Ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd
and Bishop of your souls
“All we like sheep have gone astray,” the sentence from Isaiah (53.6) for Morning Prayer on Good Friday reminds us (BCP, p. 1). “We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,” the General Confession bids us pray (BCP, p. 4 & 19). Such are the ways of our being “returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.” God “governs us as masters of ourselves,” Aquinas notes, but that presupposes a deep awareness on our part about human sinfulness. We can only be masters of ourselves through divine governance, the one who rules us as the Shepherd of our souls, the one who returns us to the radical truth of ourselves and of our humanity precisely because we have erred and strayed and are lost to ourselves.
Such is the significance of the Gospel of Christ as the Good Shepherd. We have a far too sentimental and emotional attachment to this concept, I fear, and often fail to recognise its radical meaning. Yet it is there before our eyes and speaks to the darkness and the dangers of our current world whether it is Covid-19 or the rampage of mindless madness in the mass shooting in Nova Scotia which we are suffering through with broken hearts. It speaks to the darkness of our hearts and minds.
We can’t possibly grasp its significance without realising how deeply embedded it is in the Christian understanding of the Resurrection, on the one hand, and in the transformation of images in the Hebrew Scriptures, on the other hand. The Second Sunday in Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. The image of Christ the Good Shepherd belongs inescapably to the doctrine of the Resurrection, to the fruit of the Passion of Christ, to the radical meaning of God’s love for our wounded and broken humanity, and so to our province of the broken-hearted.
Jesus identifies himself as the Good Shepherd. He tells us that the Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Such is sacrifice, such is love, God’s love for us. “Herein is love,” for God’s love for us is the ground of our love towards one another. But the background images from the Hebrew Scriptures are needed for a fuller understanding. Principal among those is the 23rd Psalm, the Shepherd’s Psalm. “The Lord shepherds me” or “the Lord is my Shepherd” or “the Lord rules me,” Dominus regit me, as the name of one of the familiar hymn tunes puts it. As Aquinas notes, “he who shepherds, rules.” The real rule and governance in our lives is Christ the Good Shepherd. It is one of the dominant images of Resurrection love.
We forget the connection between the Shepherd’s Psalm and the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd, Jesus says, “gives his life for the sheep.” “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” the Psalmist says. Why? Because “thou are with me.” God is with us in the journey through the depths and darkness of human sin and evil. It is nothing. He is everything. And that makes all the difference.
The second Hebrew Scripture that pertains to Christ the Good Shepherd is the revelation of God to Moses in the Burning Bush, “I Am Who I Am.” These are powerful words echoed by Christ in the various “I am” sayings in John’s Gospel. A clear and definite connection is being made between God’s “I am who I am” and Jesus’ saying “I am” and proceeding to establish a set of metaphors or images about what that means in relation to us. Here it means that God shepherds us, calls us back to himself, embraces, protects, and forgives us. We who were wandering and lost are returned and found in the embrace of the Good Shepherd.
Is something required of us? To be sure. Our openness and acceptance of this simple truth. We only live when we are returned to the principle and author of our lives. And it is always by way of the valley of the shadow of death; in short, by way of sacrifice for that is the way of love. Christ returns us to himself in his love for the Father but only through the Passion, only through the pageant of sorrow and sin, of death and destruction. God makes a way to him through the very things that belong to our waywardness, our sin, our folly, our death and destruction.
The Passion is the strong reminder to us of what human evil actually intends and seeks. Evil seeks the denial of the goodness of creation and of God himself. It is a very basic and fundamental contradiction. It depends upon the very thing which it denies. Yet the great good news is the realization that the Good is always and everywhere greater than the evil of our hearts. We are embraced in the love of Christ the Good Shepherd. We are returned to him out of the mess and disorder and chaos of our lives.
There is more than sentiment that belongs to this image. It is a strong testament to the essential goodness of God and his goodness towards us. Here is the care which strengthens us. Its comfort is what sets us in motion towards one another as embraced in the Shepherd’s love. When we forget or deny this truth then we are lost in the emptiness of ourselves out of which comes death and destruction.
Such images ground us in the truth of God’s creation. They recall us to who we are in the sight of God, his beloved. His life is given that it may live in us. How? By letting his life rule in us. Thus are we returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. We are returned to God.
What that means is more though not less than emotion and sentiment. One of the great literary and philosophical works was written behind closed doors, actually in prison. Awaiting execution on trumped-up charges of treason, Boethius in the 6th century wrote The Consolation of Philosophy. Buried and lost in grief and sorrow, Lady Philosophy appears to him. Like the Good Shepherd, she seeks to return him to his true self, banishing, like Job’s false comforters, the appeals to feeling that entrap us in ourselves. Instead, we might say, emotions are deepened into thought rather than keeping us imprisoned in ourselves. The 1980s movie, the Elephant Man, tells the moving story of Joseph Merrick, hideously deformed and treated as a freak and aberration, caged like an animal. From behind closed doors, he is heard reciting from memory Psalm 23. It is a testament to his essential humanity. It is about being returned to who we are in the sight of God in spite of sin and abuse.
We long and yearn for real connections with one another that cannot be accomplished through the veil of the digital which at best can only point us to what we seek and desire. The virtual tribute and media vigil on Friday evening for the victims of the mass shooting was moving in many ways yet simply pointed to the longing and desire of our souls to be returned to something more than our emotions and distress. Somehow it was even possible for matters of faith and religion to be allowed a voice. J.P. Cormier sang really about the Good Shepherd who calls us home. Some of the pastors in the communities of the afflicted were allowed to offer prayers. The mayor of Truro referenced the Scriptures in a remarkable way. All this was a far cry from the federal government forbidding the mentioning of the name of Jesus at the Swiss Air Flight 111 memorial in 1998.
The story of Christ the Good Shepherd belongs to the wisdom of the consolation literature, a whole tradition of philosophical reflection that draws us out of the prisons of ourselves and into the knowing love of God. We are returned to the God who governs us as masters of ourselves, the God who deepens our emotions into thought. Never more so than in times of deep sorrow and distress. Christ the Good Shepherd calls us to himself through the valley of the shadow of death. We are returned to the Shepherd of our souls.
Ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd
and Bishop of your souls
Fr. David Curry
Easter 2, 2020
Posted not preached owing to the Covid-19 outbreak