Sunday Musings
A shepherd? Really?
Today is the Fourth Sunday of Easter. By tradition it is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. The biblical texts are familiar, however, even to those who don’t regularly attend church — Psalm 23, a letter from 1 John on love, and a well known portion of the Gospel of John: I am the Good Shepherd.
Psalm 23
Dominus regit me, Book of Common Prayer
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures
and leads me beside still waters.
He revives my soul
and guides me along right pathways for his Name's sake.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me;
you have anointed my head with oil,
and my cup is running over.
Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
1 John 3:16-24
We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us — and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.
John 10:11-18
Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away — and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”
Seventh grade was my first experience of gym classes with uniforms and showers. We were given lockers to store our clothes and, since there weren’t enough for every student, we had to share.
Thus it came to be that I was assigned a locker mate: Charlotte, the goat girl.
Baltimore County was, even in 1970, a pretty agrarian place. New homes often sat on an acre or more of land, often right next to old family farms. Urban kids like me, whose parents moved from Baltimore City in a fit of white flight, wound up in schools with rural children, whose traditional way of life was being overwhelmed by newcomers.
Unlike those of us in the fancy new houses, the farm kids had to help out their parents on the farm before coming to school. Instead of following teen-age fashion trends, they arrived in class wearing their chore clothes that were often covered with dirt and dung and whatever else they had to shovel or slop in in the morning. The city kids in their bell-bottoms and minidresses, who mostly looked like extras from the Brady Bunch, bullied their farmhand classmates mercilessly in that uniquely cruel middle school way.
Charlotte was frequently targeted by bullies. Her before-school task was feeding her family’s sheep and goats. She was also in the “awkward stage” of girls, a little plump and wearing braces. In addition to that normal stuff, however, her clothes reeked of her morning flock, and she arrived at school every day perfumed with eau de barnyard. The bullies christened her, “Charlotte the goat girl.” In a more romantic age, some pastoral painter might have dubbed her a shepherdess.
But this was 1971.
I groaned when I saw my locker assignment. Nobody wanted to be near her because the agricultural odor was so strong. Other girls told me they pitied me.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I reported to the gym, hung up my fresh clothes in the locker as Charlotte hung up her work clothes. After class, I’d take out whatever mod outfit I’d worn, whose scent now matched the overalls in the locker. The bullies starting picking on me, too — despite my neon-colored minis and fishnet tights. Charlotte didn’t exactly become a friend but she may have counted me among hers. I did pick up a few tips about feeding goats and learned the difference between them and sheep.
I also learned that being a shepherd was dirty, smelly, and unpleasant work. It certainly wasn’t the stuff to make a girl popular — except maybe among sheep.
And Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd.”
I bet that didn’t win him any friends. I know for sure nobody wanted to share his gym locker.
It was a strange claim for Jesus to make. Being a shepherd in the ancient world was not that different from Charlotte’s experience. Few grown men were shepherds or wanted to be shepherds. It was a job for women, children, the enslaved, or the elderly — all people who were socially marginalized.
In the Bible, women often shepherded flocks. Rachel, the beloved wife of Jacob, was a shepherd: “Rachel came with her father’s sheep for she was their shepherd” (Gen. 29:6). The same was true of Zipporah, who became Moses’ wife: “Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock” (Ex. 2:16). The woman in the steamy Song of Songs also seems to have been a shepherd — her lover tells her, “Pasture your little lambs beside the tents of the shepherds” (Song 1:5-8).
The most famous shepherd in the Hebrew scriptures was David, a child, the youngest son of eight boys. Watching over sheep was the only job left for the end of the line children, those often troublesome younger brothers with no worthy occupation. Indeed, most of the patriarchs who were praised for their large families and herds didn’t actually do the work of either parenting or shepherding. They left that to their wives, children, and servants.
In the ancient Middle East, herding was the work of women and children. Not something that any respectable man would do himself.
