EASTER IV 2013

Shepherd and Sheep -- Camille Pisarro (1888)

• Acts 9:36-43 •
• Psalm 23 •
• Revelation 7:9-17 •
• John 10:22-30

The 4^th Sunday in Easter is always “Good Shepherd” Sunday. It gets this name from the fact that the appointed Psalm is the 23^rd – ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ -- and the Gospel for the day is a passage from John in which Jesus applies the metaphor of shepherd to himself. In many churches, it is customary to have “shepherd” hymns and anthems (often versions of the 23^rd Psalm) in order to underline the Good Shepherd theme.

Partly thanks to the enduring popularity of the 23^rd Psalm, the language of sheep and shepherd is both familiar and comforting to most church people. And yet, the world in which we live – even in rural areas – is so far removed from the world in which the biblical shepherd was a familiar sight that we might wonder whether, despite its familiarity, the image can still speak to us, or convey anything at all to those who are not already church goers. Indeed, for a modern audience, describing faithful Christians as ‘sheep’ can be expected to have negative overtones – a docile inability to think for themselves.

The Good Shepherd

 

To make the metaphor speak afresh, we have to understand that shepherds in biblical times had two crucial tasks. First, they had to lead the sheep to sources of water that they couldn’t find for themselves. Second, they had to protect their sheep from wild animals against which they were powerless. Sheep needed the superior strength, wisdom and care of the shepherd to survive and flourish. Without it they would “go astray, each to his own way” as Isaiah famously puts it (Is.56:3).

The message for us is this. However earnest our seeking, searching, questing and questioning, it is God who finds us, not we who find God. Our task is to be able to recognize His call, and to follow the divine Word in preference to establishing paths through life of our own devising.

3rd/4th century mosaic from the Roman Catacomb of  Priscilla, courtesy of the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt Divinity School