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.

Odd socks...

So what to do with the long Christmas vacation in Cambridge? Start writing essays? Catch up with reading? Put your feet up? All superb ideas, and maybe options I should have opted for... however, I didn't and now I seem to be continually wearing odd socks!

I decided that it would be good to experience ministry during the big Christian festivals this year. So with agreement from the Minister who supervised me over the summer and my College Tutor, I am now back on placement. It was a fantastic idea at the beginning of term, but maybe not anymore!

You would think that Christmas was easy, the story's the same every year and so are the carols. The Sunday School will have to do a Nativity and people won't feel they have had Christmas without Nine Lessons and Carols. Then you have the Luncheon Club's Christmas Lunch, the Women's Fellowship Christmas Tea and all the others. It is the season of no sermon writing and mince pie eating!

If only...

You may have three carol services on one day, but they all have to be slightly different, because you can't use that carol in one church and someone is singing a solo in another and in the other you can only find eight readers! There is the Christmas Eve and the Christmas Day addresses, which have to be short but pack a punch as this may be the only chance you get to share the message with some people till next Christmas. Then after all the lunches and teas, there are all the folk you need to visit before Christmas. Your days start early and finish very late. You loose the ability to find matching socks.

It sounds like Christmas really is a chore for a Minister of Word and Sacrament, but from what I have experienced in the past ten days, that is far from the truth. It's hard work, but it is also a huge privilege. To be able to take Communion to someone who is house-bound with Christmas greetings from the Church. To be able to share the good news of Christmas with people who may have just come to hear the carols. To do what God has called me to do is no chore but a blessing, even if it means I end up wearing odd socks.

A third of the way there

I have survived another term! Term number 4 of 12 is complete, which I guess means that I'm a third of the way to ordination! Gulp!

It does seem a bit strange to say that "I've survived", but some days that is what it feels like. If I'm not battling with Scripture, I seem to be battling with theology or trying to work out exactly who the guy with the beard was who said some when back in the depths of time something that shifted the sand on which the Church stands. I get to the end of the day worrying about whether it was Zwingli or Calvin who liked to eat cream cakes on a Sunday after preaching four three-hour sermons. Once upon a time, well 15 months ago to be a little more accurate, I had a job, a house, heating and a shower. Now I have a vocation, a rented flat, heating which needs supplementing with woolly jumpers and a bath! However, I do still seems to spend the majority of the day doing one of my least favourite activities: reading. (Another battle in my life - words!)

All this paints a rather negative picture, but where I am now is far from negative. The last 15 months has been a hard slog and that wont change. If it starts to get easy I think I might worry more. But not once can I say I have looked back to where I have come from and wished I was back there. Yes, some mornings it would be nice to walk into a warm bathroom and jump into the shower, or it would be nice to be spending the day collecting temperature readings from a potato rather than tying myself in knots over what Paul actually meant when he used the word 'righteousness' in his letter to the Romans. But hopefully one day soon I will again have a bathroom with a radiator and a shower, and really spending the day measuring the temperature of a potato is not nearly as satisfying as even making the tiniest bit of sense out of what Paul was saying about righteousness.

I know I still lack confidence in my own knowledge, that I would still rather sit and say nothing than say something that may be wrong. Every sermon I write, I doubt myself and worry that I may have strayed into some area of heresy which I am completely oblivious to. But I can now stand up in front of a group of people and share some of what I have discovered during the week with some element of confidence (though deep down I am a gibbering wreck). I can even have unscripted moments!

Theological college has changed me and will continue to change me, as will my ministry in the years to come. I can no longer (and at some level no longer want to) hide away in an office in the background. There of course will always be those moments when I wish the ground would open up and swallow me, but I'm learning that is ok. And maybe, just maybe, I am beginning to really make a start on understanding who God wants me to be.

The waiting time is almost upon us...

So week 7 started today... WEEK 7... just two weeks and term is finished and Advent is here!

Ooooh... Advent... Christmas...

Now I know Christmas seems to get earlier and earlier every year in the shops, but it also arrives very quickly when you study at a University that has very short terms. I have this term joined a choir (yipee, at last I am no longer just singing in the bath), and what do you have to do at the end of Michaelmas term? Well sing carols at a concert or in the streets of Cambridge (or both). And because I have starting singing Christmas carols, I thought that gave me a good enough reason for starting to practice Christmas carols on the trumpet as well. Ok, most probably won't be playing in public this year, but you never know, so it is worth being prepared!

This of course means if I start looking at Christmas carols, I also have to look at Advent carols (usually same chapter in the hymnbook anyway). After all Advent does come before Christmas: a point that sometimes gets forgotten. And as I have to lead worship over Advent, no bad thing getting the tunes into my head now. I do, however, have a favourite Advent carol: 'O come, o come Emmanuel'. Someone in my preaching class the other day did suggest a set of themes to cover the season of Advent which would allow the use of 'O come, o come Emmanuel' on every Advent Sunday! My first pastorate, beware, we will be doing this and I will be playing the trumpet! (Why not, I'll be the minister... I can do what I want... can't I?)

