The Great Fifty Days of Easter presents an annual rhythm of scriptural passages sounded by the seven Sundays marking the Paschal Season.  Easter Sunday itself unfolds the central, saving mystery of faith – the ecstatic proclamation of the resurrected Christ.  Easter II remembers Blessed Thomas whose doubts have given him a bad name, although not by Jesus, mind you.  Thomas is our honest, honorable spokesperson who remains somewhat incredulous about Easter’s wondrous news, but is reassured in his tardiness by a very much in-the-flesh Jesus.  “His Lord and his God” shows Thomas those telling wounds which reveal Jesus’ identity.  Easter III reiterates that Jesus is neither a specter nor ghost, but a real albeit resurrected, wounded Savior who is hungry.  Disciples share their food with him and come to realize that in that simple act Jesus confirms his bodily resurrection from the dead.  Ghosts don’t eat.  We observe Easter IV this coming Sunday, thankful that Jesus is very much our Good Shepherd and we “…the sheep of his pasture,” echoing both Psalm 23 and Psalm 100. On Easter V Jesus presents another image for helping us understand what God in Christ has accomplished.  Jesus compares himself to a vine and we the branches, a frequent and familiar image like shepherds and flocks of sheep in scripture.  Throughout the season Jesus uses those images while talking to the shepherds, farmers, and fisherman who have become his disciples. Jesus’ AND the Church’s challenge is to find the language necessary to unfold this Good News for anyone anytime in need. On Easter VI Jesus focuses on the community of loving service God has fashioned, people connected like branches and attentive like a trusting flock to hear, follow, and embrace Jesus’ teaching. Finally, on Easter VII Jesus fervently prays that we remain ONE body sharing ONE faith in the ONE who has laid down his life in obedience and faithfulness so that we actually can be, act, and witness to that blessed ONENESS.  Anything and everything which corrodes that unity, which compromises our witness by our own shortcomings, bickering, suspicions, hatreds, prejudice, and trying to go it by ourselves […as if God in Christ doesn’t matter most of the week] is the source of chaos that we are invited to bring to the Confessional.  Those are hard things to confess, but the God of all mercy insists and demonstrates that we can confess these things and NOT be annihilated in the process. [Any actions or statements by the Church which do not reflect the unfathomable hospitality of God the Church itself must address in abject humility.] Instead of annihilation, God in Christ offers healing, relief, forgiveness, and the gifts necessary to invite others into God’s embrace of love.

            So, what are we to make of Sheep Sunday [Easter IV]?  Unfortunately, most of us don’t have all that much experience with sheep or vine tending.  Popular wisdom thinks sheep are either inordinately cute and cuddly, wooly lambs or inordinately dumb. Cute they are; dumb they’re not! Sheep are often maligned in otherwise well-meaning self-help literature when used to represent failure and temerity, the regrettable tendency to acquiesce to whatever “crowd / flock?” in which we find ourselves, unable or unwilling to “be our own person,” “stand on our own, two feet,” “use the minds God gave us,” and the like. In a culture that emphasizes independence at all costs, Walter Marks 1968 hit song I’ve Gotta Be Me presents a few troublesome lines:  Whether I’m right or whether I’m wrong / Whether I find a place in this world or never belong / I gotta be me. While Marks’ song really is a plea for becoming people of integrity with gifts and abilities to offer, it too often becomes just another song for those unwilling, unable, or unsure just how to invest in community, to be people in abiding, honorable relationships. 

Martyred theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers some helpful reflections on learning to become a person of integrity who is at the same time a trusted/trusting member of a supportive community of faith. In Life Together: Prayerbook of the Bible Bonhoeffer remarks: “Many persons seek community because they are afraid of loneliness.  Because they can no longer endure being alone, such people are driven to seek the company of others.  Christians, too, who cannot cope on their own, and who in their own lives have had some bad experiences, hope to experience help with this in the company of other people.  More often than not, they are disappointed.  They then blame the community for what is really their own fault.  The Christian community is not a spiritual sanatorium.  Those who take refuge in community while fleeing from themselves are misusing it to indulge in empty talk and distraction, no matter how spiritual this idle talk and distraction may appear.  In reality they are not seeking community at all, but only a thrill that will allow them to forget their isolation for a short time…    [Life Together, p. 81-82 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005)].”

By commending the image of a flock and shepherd, Jesus understood exactly what he presented to his disciples and followers.  Sheep are among some of the earliest animals to be domesticated [i.e., have become accustomed over time to dwell with humans], only dogs being domesticated long centuries before “shepherds watched their flocks by night…”  Sheep are hard-wired to live in close companionship, in theory reflecting the creation of humankind in Genesis 2:18.  In fact, sheep become quite tense and panicky when alone. Easily spooked by unexpected sounds, sheep can quickly lose their sense of place and security, prompting them to bolt.  It is no surprise that they are wary creatures, constantly on the watch for predatory threats.  Their constantly bobbing heads is merely a sheep’s way of keeping track of things.  Their eyes are positioned to make possible an unusually wide peripheral range of vision, often between 270 and 320 degrees.  In short, they don’t need eyes in the back of their heads; they can readily see possible threats coming from behind.  Observant creatures, they recognize and remember for a very long time the faces of many of the sheep they spend their time with, not to mention human faces, too. Familiar sounds and voices further connect them to others, including bleating lambs and their shepherd’s voice. They can accurately read emotional states from a glance at faces.  So, it is no wonder that Jesus remarks this Sunday: 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 [St. John 10:14-16].

It was my great privilege to have strolled into the path of a flock of sheep with their shepherd one foggy morning in the heather fields near Lüneburg, Germany.  It was a hushed, almost mystical glimpse into the biblical record itself.  The shepherd, in fact, trailed behind to encourage stragglers to rejoin the group, constantly watching [even my friends and me!] and cautioning us not to make loud noises nor sudden moves which might spook the flock. By nightfall the flock would return to its sheepfold, the shepherd blocking the entrance with his own bulky self.  He very much, like Jesus for us, placed himself between any threat and danger for the flock entrusted to him.

It is helpful to remember that Jesus’ comparisons are metaphors and similes; they are invoked to serve very specific purposes.  Jesus wants us to understand that we have been created to be people of community, but that never means we have been fashioned nameless automatons without personhood, unique gifts, nor integrity of our own.  God asks us this: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid… [Matthew 10:29-31a]. [If you are still unsure also read Matthew 6:28-33]. This is a helpful rule of thumb: God calls 1) each of us by name 2) into a loving, supporting community of faith where we are healed, forgiven our misunderstanding of the life God grants us, while gracing and restoring us to live life fully.  No wonder, then, that we can sing: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever [Psalm 23:6].