Being sheep and shepherds

So with term being in full swing again, we have, once again, the delights of Life and Service, and this term we are considering that great elephant in the room of every church: pastoral care. In class this morning we briefly touched on some of the imagery which is attached to being a pastor, incuding the image of the shepherd. This is a Biblical image that apparently more and more people are struggling with, but it is an image I have used quite a lot in association to sheep and it got me thinking about a sermon I gave over the summer.Therefore, here is my sermon on being both sheep and shepherds, with reference to Jeremiah 23.1-6, Psalm 23 and Mark 6.30-34.

Not only do sheep and shepherds appear at regularly intervals throughout the Bible, but they are used as metaphors in both the Old and New Testaments. Three examples of their metaphoric use we’ve read in Jeremiah, the Psalms and Mark. The image of a sheep is used by individuals in reference to themselves, for example as in Psalm 23, whilst else where Israel, Judah and even humanity as a whole is equated to being like sheep. And as demonstrated in today’s readings, you can’t have sheep without a shepherd or vice versa. But this metaphoric duo is not confined to the Bible, it has been used throughout history to describe the relationship between gods or kings and nations. Apparently King Hammurabi of Babylon called himself a shepherd and Homer regularly styled the Greek chiefs as shepherds of their people. For rulers in the ancient near east, their ability to tend their people like they would ‘pasture’ sheep demonstrated their legitimacy to rule.

But being a sheep or a shepherd is far from glamorous. Sheep are not the cleanest of animals and do have the tendency to flee at the sign of any danger. They are not stupid animals, research has shown that their IQ is on par with cattle, just below that of pigs and they’re apparently good problem solvers. However, their stomachs do tend to rule their heads and their strong lead-follow tendency isn’t a characteristic most people would want to be associated with. And when it comes to shepherds, in Biblical times and earlier they were usually teenagers, the poor or the elderly. They were lonely figures, isolated from society, seen as the lowest of the low. So what is it about sheep and shepherds that nations and great rulers are likened to them? And why are they recurring images associated with God and his people? Ok, in times gone by, shepherding was something that most people would have a working knowledge of; but was this the only reason, or like many of the metaphors we meet in scripture is there something much deeper which makes them as meaningful today as they were yesterday?

Nations, groups of people, flocks of sheep, though they can be self sustaining, are easily scattered and individuals lost if there is no protection or leadership. The only defence mechanism a sheep has is the ability to run; to run without any thought to the way they are going as long as it is away from the immediate danger. And the direction that one sheep runs in will be a totally different direction to another. And humanity has a very similar defence mechanism—it is much easier to run away from our fears, problems, troubles than to face it. But with a shepherd, sheep have someone who can easily lead them to fresh pastures, someone in who they can trust, someone who will lead them safely from danger, who will be their protection. And do we not look for leadership in times of trouble? Is it not the rulers, the kings of the world, the political leaders, who nations turn to for guidance in times of conflict. However, as Jeremiah’s prophecy demonstrates, sheep need a good shepherd if they are going to be cared for in the right way; highlighting another important point about shepherds—they very often cared for sheep that were not their own. The nation of Judah, God’s sheep, had been under the care of their kings, God’s chosen shepherds, but Judah had been neglected by the kings. Because of this Judah had been scattered, they found themselves in exile. They’d been failed by their shepherds because the shepherds were more concerned with their own welfare than those of whom they had been trusted to care for. Judgement therefore came on both the sheep and the shepherds.

Jeremiah’s oracle, though one of judgement, was also one of hope. Though God was ‘firing’ the current shepherds, that wasn’t the end. God wasn’t going to leave the flock scattered, to fend for themselves, to be without leadership, guidance or protection. And God hadn’t given up on the idea of having shepherds; but they would be the right people for the job, they would be trustworthy, obedient, they would care for God’s people as if they were their own, they would lead them to safety. Because of these new shepherds, the flock would have no longer anything to fear and would be one again.

Roll forward about 700 years and Israel and Judah have been restored, but they are still people who are ‘like sheep without a shepherd’. The new shepherds, the Davidic kings who Jeremiah had prophesied about, had they been the ones who had led God’s people home? If so, what had happened to them? Or were the people still waiting? 

One commentator suggests that Mark reporting Jesus as saying “like sheep without a shepherd” alludes to Old Testament imagery which would imply to the reader that Jesus was the one who was the longed-for king of Israel, the Messiah, one who would be like Moses teaching and feeding the people. And in Mark’s description of the scene and the events that happened around the verses that we’ve read, Jesus does both teach and feed the people. Jesus sees a whole group of people waiting on the shore, people who were without direction, without purpose, looking for someone to lead them. However, was that his role? Mark’s view would advocate that and in John’s gospel Jesus refers to himself as the good shepherd. But Jeremiah prophesied about not just one new shepherd, but many shepherds. Were the many shepherds just put in charge until the time was right for the one, true shepherd to come? Or are we missing something?

Shaun the Sheep—that well-loved Wallace and Gromit character, who, as some of you will know, now has his own cartoon series. Shaun isn’t like the other sheep, he doesn’t display the characteristics which are typical for a sheep, but ones which are more typical of a shepherd. According to the theme song, Shaun is a brave courageous leader; he is a father of invention with a charismatic knack for causing havoc in the pasture; he’s pure gold and if his mates get into trouble he’ll return them to the fold; he even mucks about with those who cannot bleat! Remind you of anyone else I’ve spoken about this morning?

So can a sheep, be also a shepherd? Well, obviously in the world of cartoons and make-believe anything and everything is possible. But what about Jesus? His humanity made him one of God’s people, one of God’s precious flock. John the Baptist called Jesus the ‘lamb of God’. Ok, Jesus was not a sheep like the people of Israel were sheep, or in the way which we are sheep, but his human experiences meant he knew what it meant to be human. And is it not easier to lead, to guide and to even protect something you really understand? Shaun understands what makes the rest of his flock tick, because he is not just their leader, he’s one of them. In the same way, Jesus understood the people of first century Palestine, and he even understands us today, because he has been there, he’s been inside the realities of life. Jesus—shepherd and sheep.This, however, does not answer my quandary over Jeremiah’s prophecy. What did God mean by those words? Who are the shepherds who will tend to his people?

Though Jesus went around teaching and feeding the masses, he did not go alone—he took with him the disciples. And as they went he equipped them to carry on the work he had started and then sent them forth to equip others with the aid of the Holy Spirit. Jesus showed the disciples that they were not just sheep but also shepherds. And so it is that the Church is not just the place where God gathers his people, his flock, it is the place for equipping new shepherds. We are both sheep and shepherds. It is our responsibility to continue the work God started through Jesus, to follow Jesus’ example and with his help, gather God’s people, the scattered and the lost, then care for them. For we have been there, we’ve been those scattered sheep, those lost sheep, so now God can work through us.