So Advent, that waiting place, that time to prepare and to look forward. A time we sometimes miss because we're too busy with Christmas. Well, this year, things are going to be different. I may be singing Christmas carols in November and going to Christmas dinners in early December, but this year I'm not going to forget Advent and the place of limbo it puts us in and the longing for Christ's coming (again).

Therefore, theme tune for 1st to 24th December: "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"

What is the priority?

As this term progresses, weeks seems to be getting shorter and shorter whilst the 'to-do-list' gets longer and longer. So when I sat down to plan my morning prayers, that I had lead this morning, at the end of last week, picking up a bit of liturgy I had sat on my computer would have been the sensibly and less complicated thing to do. However, why make life easy for myself, starting with a blank piece of paper is so much more fun!

Not that I was actually starting with a blank piece of paper per se, because as I have found the busyness of term taking over life and seen others beginning to become swamped by work, the words 'cast your burdens upon Jesus, for he cares for you' have entered my head. They are of course Biblical (I am an ordinand after all), but not a direct scriptural quote. I think I possibly learnt them from a song (as that is where I seem to learn most of my almost scriptural quotes I ever remember). But what to do with that - well link it to an image of course!

Now this sounds all very simple, and actually it was, apart from the fact that I needed the image to be the size of 2A0. Surprisingly, I don't own a printer that prints that big, neither does the college - so 36 sheets of A4 and a role of sellotape later, my image appeared on the floor. This was excellent work (well almost), but it also consumed quite a lot of time. Time that I could have been using to read or write an essay, I spent on my knees in chapel sticking pieces of paper together. Do I have my priorities wrong?

As I have sat and reflected today I realise that I didn't have my priorities wrong. Yes, my essay of Righteousness is not going to write itself, but leading the Community of Westminster College in an act of worship, however short, is just as important. For this not just an academic community, it is also a worshipping community; something that is easily forgetting in the stresses and strains of academic life.

Besides which it part-fueled this evening's theological discussion in the pub! Result!!

It's like being in a scene from "Mona Lisa Smile"...

I thought I'd take a break from reading and put my mind to more reflective use. Now, if I felt like being a real swot, I could of course get on with next week's homework for Pastoral Theology and start a narrative theological reflection on something or other. But since I have absolutely no idea what I'm meant to do and currently can't be doing with reading another slightly obscure text to try and work out what I'm suppose to be doing - I'll blog instead!

Now, as some of you out there know, I'm dyslexic. Which means, though I'm apparently a visual learner, reading is really not one of my strengths, and when I see page after page of words I get slightly disheartened and start wondering what's on telly. And of course in lectures, when we do get handouts or even the odd powerpoint, they are general pages and pages of words. This is why my first degree was in engineering - very few words and lots of pictures!

But this year, things have changed slightly - I've found a paper which involves pictures! To be precise it is all pictures (well there is talking from the lecturer too, but all the same there are no words on the screen). Being that the course is entitled 'Icons and Images', I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised, all the same I did find it very amusing when in the first lecture the lecturer walked in to the class with a box of slides tucked under his arm.

I don't know how many of you have seen the Julia Roberts' film 'Mona Lisa Smile', but at that point this lecture started I was transport to a scene in the film where the Julia Roberts who is teaching art history to a group of girls is going through picture after picture, exploring what these pictures represent, what the artist is trying to get across to observer. I never thought I would every find myself in such a class, but every Tuesday afternoon this is now what I do - look at picture after picture, being taken on a journey through religious art and iconography, learning to see what the artist is trying to show me. I may not agree with some of the theological aspects of the art, and I definitely can't get my head around veneration of images and icons. But I'm being to appreciate how artists have tried to depict pictorially things that even the most esteemed theologians struggle to put into words.

So here's to images and icons - my picture-based theology paper, when I get two hours off from looking at words (bliss).

Time to make a list...

Ok, now I really know term has started again. The grand idea of long mornings drinking coffee and slowly reading my way through Calvin, Barth, Winnie the Pooh (opps the secret is out) has gone, and now there is an ever growing list of class reading to do, seminars to prepare for and don't even mention the word 'supervision' - it makes me come out in a cold sweat! How did I ever manage to complete a degree in Engineering, when now with only 10 hours of lectures on my timetable I don't seem to know how I'm going to get everything done and in on time!

Ah yes, its the first week panic! And after a day like today, which seems to encapsulate approximately half of my teaching hours for the week, I really shouldn't try rational thinking. Rational thinking when tired becomes very irrational very quickly!

So it's time to make a list...

Now will someone please take the list away, it scares me!