Being a sheep

Okay, who wants to be a sheep when they grow up?  Certainly, this was never my ambition. When I was boy, if we played a game as to which animal you could be, I’d go for the top – make me the lion, king of the beasts.   Growing up in the fifties and sixties, our image of success was the “leader of the pack.”  In the seventies and eighties, we really set our sights high – we were going to be masters of the universe.  Can’t go much higher than that, eh?

Well you can.  You can be a sheep.  Not just any sheep, but Jesus’ sheep.  In John 10, Jesus says that he is the Good Shepherd.  My first thought is of the parable of the lost sheep, where Jesus goes out and finds the one sheep that has wandered away from the other 99.  It’s a nice parable God seeking out every last wandering soul, and, as a wandering soul myself, it is quite consoling.  But it is not Jesus means in John 10.

When Jesus makes this claim, he says,  “I am the Good Shepherd.  The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” (Jn 10:11)  Jesus contrasts his shepherding with that of hired shepherds who merely flee when danger approaches and leave the sheep to the wolves, the bandits, or whoever.  In contrast, Jesus lays down his life for his sheep.

Jesus offers the ultimate security – by laying down his life, he wins eternal life for his sheep.  And nobody, not the lion, not the leader of the pack, not even those who seek to master the universe can take that eternal life away.  For Jesus knows his sheep and his sheep know him.  They hear his voice and follow him to where only he can lead.

In Jesus’ day, the entire town’s sheep may have been kept in a common enclosure during the night.  They didn’t use branding to tell the sheep apart, and, as you might imagine, one sheep tends to look pretty much like any other.  To separate the sheep in the morning, each shepherd would simply call out to their sheep.  The sheep knew to follow that one voice and no other.

Our problem is that the world is filled with many voices and only one of them is Jesus.  Many try to sound like Jesus so that we follow them.  How do we tell if we are following Jesus into the eternal life that he won for us?

Everyone here in church today already knows one answer to this problem – we arrange our lives to spend time with Jesus in prayer, to join with others at the wonderful prayer of praise and thanksgiving called the Mass, to make Jesus a part of us by participating in the Eucharist.  To keep the world’s voices from distracting us, we may devote some of our time to reading the Bible, studying the lives of the saints, doing other spiritual reading.

We also see in today’s reading from Revelation that when Jesus laid down his life, he was, in essence, the sacrificial lamb, dying that we might be saved.  Ironically, he becomes the Good Shepherd by dying as a lamb. 

Following Jesus’ call, as the sheep follow the call of their shepherd – literally living our vocation – from the Latin, vocare, to call – entails this same sacrificial love.  For example, when we live our vocation as married persons, we lay down our single lives to join with the other as one.  As we live our vocation as parents, we figuratively lay down our lives to raise our children.  And while we would hope this never happens, what loving parent would not literally lay down their own life, as Jesus did for us, if that would save their child. 

Jesus is calling each one of us to our own particular vocation.  When we choose to ignore the call of the Good Shepherd, preferring instead to follow our own voice and our own desires, to be our own shepherd, we will certainly lose our way and fall prey to the wolves of pride and the bandits of fear.

Following his call, living the vocation he has called us to live, we rest easy and secure in the knowledge that we live not because of who we are, but because of whose we are – the Good Shepherd’s, the one who died that we might live, the one whose voice we heed and follow.

His sheep we are, His sheep we’ll be, forever and ever, Amen.    Alleluia.