Of sheep and shepherds

Acts 13.14,43b-52 ‘Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles’

Revelation 7.9, 13a,14b-17 ‘The Lamb will be their shepherd and will guide them to springs of living water’.

John 10.27-30 ‘I give eternal life to my sheep’

 

I give eternal life to my sheep. Alleluia.

 

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The Fourth Sunday of Eastertide, today, is traditionally known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.

 

That’s because the Gospel, psalm and other readings feature the image, the motif, of the shepherd.

 

And shepherds in the scriptures, and the life of the Church, are all judged against the measure of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.

 

The shepherd is the dominant image of Christian leadership and the Good Shepherd the source and inspiration of it.

 

It’s a very different model from the ‘strong man’ leadership we see in some parts of the world today or indeed the ‘anything goes’ style.

 

The word ‘pastor’ is the Latin word for ‘shepherd’.

 

I am charged with the duty and joy of being your pastor, your shepherd, who, as a priest prays for you, teaches you, leads you and offers the Eucharist with you.

 

As a pastor – a priest for you and a Christian with you - my vocation, my calling, reflects in the local that of our Bishop, Christopher, and his care for us across our Diocese, on the worldwide level the new Pope, Leo XIV, has a pastoral care for his people.

 

Priests are told at their Ordination, ’hold the example of the Good Shepherd always before you’.

 

A good place to start considering this pastoral charge, is through the special stick carried by shepherds and by bishops: the shepherd’s crook , known in church as the ‘pastoral staff’.

 

Traditionally shepherds who look after sheep carry them, and so of course do Bishops, the shepherds, the chief pastors, of the Church.

 

The crook is used – with a flock of sheep and the flock of the Church - in various ways: to rescue, to guide, to obstruct, to protect and to lead.

 

The shepherd uses the curve of the crook to rescue by using it to scoop up a lamb or sheep stranded in a ditch or caught in a thicket.

 

So too Christ through his death and resurrection rescues us, from the gates of hell and the valley of the shadow of death, by lifting us up and rescuing us from sin.

 

The pastor in the church is called to seek out and then lift people out from the ditch of sin, despair, sadness and lack of hope where they could quite easily die spiritually.

 

This is done by proclaiming the forgiveness and reconciliation of Christ the Good Shepherd to those who cry out for life.

 

If your life is like that, stuck in a ditch of pain, then Christ the Good Shepherd, through me his priest, seeks you out to bring the healing medicine of the Gospel.

 

That might be through what’s called a ‘pastoral conversation’ (a bit like counselling) or even more significantly through a formal time of confession – that is when Christ, the Good Shepherd, gets in the ditch with you and lifts you out.

 

As the sheep are led to fresh pastures the shepherd uses the crook to guide, gently steering the sheep, pointing the way.

 

The Good Shepherd leads us to be spiritually nourished and fed guiding us along the lifegiving path that we find in his teaching in the Gospels.

 

His priests and pastors are trained and formed to make that guidance life giving and clear.

 

A pastor in the Church needs to know where to find spiritual nourishment so as to be able to point others to the ‘green pastures’.

 

Those green pastures are feeding on the Word of God and the sacraments which are channels of grace and power in our lives.

 

The shepherd’s crook is also to obstruct.

 

It blocks the way of predators who threaten the flock, or sheep who are separating themselves off.

 

The priest is told to be ready to admonish which is an old-fashioned word which means ‘urge by warning’.

 

I am not a good admonisher, I know, but there are times when being nice doesn’t cut it.

 

No one is saved by niceness but by Truth: it’s often observed that if Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was a parish priest he’d be a very unpopular one: he didn’t hesitate to rebuke and admonish.

 

The shepherd uses the crook to protect.

 

The shepherd’s task in ancient times was to fend off wolves and bears from attacking the flock.

 

King David, whose first calling was as a shepherd boy, wrestled predators to protect the sheep, before slaying Goliath to protect the people.

 

The Christian pastor is charged with resisting and obstructing all that threatens the spiritual wellbeing of the flock of Christ.

 

That means in teaching and reading the ‘signs of the times’, those currents in culture and society hostile to the Gospel or antithetical to Christ.

 

The priest calls out that which is evil and spiritually corrosive: and believe me doing that comes at a cost of disdain or hostility, not unlike the apostles Paul and Barnabas encountered on their missionary journeys, but hostility did at least fill them with ‘joy in the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 13.52).

 

And finally, the crook is to lead: it points the direction.

 

Flocks in the Holy Land in Jesus’ day, and even now, are not driven from behind, dogs snapping at their heels, but are led by the shepherd who calls out to the sheep.

 

The shepherd sets the direction and calls.

 

The Good Shepherd, Jesus, says in the Gospel, ‘My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me’ (John 10.27)

 

The task of the Christian pastor is not to decide his own way arbitrarily, but prayerfully to seek, with his people, the way, the truth and the life of the Good Shepherd.

 

The pastor, as shepherd, is to keep his eyes fixed on the good pasture, life in Christ, and continually to call the flock home to him.

 

And where are we going as a flock?

 

Our second lesson captures it: the vision of heaven, that is to say life in deeper union with Christ in this world, and life with him in the world to come.

 

St Paul says elsewhere, ‘I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus’. (Philippians 3.14)

 

He presses on because he knows our citizenship is in heaven. (Philippians 3.20)

 

That’s what the vision of Revelation describes:

 

I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. (Revelation 7.9)

 

And there is the Good Shepherd at the heart of things, the Good Shepherd who is also the sacrificial Lamb whose body and blood is the food and drink of the Christian life and whose blood washes those who are his witnesses in tribulation and trial and have died to sin to live with Christ.

 

Witnesses to the life of the Gospel as the ‘sheep of [Christ’s] pasture’ (cf Psalm 100) will have their hunger satisfied; their thirst quenched; and be shaded from harm because:

 

the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,

    and he will guide them to springs of living water,

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. (Revelation 7.17)

 

 

O God, our sovereign and shepherd,

who brought again your Son Jesus Christ

from the valley of the shadow of death,

comfort us with your protecting presence

and your angels of goodness and love,

that we also may come home

and dwell with him in your house for ever.

(Common Worship: Daily Prayer, p. 679)