Thomas Kleinert
I’ve been pulling books from the shelves in my study the past few days. I need to decide which ones to keep, which ones to leave for other readers, and which ones to drop in various bins. So I came across this slender volume again. I trust you will forgive an old man for getting a little sentimental. This was the first book of religious instruction that wasn’t read tome, but that I would read myself. It was given to me when I entered first grade, and, of course, the first weeks of the first year were all about the pictures.
On the front cover is a man dressed in a white robe carrying a lamb; and gathered around him are lots of sheep. On the back cover is another picture of that man. There’s a round corral in the background with sheep going into it, and in the foreground is the man in the long white robe, holding a staff in both of his hands, the pointed end raised against a snarling wolf. To my six-year-old eyes, the wolf looked very dangerous, almost like a dragon, but I could tell that the man standing between the wolf and the sheep would do anything to keep the foe away from them. The title of the book is “The Good Shepherd.”
When they gave it to us we couldn’t read or write yet, but we learned a song, and the words in English go something like this: “Because I am Jesus’ little sheep I delight in my good shepherd who knows how to take good care of me, who loves me, who knows me and calls me by name.”[1] “Jesus’ little sheep” — it sounds sweet and cutesy, but when I was 6, I already knew better: I had seen the back cover of the book. I knew this shepherd was a fearless defender who would protect the flock under his care. In the first week of first grade, with a picture and a song, the church taught me one of the core truths of our faith; all that followed would be commentary: I am known, I am loved, I belong to Jesus, and no wolf can snatch me.
In Israel’s imagination the shepherd is a rich and complex figure. All the patriarchs were nomadic shepherds. Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, when, in a flame of fire out of a bush, God spoke to him, sending him to bring God’s people out of Egypt.[2] David was keeping his father’s sheep when Samuel came to anoint him king over Israel.[3]In Israel’s imagination kings and leaders were shepherds whom God had called to guide, protect, and care for God’s people. And when they didn’t shepherd them well, prophets rose to speak. When Jeremiah shouts, “the shepherds are stupid and do not inquire of the Lord” — everybody knows he’s not talking about some sheep herders in the hills.[4] And when you listen to Ezekiel, you may think he’s been reading the budget proposals currently under consideration in Washington:
Woe, you shepherds who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals.
Ezekiel’s words ring out across centuries of unjust, loveless rule, and they conclude with the awesome promise of God:
I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.[5]
When we say Psalm 23 against the backdrop of this history and this promise, we hope to absorb some of the profound trust expressed there: The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. I fear no evil. I will live in the house of the Lord. And we hope to absorb some of the polemical thrust against rulers who oppress God’s people. You are with me, we say defiantly. You are my shepherd – and nothing else matters. You know me. You love me. You call me by name. I am yours.
Learning to sing, “I am Jesus’ little sheep” I only learned a portion of all there is to know about God, but trusting the promise, I already knew, in all the ways that matter, who God is: You are with me. God said to Isaac, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”[6] When Moses asked, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” God said, “I will be with you.”[7] When Moses passed the mantle of leadership to Joshua, he said to him, “Be strong and bold, for … the Lord … will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”[8] And when Israel was in exile, the prophet Isaiah gave God’s word to an anxious people, “Do not fear, for I am with you.”[9]
Every generation of God’s people has received the promise of the divine shepherd: When earthly shepherds fail to rule with compassion and justice, as they have and they will, their failure won’t end the divine shepherd’s reign.
I myself will search for my sheep, says our God, and I will seek them out. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.
For you and me the divine shepherd has the face of Jesus. Now sheep are not brilliant creatures, and there aren’t many stories in the tradition about smart sheep. “When I was a boy,” writes Andre Dubus,
sheep had certain meanings: in the Western movies, sheep herders interfered with the hero’s cattle; or the villain’s ideas about his grazing rights interfered with the hero’s struggle to raise his sheep. And Christ had called us his flock, his sheep; there were pictures of him holding a lamb in his arms. His face was tender and loving, and I grew up with a sense of those feelings, of being a source of them: we were sweet and lovable sheep.
