Good shepherd, good sheep

Currents in Theology and Mission, August, 2003 by Peter J. Gomes

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold; I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.

--John 10:16-16

The gospel of the Lord.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be found acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Yesterday I spoke of the burden of the familiar, and I know that this text has a burdensome familiarity to all of you, because on Sunday most of you had to labor through it, it being Good Shepherd Sunday. I appreciate the fact that you hope that I will do at least as well as you did, and that you may hope to grab at least a morsel of some novelty from me, or from whoever else could be standing up here today, for next Good Shepherd Sunday. So, I'll do my best on the principle of Hansel and Gretel; I will try to drop a few bread crumbs along the way in the hope that we will not be eaten by the big bad wolf of the text but may find something here that will be helpful to us all.

I've spent my life dealing with this wonderful text about the Good Shepherd and, by implication, with comparison with a bad shepherd; and I once had a wonderful experience that lends itself to an attempt to provide both an exposition and an experience of it.

Many years ago I was invited by a great friend, Richard Holloway, whose name may be familiar to some of you Episcopalians at least, to preach on the occasion of his consecration as bishop of Edinburgh and the Episcopal Church in Scotland. The position of Episcopalians in Scotland has always been slightly ambiguous; Episcopalians are used to being the established church wherever they are, but in Scotland they are merely ordinary dissenters, the established church being the Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian. So, the Episcopalians in Scotland are mildly defensive, and when people are defensive they become terribly aggressive.

Richard was, and remains, my friend, and in extending this extraordinary gesture he broke with all convention in inviting me, a Baptist, to preach at his consecration in St. Mary's Cathedral; and later he was placed in the embarrassing position of having his invitation rejected by his fellow Presbyters--fellow bishops in the Scottish church--because I, as a mere Baptist, did not stand in apostolic succession. Poor Richard had to do the embarrassing thing of withdrawing the invitation he had extended to me and inviting me instead to preach at his enthronement in the evening rather than at his consecration in the morning. He was embarrassed by this, and I was mildly perplexed and even a little bit annoyed, but not altogether surprised.

The text that was assigned to me at the enthronement in the evening was this very text about the Good Shepherd, and it was wonderful. The bishop was enthroned, he stood at the door of his cathedral on the outside and banged on it with his crozier demanding admission, and this was great ceremony and all of that; and there was I, this Baptist, surrounded by all these ancient bishops of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, and still smarting, I must confess, from my exclusion in the morning. Not the Spirit of God, but a spirit got into me, and I proceeded to give out the text which you have just heard, and I announced to all assembled the fact that really this pericope ended somewhat prematurely, because the faithful will know that this goes on to describe in more detail, after the eighteenth verse, some interesting things about the shepherd and the sheep, and that one of the most telling verses, which was omitted from this reading, was the fact that the verse goes on to say of the Good Shepherd, "All who came before me were thieves and robbers." I said, "So much for the doctrine of apostolic succession."

This point would not be lost on you Lutherans, I knew, in the matter of your new relationship with the episcopate in your sister church; and it reminded me then, as it reminds me now, when we hear the lesson of the Good Shepherd, that it is a grave and perhaps even diverting temptation to routinely associate ourselves with the shepherd and not with the sheep. What an interesting ego trip it is to say, as we read this, "Yes, this is talking about us, we are the shepherds, and those poor wandering bewildered people in our congregations, who are either there or not there, are the sheep." So we try to figure out where we fit in. Do we know our people by name? Are we better than hirelings? How do we carry ourselves like the Good Shepherd as opposed to the Bad Shepherd?

I want to suggest that the connection in this text on Good Shepherd Sunday, particularly for the clergy, is not that we are the shepherds, good, bad, or indifferent, but that we are among the sheep. That puts a slightly different perspective on this text for us, because when we preach to our people as fellow sheep instead of as shepherd and sheep, they may actually be inclined to hear the text somewhat differently than we are accustomed to giving it to them and they are accustomed to receiving it. If we think of ourselves as among the sheep, as opposed to belonging to the Shepherds' Union, we may actually gain a new insight into the relationship that we have with one another. It is not the only one, but it may be a useful and a mildly novel one.