12-13-09 “The Shepherd’s Way Home”
Imagine one listening in that crowd around John the Baptist.
a shepherd.
Like Abel, Adam and Eve’s second born,
the first slaughtered,
by his firstborn farming brother.
His father trusts him,
that’s why he’s put in charge of the valuable flocks,
flocks that provide wool for homes and trade, clothing, milk, meat,
dung for fuel, hides for scrolls.
Little economic engines bleating all over the hills of Galilee.
Was he lured in by the urgency of John’s words,
the intensity of the crowd’s listening,
Had he ever been part of a group of people so transfixed in listening?
At first, perhaps the people appeared almost smug,
people in the know,
hearing what they expected.
“Children of Abraham,” calling out
“tell us a story, John, tell us what God will do for us.”
But the story John told came with a twist,
a love story, yes,
but barked back with a bite.
“Who do you think you are?
You think that because your ancestors followed the Good Shepherd
you can wander anywhere you want and call for room service?”
(My imaging works in Twenty first century vocabulary).
God doesn’t deliver on demand.
Why, If you disappeared,
God could raise a new flock right out of those rocks under your feet.” You tie your lives in knots
and yell at God for not untying them,
WHO –DO- YOU- THINK- YOU- ARE?”
John seemed to reach into their lives, to know their thoughts, their past,
to grab their every need in his fists.
His words reaching an impassioned edge,
straining against the limits of civil discourse,
but held in check by a rein of love.
“What then should we do?” murmured through the crowd,
“what should we do?”
John’s prophetic words tumbled over and through them,
Prophetic words, harvested from his people’s history,
The shepherd might have remembered that long age,
Moses,
who spent his exile as a shepherd,
used those skills to lead his people like a flock through the wilderness, traveling at the pace demanding by real sheep.
They couldn’t leave them behind.
they’d need them in a new home, in the new land.
He might have remembered
David,
The shepherd boy turned king
who forgot the needs of his flock
and had to be called back to accountability by God’s prophet, Nathan.
A shepherd’s responsibility is to protect the sheep,
not become a wolf among them.
David fell and fell hard
And yet, when he heard the word of the LORD,
What should I do LORD, what should I do,
remembered who he was, whose he was, and found his way home.
This shepherd, listening to John,
was taking quite a chance,
leaving his flock on their own while he followed the mesmerized crowd,
gripped by the hold John’s words had on his audience.
Those words carried an urgency
on which seemed to hang the balance of the world.
“What should we do? What then should we do?”
Looking at each other in confusion, looking at John for guidance,
This shepherd heard the people on all sides ask, “What should we do? “
John’s answer, “You know what to do. Take care of each other.
If one of you needs a coat and one of you has two coats, you know what to do. If one of you has food and others are hungry, you know what to do. Do everything in your power to take care of each other.
“Take care of each other as well as, or better than,
you steward your flocks, your business, your households.”
John’s eyes met each person in the crowd, one by one by one, each man, each woman. When he looked into the young shepherd’s eyes, it was as though his own brother was looking at him.
Did John say it out loud, or did his own mind supply the words,
When was the last time he talked, really talked to his brother,
in the way that lets each other know what your life is about,
what you really need?
And why had he hidden that extra loaf of bread last week
when the scroungey looking fellow ambled down the road,
looking hopefully his way?
The shepherd knew what it felt like to be hungry,
but he also knew he’d never starve. He was part of a family.
All he had to do, whether it was near or far, was go home.
He heard others begging John,
each voice more desperate for relief than the last.
He heard the tax collectors ask, “what should we do?”
Johns’ answer, “You know what you should do. Collect just what those folks really owe, their fair share, no more.”
He heard soldiers, soldiers (!) ask like little children, “What do we do? What should we do?”
John’s answer, “You know what to do. Don’t misuse your power on those you are to protect. Don’t coerce them.
Don’t extort money from them, for God’s sake!
Don’t accuse them of things you know they didn’t do,
just to make your job easier or entertaining.”
He watched the soldiers,
Roman soldiers,
Israeli Soldiers,
temple guards,
shake their heads as if coming out of a deep sleep,
look around at the everyday people all around them,
see the people’s faces as if for the first time.
Sheep go astray. They wander. They follow false trails.
When they realize they are lost, they call for their keeper.
When they hear his voice, then they know they are home.
“What should we do, what should we do?”
Should we follow you, John?
Their voices turned to expectation, to hope.
“No, not me, watch for the one who is coming after me.”
He seemed on the verge of adding, “idiots,”
but something, someone (?), who he stopped and listened to,
gentled him, like a sheep being coaxed into the fold.
Might this shepherd who we are imagining
have heard strange rumors when he was a child in Bethlehem,
the shepherds’ town, the little city of David.?
Strange rumors of shepherds, who’d seen angels,
and heard songs in the heavens, a cosmic symphony of praise.
Sheep go astray.
He was startled to remember his own flock, those in his own keeping.
What is a man?
So much of what we are is determined by the responsibilities we accept, the responsibilities put in our keeping.
We are given the power to lead and care for,
and we are given the power to choose who to follow,
who to be cared for by.
The Good Shepherd led him home to who he was, a keeper of flocks.
…led him home to who he was, kept in the heart of the Good Shepherd.
This is how we prepare, this is the Good News, John said,
and the shepherd heard that there is a way home.
With the multitudes that day, he went down to the river
and was baptized by John, turned around, washed clean, dunked down, and came up with a gasp of recognition. “God, you are my God,
I make my home in you,
I look for your redeemer’s coming to be my Shepherd”
And he went back to his flock, patting them and calling them, each of them, one by one, and went back into the hills. As he passed others in the human flock around him he saw others of the same household of God, going back to the work God gave them, but expecting that nothing would be the same.
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New Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary, “Sheep,” “Shepherd”
Anchor Bible Dictionary Volume 5, “Sheep, Shepherd,” Jack W. Vancil.
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