Many modern notions of Jesus the Good Shepherd are shaped more by European romanticism than by any sense of historical reality. We hear “I am the good shepherd,” we might think:
But the people to whom he said this probably thought, what? Because they were thinking of shepherds more like this:
We consider these cozy and comforting verses — and they are often read at Christian funerals. But the truth is that they are somewhat confusing to anyone seeking safety or comfort.
In the ancient world, sheep were important to their owners; sheep were important for the economy. They signified wealth and status. Despite their value, the job of shepherd often fell to society’s least important members. A shepherd tended sheep, guided and guarded them, provided food and protection and cared for them.
Sure, someone might do the job well, but shepherds themselves weren’t generally seen as good people, not as someone you’d want to hang around with or be your friend. They were expendable people in menial but necessary jobs.
Not that different from many jobs today:
I am the good migrant farm laborer.
I am the good dishwasher.
I am the good night security guard.
I am the good housekeeper.
I am the good sanitation worker.
I am the good preschool teacher.
I am the good shepherd.
These are biblical texts of reversal, with radical implications. It was obvious that the sheep were valuable and needed attention. But if we focus only on the sheep, we might miss the most compelling point. Jesus identified himself with the shepherd — a job held by those unfit for any other occupation.
Respectable people must have winced.
He elevated a mean occupation to sacred status, claiming it to be the very work of God. In effect, he extended dignity to all those consigned to such work by the powerful and wealthy. While criticizing “hirelings” who treated their work carelessly, he sided with those who did the good and essential work of community — tending, guiding, guarding, providing, protecting, and caring.
I am the good shepherd.
Suddenly, the sheep — although always financially valuable — become more than mere property. And the shepherd, the necessary but largely invisible cog in the economic machine, is ennobled. The new community isn’t based on money and status, but on compassion, care, mutuality, and service.
This is the comfort and safety of God’s commonwealth — God loves, the Good Shepherd loves, and the community is constituted by and bound by love. Jesus imagines an entirely different kind of flock, not one owned by some greedy and distant overlord, but an inclusive human family tended by the motherly care of God and led by little children.
I can almost hear Jesus saying, I am the good goat girl. And I wonder what happened to Charlotte. She taught me more than I could have guessed back in that locker room.
INSPIRATION
Psalm 23 (Dedicated To My Mother)
by Bobby McFerrin
The Lord is my shepherd, I have all I need,
She makes me lie down in green meadows.
Beside the still waters, She will lead.
She restores my soul, She rights my wrongs,
She leads me in the path of good things,
She fills my heart with songs.
Even though I walk through a dark and dreary land,
There is nothing that can shake me,
She has said She won’t forsake me, I’m in her hand.
She sets a table before me in the presence of my foes,
She anoints my head with oil,
and my cup overflows.
Surely, surely goodness and kindness will follow me
all the days of my life,
And I will live in Her house,
forever, forever and ever.
Glory be to our Mother and Daughter
and to the Holy of Holies.
As it was in the beginning,
is now and ever shall be
world without end.
Amen.
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Lord of the sheepfold, whose love is not for hire,
who calls to himself the victims of the world:
we thank you that Christ laid down his life for us when we could not help ourselves;
in the weakness of his love give us strength to work for peace in the world to serve, through Jesus Christ, the good shepherd. Amen.
— Steven Shakespeare
This is the most upending post, altering of my mental picture of these scriptures. I read this before getting out of bed this morning. I love it when my preconceived notions get altered before my first cup of coffee.
I find it tragic that so many in our society rail about the issue of migrant undocumented workers and would like nothing more than to see them deported out of the United States. However, I sense if that were indeed to occur, many departments and shelves in our grocery stores and supermarkets would quickly become bare. For a good lesson on what it's like to be a migrant farm worker in California read the book, "The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields, and the Dinner Table" by Tracie McMillan. In the first few chapters you'll discover just how abused, underpaid and yet how skilled these migrant undocumented workers really are that harvest so much of our nation's produce.