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Monday, May 08, 2006
Shepherd Theology
Psalm 23; John 10:11-18
The most famous and favorite chapter in the whole Bible has to be the 23rd Psalm. God as the Good Shepherd! There's tremendous comfort, hope, and security there. So what was Jesus up to when he took that name for himself?
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Once we left Dublin the air grew more and more (how shall we say?) aromatic.
When our rented car rounded a curve in the Irish country highway we understood why. There, spanning the road from shoulder to shoulder, and all bunched up shoulder to shoulder, trudged fifty or more sheep.
Not a care in the world. And not one reason to hurry along. All in the care of their shepherds fore and aft.
And so it was as Joanne and I toured our way through the 40 shades of green that idyllic summer of 1991. Ireland seemed to belong to the sheep.
Driving along one day in the west country we spotted down below a cove with a bit of beach. Sun bunnies that we are, we turned onto a winding lane to find and enjoy that beach. We found ourselves close behind a slow-moving panel truck. Its rear windows were steamed up, and then I noticed why. Several sheep faces were staring me right in the eye.
Now that's what you call VIP service!
The 23rd Psalm calls God Israel's Good Shepherd, who provides much more than a van ride down a bumpy road. Green pastures and still waters. Food and drink, and healing balm in the bargain. Protection from marauding beasts. Rescue from dangerous side tracks. And all of it for time and eternity.
Jesus once dared to declare himself the Good Shepherd, upsetting his religious listeners more than a little bit. Then he compared and contrasted his kind of shepherding with that of a Hired Hand in God's sheepfold.
Think Brokeback Mountain.
Jack and Ennis crossed a line when their confused desire for each other broke out in a torrid love affair out there among the sheep they'd been hired to tend. Instead of posting one or the other up with the flock overnight, they began staying in the tent together down by the river's edge.
That put them across another line. One morning they found up on the hill a bloody half-eaten carcass where a real live sheep had stood at sunset. The hired hands had let their own preoccupations get in the way of taking care of the sheep.
Hired hands come and go, doing their jobs more or less efficiently. But they have no ultimate stake in the security of the sheep.
Not so the shepherd.
Jesus puts it bluntly. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
He'll lay down his body at the entryway to the sheepfold all night long, to keep at bay a hungry wolf or worse. He'll go hungry if necessary, to make sure the sheep are fed and watered. He'll put aside his own safety to go search for a stray, until he finds it and brings it back whole to the fold.
A city boy born and bred, I take this all on faith. What do I know about sheep?
But I'll bet you every cent I've got that the wooly critters in that Irish minivan had nothing on me when it comes to the care of a Good Shepherd. I take that on faith as well. Well-proven faith that has stood the test of a lifetime.
posted by Jack Buckley at
12:09 PM
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