April 25, 2010
The Fourth Sunday of Easter (Year C)
Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17;
John 10:22-30
Today we are bringing a new person, Graeme, into the sheepfold. We will baptize him this morning, making many promises to him and to his family about what that sheepfold will be like. When we proclaim the baptismal covenant, we will be telling Graeme and each other how we will live out the faith we profess with and for him this morning. And as always, in the faith we will profess together we are pointing to the “shepherd” who knows us already. The shepherd whose voice we know to follow – as the reading from John suggests!
I don’t know much about sheep, though I admit I like the images of them around crèches at Christmas time. I like it that we are called the Church of the Good Shepherd. I like it that as people who have been part of this community leave us, we give them a sheep to remember us by. And I like it that we celebrate each baptism with the gift of a share of a sheep in the name of the child who is being baptized. We do this, of course, so that the very first gift a child gets is a gift on his behalf to Heifer International. He begins his life in Christ by providing for others. Heifer is a program that embodies the baptismal promises we make. All these sheep are intended to be a tidy package that is easily understood. But like all tidy packages, it is but a mere metaphor that points to something far more profound. They only skim the surface of what we stand for as a people of faith and in calling ourselves the Church of the Good Shepherd. It is a beginning of our self-understanding and what we stand behind and for as a community. They are metaphors, sheep metaphors.
As you are all likely aware, sheep are not the brightest animals in the barnyard! I am not sure how that fact is relevant to the discussion of the good shepherd this morning, but I do think it is something we all need to carry in the back of our minds as we think about the lovely pastoral images of shepherd and flock. That image of “not the brightest animal in the barnyard” is perhaps helpful if we think of it in terms of metaphor for “simplicity.” Sheep are not like dogs who also certainly recognize the master’s voice, or even cats who recognize it and ignore it. Sheep show no waggling affection for the shepherd. They just dully, blindly follow the one in front of them toward that voice that will provide the necessities of life, food, shelter, and water.
Dogs will love you if you leave them. Who else will greet you even after you have left them for a week or a month? And they will love you even if you yell at them for tearing up the couch! Sheep are not bright enough to tear up the couch, let alone come waggling to you in delight after being chewed out!
Yet here we are, the sheep of the flock of the good shepherd! What was Jesus thinking when he chose this metaphor?
Maybe he was saying that faith is not a matter of intelligence, not a matter of gushing affection, or mischief or superficial waggling! Maybe he was using this metaphor to point out that faith is not even a matter of individuals knowing that voice of the Good Shepherd. Maybe what Jesus was thinking was that faith in God is not about knowing anything more or less than the mystery of recognition that happens when a not so bright, but still cute and lovable, animal just does what the flock does at the instruction of the shepherd.
Maybe faith is not about great theological understanding, or knowing all the prayers, or even having a rich and deep spiritual life. Maybe human faith is not measured by any of these things. Human faith is not the “stallions in the paddock” nor the stately and very intelligent “elephant on the African plain.” Faith – those who have it are not that elegant and grand. They are more like the humble sheep. All the great mystery that poets name and prophets proclaim is window dressing for the simple and humble life of faith we invite Graeme into this morning.
The shepherd already knows Graeme, and I would also venture, probably heretically, that Graeme already knows the shepherd. There is a part of him, his soul, alive in this world for so short a time, but alive nonetheless, in the simple, humble yearning for the simple elements of life. The sheep might name those simple things as “the source” for water, food and shelter (if a sheep could talk that is and speak its needs). But the infant soul names just as simply, just as basically, its source as being connected to the source of souls, God.
We make it complex, of course, because humans believe they really are more like the stately elephant or the stallions that run wild (or in Derbys!) but we delude ourselves when we get to thinking too grandly of our souls, too mysteriously, too complexly. The truth is the soul yearns for God from birth, and that yearning may take on depth and breadth as we grow and it grows, but the simple truth is it yearns for the voice of God to lead it toward the basic thing of its survival, relationship with God.
Sheep: our souls are like a sheep, seeking that simple reality of connection with the voice we know owns us.
So, why all the professions of faith and the baptismal covenant at all? Probably because we are not the brightest animal in the barnyard and we need a guidebook, a map, a “how to manual” for our human lives to help us focus on what the path is that the Good Shepherd might lead us toward. We can think of it as a Good Sheep behavior guide!
And the truth is that if we are able, and if Graeme is able, to live what we promise to God who knows us so well, then our faith will no longer be merely the simple yearning for relationship with God. We will be beyond that simple “sheep-ness” and into something far more complex and, dare I say, far more holy! Our faith will be drenched in layer after layer of holy relationships with those whom God loves, other humans and all of creation, relationships that will shape not only Graeme’s life and our lives as individuals, and will shape our community in ways we cannot imagine, transforming not only our way of being community together, but every other community we touch in our lives.
I believe to be “one who knows the shepherd’s voice,” a sheep of God’s own flock, God calls us to follow where Jesus went, to be as he was, to love as he did. I don’t know anyone who does that perfectly, but I know that is no excuse for not trying. The simplest things, like yearning for a relationship with the source of all relationships, the author of our souls, is an easy thing to say, a voice we can readily follow. But when it comes down to it, learning the nuances and complexities of traveling where that voice leads and has led and continues to pull us is not what makes us the smartest animal in the barnyard. But faith does allow us most certainly to be the “beloved ones.” Being a person of faith and learning its nuances and mysteries, surviving the joys and the darkness that faith contains is not a straight and narrow path, nor is it just an easy listening response to a familiar voice calling us home. Rather being a person of faith is to attune our souls to that voice, and trust that even when we are lost and hungry, seemingly without hope or possibility, that that voice will lead us in the right direction, toward home, toward what we really need for survival.
May Graeme have a life of hearing that voice – and so may we!
Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd