John 10 vs 3 ‘He calls his own sheep by name.’
Can you imagine being a sheep?This is, perhaps,more difficult for men because not only is it an interspecies imagining, it is an intergender one as well. Rams are notoriously anti social so, for our purposes, you are a ewe.
And you are out on a fell, or in a nicely hedged meadow, or, God forbid, being asked to browse on stinky brussel sprout stalks. And, here we draw obvious parallels with Spring 2020, you are prone to a multitude of nasty diseases. You’re not too fond of ravens either or dog walkers’ dogs.
Yet you have a guardian who calls you by your name. And loves you. At lambing time your guardian and protector will stay up all night, every night, to ensure the safety of everyone in your flock. And will tend your children as of they were their own.
When you eat sweet grass no wolf will harm you; when you are becalmed in the snow, hungry and weighed down, you will be fed and sheltered. Annoying flies will be kept at bay and, most of all, you will know who you belong to. You are marked with their sign.
We humans see ourselves as shepherds, and sometimes we are. And sometimes we are more of a liability to a world in our care than a defence.
Yet in God’s eyes we are sheep. It is the most extraordinary thing that Jesus calls you, me, and the couple next door by name. In God’s eyes you are an individual, but an individual in a flock. You do not need to earn God’s attention, you cannot, by purity of breeding, command more, and you cannot be so riddled with disease that you are written off.
What value, though, is there in being called if you don’t hear. Jesus, in our Gospel, talks about sheep ignoring the voice of strangers. If only human beings had the sense of a sheep. If only we could understand the mortal danger of not being able to distinguish the voice of the shepherd from the voices of those who would take us down paths of their own devising.
In our life of the spirit there are many thieves and bandits but only one shepherd. In these times we have plenty of reasons to be fearful yet we are handed one gift-that of quietness as the normal world is cancelled. In the quiet, perhaps, we can grasp an opportunity. We can hear a gentle shepherd’s voice calling us by our name.
Then, surely, God’s goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life.
Amen