The Great Good Shepherd

Sermon by Jamie Howison on Psalm 23 and John 10:22-30

When I was fifteen, I spent a couple of weeks on my aunt and uncle’s sheep farm in Scotland, my parents reasoning at the time that it was probably a good thing to clear the teenaged Jamie out of Winnipeg for a time, to get his feet in the farm fields and his head into a whole different sort of space. They were right, and combined with time spend in England with other relatives, it made for a glorious sort of summer.

Now at the time I had only a very vague sense of farms, and particularly of sheep. I had rather romanticized images of walking in the fields surrounded by placid and peaceful sheep, but soon discovered that as soon as I climbed over one of the stone fences surrounding the fields, the entire flock would hustle away from me as far as was possible. Any movement I might have made toward the flock would cause them to again move off in the opposite direction, which more or less ruined my naïve and rather romantic imagery of sheep and shepherds. The only lambs that would come close were the orphans who had not bonded to their mothers and so saw we humans as being the closest thing they had to kin.

In 2008 I again had the opportunity to spend a bit of time on a Scottish sheep farm, this time the 300-acre property belonging to my cousin. Half of his farm was dedicated to the reforestation of the land with native trees and plants, which had been displaced after the Second World War by a program of planting Canadian Balsam Firs across swaths of Scotland; a move that in retrospect was seen as deeply problematic for the local eco-system. The other half was given over to a small herd of Galloway Cattle and to a flock of sheep, which my cousin knew intimately. The cows were his “girls,” easy to approach and completely unafraid of humans. The sheep, on the other hand, required the herding skills of his border collie Lil, who seemed to take great delight in rounding up the sheep and moving them from field to field. But would those sheep come near me? Not a chance. My cousin as the shepherd could get much closer, but only with the help of Lil.

Sheep, you see, are not known for their brightness or canny intelligence. Quite the opposite, in fact, sheep are wary, and they move as a flock. If one bolts, they all bolt. If one huddles into the corner of a sheepfold, they all huddle with it. Simple survival might be their primary goal, and they’d rather that dogs and humans just keep away. A skilled shepherd can herd a flock of sheep, and in Turkey I remember seeing a couple of those shepherds very ably moving a flock right through the streets of a small town. Had they not been herding the flock, I can only imagine the path those sheep might have taken. And domestic sheep come from a long, long line of being domesticated—millennia, in fact—such that without being sheared of their wool by the shepherd, domestic sheep will become overgrown to the point of dying. Their wool has flourished… but not so much their intelligence.

Painting by Helen Lyons

The author of the 23rd Psalm would have known this, as would the various other biblical writers who use shepherd imagery for a king or leader, and sheep imagery for the people. When Isaiah writes, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way,” (Isaiah 53:6), it is because he knows just how lost sheep become when they are without a shepherd. Similarly Ezekiel, who writes of the people of Israel that, “they were scattered, because there was no shepherd.” Those kings and leaders intended to be good shepherds, Ezekiel writes, “have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep,” and so “says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.”

The psalmist, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jesus, among many others, know just how lost sheep are without a guiding shepherd, and when you think about real living breathing sheep, it isn’t the most flattering of imagery for the people of God! Vulnerable, in need of constant care, susceptible to predators, liable to just run and follow the rest of the flock, unable to much think for themselves. That’s quite a picture, isn’t it? Is that really us?

Well yes, in a sense it is, because we do walk with a level of vulnerability, and we do easily get influenced by the movement of the flock—think of how media can impact our thinking and actions, or how advertising can convince us of what we need to be happy. Think, in other words of how much we need a guiding shepherd, and maybe sometimes even a border collie to nip at our heels in order to get us back on track.

Which is why, I think, the 23rd Psalm has such power to speak to us, even if many of us have never been near an actual sheep or spent all that much time outside of the city.

The psalm begins in a place of peace and contentment, and you can easily picture a shepherd and his flock of sheep settled comfortably in a lush valley.

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.

The Lord revives my soul

and guides me along right pathways for his name’s sake.

As James Limburg points out in his commentary, at this point the psalmist is speaking of God’s character as a Good Shepherd. There is contentment and safety, and from that place the psalmist refers to God somewhat at arm’s length. The Lord is my shepherd, the Lord does this, the Lord does that.

But then there is a critical shift, when the writer turns to acknowledge more difficult times.

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.

Here the psalmist is prepared to state openly and clearly that there are times when he is walking through the valley of the shadow of death—which may mean a threat to his own life, or could point to the experience of having a beloved friend, partner, or child die, leaving the writer reeling in death’s shadow—yet “I shall fear no evil,” for I am not doing this alone. You are with my, O God, and even your rod and staff are a comfort to me, which is interesting for a shepherd’s staff is as likely to be used on the flank of a sheep to get it moving as it is to be used to defend against a predator. Even if you’ve slapping my flank, Lord, there is comfort in having you walk me through this dark, dark valley.

This psalm is rather a part of our biblical mother tongue; probably the most familiar of all psalms, and perhaps one of the most familiar portions of the entire Hebrew Bible. Any wonder that Jesus laid hold of shepherd imagery, as he recalled Isaiah, Ezekiel, and most assuredly this psalm? “My sheep hear my voice,” he says to these Judaeans who come trying to get him to answer plainly whether or not he is Messiah. “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

I know just enough about sheep to know just how powerful this statement was intended to be. Without a shepherd, the sheep perish. Full stop. With a shepherd, the sheep have a decent chance against predators, and also have someone who will tend their wool, pull them out of bad scrapes when they get in trouble, bind up wounded legs, and occasionally even send out that border collie to nip at their heels to get them moving. Speaking personally, I need all of those things and probably more, from my great good shepherd. So isn’t it grand that Jesus is just that; the good shepherd willing to lay down his life for this funny old flock that we are.