"Yes, but...." -- Sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday (Easter 4, May 7, 2006)

We’ve been here before. We are here every Fourth Sunday of Easter. We come here and sit with Jesus and we hear him say, “I am the Good Shepherd” and we say the 23rd Psalm and we try to figure out what it means, what Jesus and the biblical authors are saying to us in all this metaphorical sheep-and-shepherd stuff.

The problem is not with Jesus’ metaphor. The problem is with us urban, high-tech, sophisticated twenty-first century Christians that we are. When we encounter the rudiments of the Christian Faith in Holy Scripture, they are presented to us in agrarian metaphors that are simply foreign to us. So when we come into church on Good Shepherd Sunday, and Jesus goes to great pains to describe his relationship with us as that of a shepherd to his flock, most of us are completely lost. The only shepherds we have ever met have been characters in Sunday School pageants, and we are more likely to encounter sheep as a sweater or as an entree than as a bleating animal on a farm.

There is a rather quaint custom of referring to the clergyperson and congregation as shepherd and flock. Indeed, this is the meaning of the word “pastor” frequently applied to parish clergy – a term, by the way, that I don’t particularly care for. My professor of pastoral theology at Church Divinity School of the Pacific was Fr. Charles Taylor suggested that that metaphor has given rise to the practice of clergy treating the congregation as lower-rank animals for whom the shepherd has responsibility. He argued that we abandon the idea of referring to the priest as “pastor” or shepherd, and refer to him or her instead as a sheepdog. In one of his books, Charles wrote: “The sheepdog image reminds us that laity and clergy are animals on the same level, while maintaining the insight that they are different. It also points to the fact that both sheepdog and sheep are under the leadership of the same high being: The Shepherd.”

In his metaphor, Jesus describes not only himself, but the flock. In other words, we ought to pay attention to this Gospel lesson not only because of what it tells us about Jesus, but because of what it tells us about the church, about ourselves. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Jesus envisions a church characterized by unity.

As we Episcopalians look forward to our General Convention, we may well ask ourselves: How do we measure up? Canon Harold Lewis of the Diocese of Pittsburgh has observed:

In the Episcopal Church a generation ago, the most serious divisions we faced were between those described as the "low and lazy," the "broad and hazy," and the "high and crazy." The Morning Prayer crowd found those of a more sacramental bent a little extreme, perhaps. The Anglo-Catholics, on the other hand, believed the Evangelicals to be somehow deficient. But there was nonetheless a mutual respect. There was ample room in the fold for a variety of sheep for whom Jesus was the bishop and shepherd of their souls. But things have changed. Today, Christian sheep seem more intent on differentiating themselves from other Christian sheep than they are with following the same Shepherd. They create little folds here, and little folds there, each of which has its own "true" leaders, each believing that its interpretation of the Shepherd's voice is the authentic one. Words like "heretic" and "apostate" have been rescued from obscurity, and Christian sheep are hurling them at other Christian sheep with what we used to call gay abandon. The fold now seems to be divided between the so-called orthodox and unorthodox sheep; between traditionalist and revisionist sheep, even sheep accused of Biblical literalism and others labeled as secular humanists.

***

The flock (or combination of flocks) known as the Episcopal Church seems more scattered than usual. Sometimes its members seem to be milling about like sheep without a shepherd. The office of bishop, long the symbol of unity in the church, which St. Cyprian described as the glutinum, literally the glue which kept the church together, now often seems to be a symbol of disunity. Bishops are being barred from entering churches in their own dioceses, and in at least one case, a Bishop was refused the Body and Blood of Christ at the communion rail! Too often, clergy have forgotten what it means to be set apart, consecrated for service. The pulpit, in some instances, has become not so much a place from which the gospel is proclaimed, but a place from which the clergy see fit to regale the people of God with stories of their own personal struggles. Too often, our parishes have become places, not where people bring them "selves, and souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice," but a place where they bring instead them baggage of every kind, in an effort to work out their issues, sometimes at the expense of other members of the community.

I think Canon Lewis is right. Our part of the flock of Christ has been infiltrated by and is increasingly being torn apart by those who have agendas other than the spread of the Gospel. I think that what Canon Lewis is describing is what a modern metaphor might call “wolves in sheep’s clothing” or in some cases “wolves in sheepdog’s clothing.”

But wringing our hands and bemoaning division is not going to do any good. What we have to do is take responsibility and start acting like another kind of animal one finds in the sheepfold these days: Llamas.

As many of you know, I'm originally from Nevada. One of the big ranching activities in Nevada is sheep ranching. There are large flocks in Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Montana.... it's a mountain desert sort of activity. One of the biggest problems sheep ranchers have is coyotes; they kill sheep, especially lambs. There are a lot things you can do to keep coyotes from taking your lambs. You can use good sheep dogs, odor sprays, electric fences, and “scare-coyotes.” You can sleep with your lambs during the summer; you can corral them at night and herd them at day. Nonetheless, you'll lose scores of lambs – I know of one rancher who lost fifty in one year alone. But the sheep ranchers have discovered the llama – the aggressive, funny-looking, afraid-of-nothing llama...

Now sheep are stupid ... I don't know if llamas are dumber than sheep or smarter, but whichever, llamas don't appear to be afraid of anything. When they see something, they put their head up and walk straight toward it. Apparently llamas know the truth of what the writer of the Epistle of James writes: "Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you" (4:7). Their heads-up, check-in-out behavior is an aggressive stance as far as the coyote is concerned, and they won't have anything to do with that ... Coyotes are opportunists, and llamas take that opportunity away.

Those among us who stir up division are like those coyotes, opportunists looking for a chance to tear apart the flock. Often, there is a kernel of truth in what they have to say but, somehow, they have taken that bit of truth and twisted it, so that that little bit of truth becomes infected with a lie. This is the way the devil worked with Jesus. Think, for example, of his forty days in the desert. Every one of the devil’s temptations was based on a correct assertion. Jesus way of answering those temptations was to acknowledge the truth in what the devil said, but challenge the twist. “Yes, Satan, it's true that I could make stones into bread, but....” “Yes, Satan, it's true that God’s angels would protect me from death, but....” “Yes, Satan, it's true that I have been given dominion over the kingdoms of earth, but....”

That “yes, but...” attitude is the posture of the Llama. Their heads-up, check-it-out behavior is “yes, but....” behavior. That is how we can answer those who preach division, “Yes, part of what you say is true, but ....” The llama attitude follows the example of the Good Shepherd.

Let me end with the story of a young woman, a preacher's daughter, who was the pride of her little rural community. She was the first to go off to college, and it was to a prestigious Ivy League institution, at that. When she returned for Christmas vacation, her daddy asked her if she would read the Twenty-third Psalm during the service. She mounted the podium, and with all the erudition and elocution she could muster, she enunciated the familiar words. But the people were totally unmoved, and she could tell they were unimpressed. She felt so humiliated, she couldn't even finish and left the podium. Then an octogenarian woman who did not even have the benefit of an elementary education, mounted the podium, and she recited the psalm with such passion and fervor, that the people were moved to tears. When she finished, there was not a dry eye in the house. The young woman complained to her father how unfair it was that this uneducated old woman could have such a profound effect on the congregation, while she herself had done so poorly. Her father answered, “Yes, child, you may know the psalm, but Sister knew the Shepherd.”

“Yes, but....” The Llama knows and follows the Shepherd. Be a Llama! When someone tries to draw you into one of those conflicted, divisive situations, follow and emulate the Shepherd!

“Yes, but....”