The Lord's Flock

A number of years ago, when I was still a seminarian, I helped teach first communion classes to the children of the local parish in Rome. One day, we were discussing the story of Noah and the ark, and the question arose, “If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?” The students had lots of creative answers. One said he would be an eagle so he could fly high in the sky. Another wanted to be a shark to explore the depths of the oceans. However, one student had the best answer. She proudly raised her hand and said, “I would be a lamb so that Jesus would be my Shepherd.”

That’s an adorable answer, but it’s probably not one many of us would think of. We tend to view sheep as not very intelligent; in fact, sometimes we insult people who are gullible by calling them “sheep” or “sheeple”. But the Scriptures often describe humanity as sheep, not so much because we aren’t very smart, but because God is a shepherd. The relationship of love, trust, and protection that exists between a shepherd and his sheep describes well the relationship God desires to have with us.

Today’s Gospel helps us understand this relationship even more. This passage comes from the tenth chapter of John, between two of Jesus’s great miracles, both of which we heard several weeks ago during the Lenten season. After he has healed the man born blind, but before he raises Lazarus from the dead, Jesus enters a discussion with the Pharisees about who he is and what he is doing. The Pharisees cannot understand how he has the authority to perform such signs; they thought they were the ones specially entrusted by God to care for the people and show them how to be holy. Since Jesus isn’t part of their group, they criticize and reject him.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus uses two metaphors to explain to them how he is the fulfillment of the relationship between God and humanity. He is the true shepherd, and he is the gate by which the sheep pass into safety. These two images might at first seem confusing, so perhaps a little background is helpful. In first century Palestine, sheep were pastured on the hills surrounding the towns. At night, to protect them from predators and thieves, the various shepherds would gather their flocks together into one sheepfold for safety. The sheepfold had walls to keep intruders out — the only way in or out was through the gate. Since the sheep were too valuable to leave alone, one of the shepherds would himself serve as the gate, sitting or sleeping across the entrance so that no one came in or out without him knowing. In the morning, when daylight returned, the shepherds would return and the gatekeeper would let them in to call their own sheep back out to pasture. The sheep would not follow any shepherd; rather, they would only follow the one whose voice they recognized.

Sina van Houten, Shepherd with His Sheep in a Landscape (c. 1900)

We can see then why these two images are helpful in understanding just who Jesus is. We are born into the world scattered and separated; as St. Peter says in today’s second reading, like sheep we had gone astray. However, in Jesus, we enter to become part of the Lord’s flock. In the early Church, Christians often spoke of the “gate of Jesus” or the “door of Jesus” as a symbolic way of speaking about our participation in the Easter mystery: the Lord’s suffering, death, and resurrection. In the sacraments, especially in baptism, we undergo a change — we pass through from one reality to another. We enter into the Lord’s sheepfold, the Church, and recognize that we have been given a special status and identity as part of the flock of the Lord. This means though that we have to live differently, as well; we have to turn away from sinfulness and error and undergo conversion, so that we live in the light of God’s truth. In a sense, we exist in the world differently than everyone else; we are not distracted by the voice of false shepherds who would lead us astray ­– whether that is those who would do us spiritual harm or the temptations of this world that promise us a fleeting happiness and false security. Instead, as the Lord’s flock, we listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd and we follow him alone into the pastures of eternal life.

Perhaps the challenging time of the coronavirus gives us an opportunity to reflect upon where we fit in this Gospel passage. Are we safely within the sheepfold of the Lord? Or have we gone astray? At times, we can all get caught up in the trappings of this world and the temptation to look for safety and security here. But a pandemic reminds us that the things of this world really are fleeting and unreliable; possessions, reputation, even health and well-being do not ultimately bring us lasting peace. There is only One who can provide true safety and security, the One who has passed through death into eternal life. To claim our place in the Lord’s flock, however, we have to be willing to pass through his gate – and that means dying to the things of this world, to all that it holds out in offering to us. We have to rediscover our need for relationship with the Lord, and to embrace, in a spirit of conversion, our new identity of being part of the Lord’s flock, of listening for his voice alone.

Friends, it may be that it is only after this pandemic ends that we will see how well we have learned to depend upon the Lord in a new way. Let’s not be like the Pharisees, stuck in pride or hardheartedness, but find the humility and self-awareness like that student of mine who wanted to be a sheep so that Jesus could be her Shepherd. It may be that he will do so by asking us to embrace difficulty – even perhaps great sorrow and suffering – but we need not be afraid, for we will be walking more closely with the Good Shepherd. May this pandemic, as terrible as it is, help all of us to rediscover our true safety and security in being part of the flock of the Lord and in listening for his voice alone.