Wednesday in the Fifth Week of Lent: Sheep and shepherd

Lessons: Psalm 119:145-176; Jeremiah 25:30-38; Romans 10:14-21; John 10:1-18

The image of God as the Shepherd of Israel runs deep. In the gospel of John Jesus uses the image or metaphor of the “Good Shepherd” to both connect him to this godly care offered and to remind his hearers we live in a symbiotic relationship of interdependence with God.  Here he pictures humankind as sheep, some lost, some found.

Why would we use such an image for the relationship between God and ourselves?

Sheep live in community for safety and well-being, to breed and to feed, which is their main occupation. But they also live in relationship to a human, a shepherd who guides, provides and protect them daily.

This is also an ancient Biblical portrait of God with us, a shepherd who guides, provides and protects us daily. In a nomadic culture which lived often by herding it was a close and familiar relationship of interdependence.  The shepherd guided and cared for his flocks and the sheep held benefits for the shepherd, milk, and wool and trade and meet at times. In some deep way the sheep add purpose to the shepherd’s existence.

Over the doors of my seminary chapel is a bronze relief of Jesus the Good Shepherd kneeling down and helping a sheep out of a twist of brambles, thorns. He is strong and attentive. One can come and go out of those doors and seldom look up to the relief, but when you do you are reminded this Shepherd is attentive to any lost in the brambles, the twist and turns of life. 

I know what it is to be lost.  I think I had a pretty good family, not perfect but pretty good.

I always had someone between parents, grandparents, siblings who loved me, not perfectly but good enough.

 

Yet I knew what it was to be lost. I was not a very good athlete and that seemed all important at times. It was discovered I was dyslexic early on, but that did not erase the pain of struggling to read when other people came by it as easily as expected. I remember my fourth grade teacher just summing it up…”you’re stupid.”  Well maybe but that really didn’t help. I also remember my fifth grade teacher whose attention healed much. That did help.

And then there was this disquietude of feeling different. I couldn’t name it really…just not quite like my elder brother…different.  I remember being called awkward…well maybe.  But it was more like different in some unexpected way, some unnamed, unacceptable way that would only find its name as I became adult.  And there was a great deal of push back on my part.

 And so there were these places of feeling lost…wondering what found was like, fitting in was like.

The ways of feeling lost are many.  These are but mine and I wonder what are yours, what are your moments of feeling lost.

Oddly this “being lost” birthed in me empathy.  I was not ambiguous when I saw someone’s hurt.  I got it. I felt connected.  I could vicariously experience another’s feelings in ways some folk missed mine.  This is an odd gift in a child but none the less present.  “He is an oversensitive child.”  Well maybe or maybe not. Maybe just clued in.

When I would see Jesus over that chapel door forever patiently dislodging that sheep, I saw here empathy acted on, there as he holds back the sheep from bolting and further lodging the brambles. Jesus somehow knows what it is to be hemmed in by that which holds back our free movement.

Yes those were the brambles of my life he was working on. He still is and that picture hangs in my study just to remind me.  So easily we get lodged in the brambles of life, self-centeredness, insufficiency, ancient hurts tapped and made new. 

Above the altar in the seminary chapel is a statue of that same shepherd with a young sheep in the crook of his arm, now safe and secure. That was me too, now safe for a moment.  Sometimes I was the lamb, and sometimes I felt called to be the arms of Jesus, protective, aware, wrapped in care. I pondered those images weekly, even daily for three plus years.

Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

Here is a life lesson…there is a journey into the care of God.  It begins with trust in an hour of need.  It may come early or late in life.  It ends in the knowledge of the One who is our safe haven, but more, the One who seeks us to secure us in life, yield us useful.

This care does not depend on whether we notice it or not.  It is a divine given.

But if we do notice it and notice it deep we become it. Why.  Because it is how we make him known and allow our hands to tackle not just our brambles but those of another.  Odd how this Shepherd chooses to work in us.