Shepherd’s don’t get much time for going to church in fact they don’t go at all sheep have no sense of time and therefore pay no attention to the days of the week and get into trouble almost any when, even on the Sabbath. In Wiltshire, and perhaps in other places too, shepherds used to be buried with a strand of wool in their hands; this would ensure that their reason for never having attended divine worship would be evident to their creator and he would let them into heaven even though they’d never heard a single sermon..
The shepherd is an outsider: he does a tough, dirty, dangerous job; with no-one for company but the sheep his conversation can be limited; he has to learn to cope with loneliness and can seem to be not particularly gracious or friendly. Because a shepherd’s status was the lowest of the low, the rabbis always found it rather troubling that King David whom they believed had written the psalms could compare God to a shepherd. But even though the Lord is my shepherd’, Jesus was still taking a risk when he claimed to be a shepherd, however good. Of course people knew about Psalm 23 and perhaps they also knew that the prophet Ezekiel had compared the rulers of his time to bad shepherds who cared nothing for their sheep i.e. the people of Israel. Even so when Jesus compares himself to a shepherd his audience must have thought first of those lonely, rough and illiterate men of the bald Judean hills.
By the time Christians started to paint pictures of Jesus almost the first image they chose was of the good shepherd. But in their pictures he looks like a curly haired beardless youth, a young Apollo with a lamb tastefully arranged across his shoulders. Perhaps they had in mind that the Greek adjective for a good’ shepherd can also mean a beautiful one. But that was not the image that would have come to the minds of Jesus’ first audience. Jesus had to win them over to this image. And he does so by showing them the difference between a good and a bad shepherd. A bad shepherd runs away and lets the sheep be snatched and scattered. A good shepherd knows the sheep and lays down his life for the sheep and brings the scattered flocks together.
How are we to interpret this for ourselves how are we to know we are well shepherded? How in other words is Sophia Ruth to realise that her baptism has made a real and beneficial difference to her life even though she may not remember quite all the details of what was said and done today? She will know it first from her parents. She will one day see what they gave up for her sake she will see how they protected and nurtured and cared for her. And perhaps she will see that in that process of being drained they nevertheless found energy. Jesus says he lays down his life and takes it up again. And that is because God is always at work in this process whereby we find ourselves by losing ourselves; we give up our time and energy and self concerns to the point sometimes of exhaustion and yet somehow it is precisely at that moment that we have a sense of being most alive, most ourselves. And what Sophia first sees in her parents, she will come to see in all who love her and also we hope and pray she will see it in the Christian community as well. There has to be more than one sheep in a flock. You can’t be a Christian on your own. Being shepherded means being in company with other sheep. In fact it’s the other sheep you’ll often be much more aware of than the shepherd. The shepherd is there but you aren’t always aware of him. So it is with Jesus he is always there but most of the time you are unaware of it like an atmosphere in which you feel secure, in spite of the fact that the other sheep he will keep bringing into the fold can be so unexpected and different. And yet this shepherd knows us all. However, scattered and divided and vulnerable the Christian flock sometimes seems, the purpose of the good shepherd is to bring it together into one fold. And so now we welcome the latest member of this flock. All this talk of sheep and shepherds may seem somewhat unreal in our society. What remains real is our need to be known, to be safe, to be enfolded, and to be named with love.
Stephen Tucker