or watched the reporting of legendary reporters such as the late Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite on the major events of the day. Many of a certain age remember sitting around the TV at the same time watching Walter Cronkite’s coverage of landmark events such as the coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination and the Apollo moon landing. Now with such a variety of media, we can choose to see and hear only information that reinforces our point of view, in a constant feedback loop, with the result that we may as well be living in alternative universes from one another. Viewers of Fox TV and viewers of Keith Olbermann, followers of the Red State website and followers of the Daily Kos website are seeing such different information and interpretations of current events that they may as well live on different planets. Or are like different flocks following shepherds who are at odds. Occasional disasters such as 9-11 may bring us together for ephemeral, fleeting moments of common purpose, but the marketers and broadcasters quickly work to divert us back to where we were, to where they want us. No wonder our society is so polarized on political and social issues.

And the church has its own share of bad shepherds who prey upon or scatter the sheep. Examples that come readily to mind are those clergy, even locally, who have abused children or who financially rip off their congregations. But more subtle examples are those pastors and churches who through their attitudes and actions make it clear that the only people welcome in their congregation are those who resemble the current membership, pastors and churches who not only fail to gather the sheep, but run off those who manage to find them. A few years ago, the UCC’s national office ran its “bouncer” and “ejector pew” commercials, satirical advertisements showing a large, prosperous suburban church turning away anyone who did not fit its prosperous, suburban upper-middle class image. The point was that the UCC is – or at least aspires to be – a place where all are welcome, even those who may not find much of a welcome anywhere else in society.

And so perhaps we resemble Mark’s picture of sheep without a good shepherd, indeed, sheep scattered and preyed upon by bad shepherds – scattered and preyed upon by our national business and political leaders and sometimes even our religious leaders – who are out for themselves, and couldn’t care less about the ordinary people on whom their livelihood depends. Sheep without a shepherd, scattered by bad shepherds who are aware of us only to the extent that they can prey upon us.

In Jesus, God gathered together the sheep that had been scattered. Paul, in his letter to the church at Ephesus, speaks of God gathering together Jew and Gentile. Paul writes “For he – Christ – is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups – Jew and Gentile – into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace….So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near, for through Christ both of us have access in one spirit to the Father.” And that process of bringing together the scattered sheep still goes on today. Christ is still breaking down the dividing walls in our own society, the dividing walls between the haves and have nots; Christ is still proclaiming peace to those who grew up in the community of faith and those who feel alienated from the church and all its doings.

Our task is to gather, not to scatter. In the Kingdom of God, on this side of eternity, Jesus has appointed us to the invitation committee, not to the selection committee. A few years ago, when I was visiting churches seeking to join the UCC, I visited one Pentecostal church in North Philadelphia that had only 3 members. Now the church had many more than 3 people show up for worship; they probably got close to 100, and this was in a small storefront. Worship services were packed. But the pastor had very high – and probably fairly peculiar – qualifications for membership, and she only considered 3 of those who showed up as good enough to be members of her church. But that’s not the way we do things in the UCC – we want to offer extravagant hospitality to all.

We must not become weary in well-doing. Like Jesus and the disciples, people may come seeking help at times when we’ve already given our all, when we’re exhausted, when all we want in the world is to rest. But like the Jesus and disciples, we can push past our exhaustion to push through to the blessings that God has for his faithful followers.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. May Emanuel Church be a dwelling place for God, and a place of hope and healing for a neighborhood in need of both. Amen.