Clueless, but Listening
Sheep, I am told, are the dumbest animals in the barnyard. To be called a sheep is not a compliment. Sheep are basically slow-moving, slow-thinking, smelly, grass-eating mammals which, if left to their own devices, are totally unable to fend for themselves and, if not penned up, apt to get utterly lost… unable to find their own way back home… back to the sheepfold. They are clueless. Yet this is the analogy that Jesus himself uses to describe the children of Israel and those he has come to save. We are the sheep. And as I look at my own life, I realize that Jesus had a point. When left to my own devices, I seem to do a good job driving off the road and into a ditch… from which I then need to be rescued.
The second part of this analogy…as discouraging as it may sound…is that I am surrounded by other sheep… sheep who are as clueless as I am… sheep who are as likely to drive off the road and into a ditch as I am. There is a quote… variously attributed to either Mother Theresa or the U.S. Marine Corps… depending upon which website you find it, that goes something like this: “We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.” I remember using that quote when I worked in the nonprofit arena in Chicago many years ago. But… if you think about it… that quote can also be used to describe much of what we do in the church. The part of the quote that I mostly ignored in my younger days… but that scares me the most today… is the phrase, “We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing.” We are sheep. Even we who are leaders are sheep. We are clueless… as clueless as the rest of the sheep. How can we lead?
The answer is that we lead by following. Christianity is nothing if not counterintuitive. We lead by following… by following our Shepherd. He is the one who leads… and we follow. How? In the gospel of John… a few verses before today’s text… the Bible tells us that “the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” In our text, it says, “I know my own and my own know me.” There is an intimate relationship between shepherd and sheep. Exactly how intimate? Our text tells us that “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” How intimate a relationship can that be?
We don’t spend a lot of time talking about the three persons of the Trinity… Father, Son and Holy Spirit… in the Presbyterian Church. In particular, we do not spend a lot of time talking about the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity. In fact, the Eastern Orthodox Church has a much more highly developed concept of the Trinity than the Western church does. Much of their early church literature talks about the relationship between the persons of the Trinity… Father, Son and Holy Spirit… highlighting the mysterious intimacy of that relationship. The Greek word that describes that relationship… perichoresis… has been variously translated “intimate union”…“mutual indwelling”… or “mutual interpenetration” of the three persons of the Trinity with each other. It is a knowledge… a type of knowing … that is so deep and so total that the three become one. It is a union of such perfection that the mystics and contemplatives of the early church dedicated their lives seeking it. How can we… the dumb sheep of God’s barnyard… expect to find it?
Fortunately, Jesus tells us the answer… “I know my own and my own know me.” It all comes back to knowing Jesus and being known by him. You see, our role is not to be the shepherd, but to be the sheep… to follow the Good Shepherd and, by following, lead others to follow him. There is only one Shepherd and that is Jesus Christ. We are the sheep ... dumb, slow moving, slow thinking, clueless sheep. We are not the Shepherd. We are sheep… and our role is to follow the Shepherd… and listen to his voice.
Our scripture passage for today says that the sheep “will listen to my voice.” A tourist in the Middle East tells the story of stopping to rest near a village well. Three or four shepherds came down to the well with their flocks. As the sheep drank the water from the well, the flocks mingled together and the tourist wondered how each shepherd would get his own sheep again. But, when the sheep were finished drinking, each shepherd walked to different parts of the hillside, calling out his particular call. The sheep followed their own shepherd… recognizing his voice… his call. That is what keeps us from getting lost in the bewildering maze of sheep and shepherds in this world. We know the voice of our Shepherd. We listen to our Shepherd. We follow by listening to his voice… for we recognize his call and we follow where he leads.
Now there are some other things in this passage that I have skipped over, but I want to go back to now. First, take a look at verse 16. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also.” What does that mean? We have already concluded that we are the sheep in God’s barnyard… the slow moving, slow thinking, wayward, clueless sheep of God’s flock. Jesus Christ is our Shepherd, whom we follow, to whose voice we listen. But there are other sheep, he says… sheep who do not belong to this fold. Who are these sheep that do not belong to the children of Israel’s fold?