Well, after dealing with just one small flock of actual sheep for one summer in New Hampshire, Dubus changed his mind about those “sweet and lovable sheep.”
I saw Christ’s analogy meant something entirely different. We were stupid helpless brutes, and without constant watching we would foolishly destroy ourselves.[10]
The Lord certainly knew that, but he came anyway, and he continues to come to seek the lost and bring back the strayed, to bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, so that all would live in safety, and no one would make them afraid.[11]This shepherd doesn’t run when the wolf comes, far from it — he lays down his life for the sheep. He subverts all the royal visions of power with their gilded dreams and imposing parades. The good shepherd has but one goal: to gather us into a community of deep friendship with God and with each other.
‘One flock, one shepherd’ is the name of that vision in John. What we see are multiple flocks of all shapes and sizes, mostly made up of sheep that look alike, bleat alike, and smell alike. But the good shepherd keeps reminding us, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”Being sheep, we’re likely to imagine that the envisioned unity will come when finally all of them will have become just like us, or when our shepherds have deported the stubborn rest of them to Libya or Madagascar or someplace else far away. But Jesus’ life and mission is about “us” and “them” becoming a whole new kind of we by growing in likeness with him.
The wolf, of course, with an impressive array of podcasts and social media outlets, tells the lambs not to give in to “herd mentality” and to “forge their own path.” But all the wolf wants are lamb chops. The good shepherd wants us to have life and have it abundantly.[12]
At the end of John’s Gospel, Jesus asks Peter three times, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” And three times he answers, “You know that I love you.” And three times Jesus responds, “Feed my sheep.”[13] To me this suggests that love turns sheep into shepherd apprentices. I’ve never been comfortable with the title “pastor,” or any titles for that matter, and you may be thinking, “Now he tells us, two weeks away from retirement?” But I’ve long loved the suggestion to think of followers of Jesus as shepherd apprentices. And I have long loved how an old shepherd described the trials and the beauty of the shepherd’s life; in my life in congregational ministry, his words have often resonated:
You need to be tough as old boots. … The romance wears off after a few weeks, believe me, and you will be left standing cold and lonely on a mountain. It is all about endurance. Digging in. Holding on. … You’ll need the patience of a saint, too, because sheep test you to the limit… The apprenticeship period for a shepherd is … about 40 years. You are just a “boy” or a “lass” until you are about 60: it takes that long to really know a mountain, the vagaries of its weather and grazing, to know the different sheep [and] bloodlines… This isn’t just … walking [the hills] behind sheep with a dog friend – it requires a body of knowledge and skills that shepherds devote decades to learning.[14]
In other words, this apprenticeship is a lifelong project; which sounds about right.
I’ll soon be getting off this mountain and I’ll continue to listen for the good shepherd’s voice and call. And I trust that you, with new leaders, will continue to grow in love with God and all of God’s beloved. He calls us each by name to send us, and in his company we become for each other what he is to us — good-shepherd-folk, committed to life’s flourishing in the kingdom of God.
[1] Weil ich Jesu Schäflein bin, freu’ ich mich nur immerhin
über meinen guten Hirten, der mich wohl weiß zu bewirten,
der mich liebet, der mich kennt und bei meinem Namen nennt.
[2] Exodus 3:1-12
[3] 1 Samuel 16:1-13
[4] Jeremiah 10:21
[5] Ez 34:3-6, 11, 15-16
[6] Genesis 26:24
[7] Exodus 3:12
[8] Deuteronomy 31:8
[9] Isaiah 43:5
[10] Andre Dubus, “Out like a lamb,” in: Broken Vessels: Essays by Andre Dubus (1991)
[11] Ezekiel 34:16, 28
[12] John 10:10
[13] John 21:15-17
[14] James Rebanks, The Shepherd's Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape (New York: Flatiron Books, 2015) and https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/agriculture/farming/11569612/Are-you-hard-enough-to-survive-as-a-shepherd.html