How to Be a Good Sheep - Psalm 23
They say you shouldn’t have favorites, but I had one. Her name was Oreo. As you might expect, she was black and white. Small for her kind, Oreo always had the sweet smell of grass and lanolin. And despite her size, Oreo gave birth to a set of twins most springs that she raised with the utmost care through the summer. Oreo was, in every regard, a good sheep.
As many of you know, shortly after college I worked on a sheep farm, caring for up to a hundred sheep at a time. While this farm sold lamb meat, it mostly sold lambs—stock for other farms around the county. Though I had no expectation at the time that I’d find my way to pastoral ministry, I do have to say it was a good experience for my work now. The bible was written by a shepherding culture, people who knew the nature of sheep, and far from looking down on them, the people of the bible often referred to themselves as sheep. They were the first animals to be domesticated, after all, because like dogs, we share a lot in common with them.
On the fourth Sunday of each Easter, we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday. We call it this because it is today that we remember that Jesus is our Shepherd. On this Sunday, every year, we read Psalm 23, one of the greatest poems ever written, and we hear a selection from John’s Gospel about how Jesus is our shepherd.
Jesus certainly is a good shepherd, but thinking about Oreo, and the response we are called to offer to the “Lord Our Shepherd,” I would like to explore with you this morning our side of the work. How do we become good sheep? This is an especially important question to answer since we are baptizing Teddy this morning. In baptism, Teddy will become another member of the Good Shepherd’s flock. What we are all about to commit to in our work and prayers is to help Teddy also become a good sheep. So, to help in that formation, we need to know what makes one.
My relationship with Oreo began the first lambing season I spent on the farm. As I mentioned, Oreo was a small ewe who always had twins. From a farmer’s perspective, twins are wonderful because you have two new animals to sell at the end of the season. But though Oreo never had trouble in her deliveries, she did get a little top heavy toward the end of her term. This meant that on the sloped pastures of the farm, she had a tendency to fall over.
When sheep fall over, especially while pregnant, they have a hard time righting themselves. If left long enough, they could die. So, it was part of my work during the lambing season to check for upside down sheep and flip them right-side up again. I did this on the regular with Oreo and each time she responded to my approach with a deep trust and surrender. While other sheep would act half wild, writhing and kicking, Oreo would calmly lay there and let me flip her over. Once right she’d take a moment, shake herself, and then run to catch up with the flock.
Being a good sheep begins with trust. In Psalm 23, it is trust that lies in the background of those famous opening lines, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.” The sheep can live without fear of lack because the sheep trust the goodness, skill, and power of the shepherd.
Trust is, in the biblical sense, just another word for faith. We so often get wrong what faith is. Faith is not about what we believe in the sense of facts in our head. Instead, faith is about actively trusting that God is good, that God cares for us, and that God has the power and skill and love to see to our good in the end.
In addition to trust, there is another thing that Oreo had and many other sheep did not. Whenever I would check on the flock, many of the sheep would run if I approached them closely. They were glad to come take some alfalfa hay from me, but they did not entirely trust me if I moved too close. But not Oreo. She would let me walk up to her anytime and give her a scratch behind the ears. She would also let me come up to her lambs and pick them up. She enjoyed being in my presence, knowing that I had her best interest in mind, and she acted accordingly.
It should be same for us with God. Many of us trust in some large and vague way, but we are not comfortable with getting close to our Good Shepherd. We are uncomfortable with prayer, with continual conversation with God. There is a fear in us of surrendering ourselves to God. But it is only when we let go of all of our defenses in full surrender that we can truly and fully enjoy life with the Good Shepherd.
To be a good sheep also means sticking close to the flock. Sheep are herd animals; they are protected by being together. And not only that, they work as a group to find their way to the best grass or the freshest water. When sheep are together, they can be easily tended and led by the shepherd.
When I kept sheep, however, there were always a few who had a tendency to wander away from the flock. In the fall, when the persimmons were ripe, some ewes that would leave the flock to feed on their sweetness. Unfortunately, these ewes didn’t last long.
We too are made for community. It is in community that we find our fullness and flourishing, however hard that may be at times. And as Jesus offers in our gospel, the best community is formed not just as a mass of the like minded, but as those gathered around the call of the shepherd. We come together because we all have heard the call and know our shepherd’s voice.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said that community for community’s sake is a dangerous thing. But community built around a common call toward God is a powerful and beautiful reality. To be a good sheep, we should seek first the call of our shepherd, but when we do that, we will find that we are with all those other sheep who are also answering that call. It is only there that we will find safety, and fullness, and flourishing. God gathers flocks, not just individuals. Staying with the flock is the best path toward our flourishing.
Today, we are reminded of a key fact of our faith. God is our Good Shepherd, and he comes to us in Jesus, the one who gathers us into the fold of his loving care. This is comforting knowledge, a grace we can simply accept, but in that acceptance, we also have the opportunity for a response. We can answer the call of the Good Shepherd by becoming good sheep. We become good sheep not in any simple, moralistic way, but by being among those who seek to be close to God, delighting in Him, cooperating with His grace, gathering with those who he gathers to His call. It doesn’t require any certifications and advanced training. All it takes is a willingness to let God roll us over and set us right again when we fall, and not to run away when God comes close to us in care. When we do that, then we will be able lie down in green pastures beside still waters in a life filled with nourishing grace. Amen.