In Jesus’ time, he was, perhaps, referring to those children of Israel who no longer worshipped at the Temple in Jerusalem. After all, in Matthew 15, he tells the Canaanite woman, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." And, in Luke 15, he says, "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” The Prophet Ezekiel tells us that God says, “I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land… They shall know that I the Lord their God am with them and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, says the Lord. You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God.” These were Jews who were lost… who no longer were part of Israel’s fold… Jews who were no longer faithful to God.
If we put this in the present time and look at the church today, who would these sheep of other folds be? Many of the commentators writing on this passage believe that Jesus was referring to the Gentiles. After all, Jews were Jews. The Israelites were always the children of God, whether or not they were completely faithful to the Scriptures. In the Old Testament there are many references to the unfaithfulness of the children of God, but they were never disowned or disinherited by God for their unfaithfulness. Punished, yes… but not abandoned. So, maybe these sheep, the sheep that are not in this fold, are not Jews… maybe they are those that are not called the children of Israel… the Gentiles. When you read our passage from John, you will see that, whenever Jesus talks about laying down his life, he refers to “the sheep,” not to “his sheep” or “my sheep,” as the writer of Ezekiel did. All of the sheep belong to God… regardless of where they are now. Notice, too, that when Jesus speaks of the other sheep, he tells us that they will all be one flock… with one shepherd… Jesus Christ… but he never says that they will be of one fold. Thus, when the Good Shepherd goes looking for the sheep, it is not just the children of Israel for whom he seeks. And when the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, it is not just the sheep of the house of Israel for whom he lays down his life, but all the sheep.
If we put this in the present time and look at the church today, who would these lost sheep be? These sheep may belong to other nations… other races… or ethnic groups… or other denominations. USA Today reports that a January 2003 poll shows that fifty percent (50%) of those who responded to the poll claimed to be religious. Another thirty-three percent (33%) claimed to be spiritual, but not religious. Only ten percent (10%) of those who responded claimed to be neither religious nor spiritual. A whopping eighty-one percent (81%) of Americans claim a religion, even though only around thirty percent (30%) attend a worship service on any given Sunday. Even those who do not claim any religion say that they believe in God. God, for them, is found in nature or in the day-to-day experiences of life. The point is that very few people claim to be atheists… not believing in any God at all.
So, who are the sheep from other folds that the Good Shepherd must also lead? Are they people of other nations… other races… other ethnic groups? Are they those that claim a religion, but do not attend a worship service each week? Or are they those who claim to be spiritual… but not religious… and are not affiliated with any religion? Or are we the other sheep… the wayward children of God who have wandered from the fold… and need to listen to the voice of our Savior… and be recalled each week… each day… into the loving arms of God?
Fortunately, on most multiple-choice tests, there is an answer that reads “All of the above.” For I believe we are all the lost sheep… stupid, stinking, wayward, and clueless, but listening for the voice of the Good Shepherd… whether we know we are listening or not. Whether we have strayed from the Presbyterian… Lutheran… Methodist… Roman Catholic… or Episcopal fold, we have… from time to time…stopped listening to our Savior voice and gotten lost on the road. And that is true, whether we are Christian today or not… whether we have been raised in the church or not.
“I know my own and my own know me.” “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock… one Shepherd.” We are not the Shepherd, we are the sheep. There are other sheep all around us… sheep that belong to other folds. As we reach out to the other sheep around us, we will find many who are listening to the voice of the Good Shepherd… but we all belong to one flock. If we are in Christ, as Christ is us… as the Son is in the Father… and, if we know Christ, as Christ knows us… and the Son knows the Father… we will follow his voice and, in this way, follow in his path, leading other sheep to him… celebrating our oneness in him.
But, there is a word of warning that I must pass on to you. This is a messy business. Do not be surprised if the slow-moving, slow-thinking, wayward and clueless sheep that follow you into the fold are not perfect in their quest to follow their Good Shepherd. They are sheep… as we are sheep. They are clueless… as we are clueless. They have no idea where they are going or what they are doing, but they are trying to follow their shepherd. That is the way of sheep. The more closely we listen, the better followers we will be… and the better we will be at leading other sheep to the Good Shepherd. Amen.
John 10:11-18; Psalm 23