One Flock, One Shepherd
“One Flock, One Shepherd”
Psalm 23 John 10:11-18
Fourth Sunday after Easter, Year B, April 25, 2021
First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho
Andy Kennaly, Pastor
When I was a kid my family visited Bigfork, Montana and we stayed at the rural home of some friends who used to live next door to us back in Spokane, Washington. They raised rabbits, those cute fuzzy white ones. They had lots of rabbits, and they raised them for their meat. I remember having seconds and thirds as we ate what I thought at first was fried chicken. Nope. Rabbit. Prepared in a big meal to celebrate.
That trip was in July over my parent’s thirteeth wedding anniversary. Our friends gave them a gift to bring home. Yep, a little white bunny rabbit, a baby one. I became the chief caretaker of this rabbit and for years gave it food and water, kept his area clean, and put him in and out of his cage to keep him safe. We gave him a name: Lucky! His full name was Lucky Number 13. He was spared from becoming dinner in Montana and lived a long life at our house. He was lucky.
The number 13 tends to get a bad wrap. If you’re superstitious, it won’t surprise you to learn than many sky scrapers don’t have floor number 13 in their listing on the elevator. You can go to the twelfth floor, or the fourteenth, but there is no thirteenth floor listed. It also wouldn’t surprise you if something bad happened on Friday the 13th. Something about that number!
People spend lots of time to play with the number 13. In biblical imagery, for example, many consider Judas a thirteenth disciple. He’s the one who led the religious leaders to Jesus in order to arrest him after the Lord’s Supper. 13, then, is associated with causing pain and suffering. If you do an internet search on the use of number 13 in the Bible, there are many references to negative things. Basically, number 13 points to rebellion against God, lawlessness by misplaced devotion, and suffering brought on by straying away from focus on God, life, and wholeness. Rather than let go and let God, people try and replace God, and put their own desires as the focus.
By comparison, the number 12 is a really balanced number. More than a Seattle Seahawks fan base, the number twelve also has Bibical roots and symbolizes completeness, the perfection of authority, the wholeness intended by good governement, especially in the church, and it represents heaven. The number 12 seems balanced, and while 13 may come across as jarring and unpredictable, 12 is smooth, solid, and dependable.
As we look at the 23rd Psalm, aspects of numbers 13 and 12 are woven in. Not only is this Psalm packed with metaphors, symbols, and meanings larger than the words themselves, but there’s a constant back and forth, an interplay between me, myself, and I, and the LORD, He, and You. The psalmist, the one writing this, is the me, myself, and I. The Psalmist talks about God and to God. God is the one referenced as LORD, He, and You. As God Almighty is the shepherd, the psalmist takes a more sheepish role. The major action is done by God on behalf of the psalmist, to bring benefit. But what we notice is that me, myself, and I are mentioned 13 times; words that point to God, add up to 12.
Something about God in the life of the psalmist makes a big difference. Because the LORD is the shepherd, “I shall not want.” It’s the LORD who guides, leads, provides, protects, and comforts. Without the LORD involved as the shepherd, the psalmist would have want, would wander, put themselves in danger, even unknowingly, and become depleted. There would be fear, enmity, and lack of purpose. But because God is the shepherd, the psalmist is transformed and their life becomes a source of goodness and mercy, and a reflection of hospitality and welcome. The confidence of the Psalmist comes from God as a gift.
Psalm 23 has embedded in that structure of 13 and 12 a classic illustration of the “false self/True self” dynamic. This is language crafted by Thomas Merton, an American Trappist Monk who lived in Kentucky until his tragic death in 1968. Most people are asleep, and unconsciously allow their false self to define their life. Even their interpretations of God and experience of faith is filtered through the false self. Living with the focus on me, myself, and I, life has a whole different flavor to it than if, instead, we die to ourselves. To set our false self aside, we can awaken to our True Self, and invite God to reveal our God-given, Godly nature. This divine, True Self can live in and through us, and ordinary life, even in its ordinariness, is transformed.
Jesus talks about this transformation, of the need to die to the false self so the True Self can emerge. He talks about this, and embodies this, as “the good shepherd.” Twice he says, “I am the good shepherd.” In biblical narrative, if something is mentioned twice its a call to pay attention. With hints of the Garden of Gethsemane as Jesus anticipates his death by crucifixion, and prays, “Lord, let this cup pass from me. But not my will, but Thy will,” so too this passage, both references to the “good shepherd” are followed up by what make the shepherd good: “the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
Jesus shows us this dynamic: die to ourselves, rise in Christ, give yourself in love for others. In this giving, there is connection, relationship, and dedication. The second, “I am the good shepherd” points this out as Jesus declares, “I know my own and my own know me.” Not only is this knowing between master and disciple, between leader and follower, but there’s a relational intimacy to it, an unconditional aspect reflected in his “just as” comment. Jesus knows his own and his own know him, “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” This is Incarnation language, God inside of us, a deep knowing, an inner, soul-quality as we rendevous with the living Presence of Christ not only found in some distant heaven, but that heaven, that meeting of God, that union of our True Self in Christ is in our own heart. Heaven in an inside job; that’s the kind of “knowing” Jesus is talking about: not a cognitive concept, but an experiential reality as basic and essential as breathing.
Wolves also get a bad wrap in Western culture. They are highly social creatures and play a very important part in the ecosystem, yet people tend to demonize them and write them off as a nusance at best and dangerous at worst. Sheep make easy prey, they are docile targets for a hunter like a wolf. In this passage, the wolf snatches the sheep and scatters them. But it only does this after the hired hand runs away. That’s the main point. The wolf is not the focus, it’s the running away from the hired hand that illustrates the lack of relationship, the broken connection, the fear, the self-referential living like the Psalmist if only 13 was in play without the 12 to keep it balanced. Jesus mentions in passing that the shepherd owns the sheep and won’t run away. A shepherd is there when the sheep is born. The shepherd helps the sheep grow up. The shepherd benefits from the wool and helps the sheep live a long, lucky life. The shepherd does know the sheep, each one. Ownership is different than renting. There’s a commitent of care, a sacrificial giving in putting the other first. This is more than transactional, and ownership in an economic sense isn’t the point. Connection in a relational sense, of “knowing” the other not as an object, but as a subject; this is unity in action.
One flock, one shepherd. All the sheep will listen to the voice. As Jesus talks about bringing folds together, here’s now a third reference to his laying down his life in order to take it up again. Jesus dies, his human false self is set aside. Christ is Risen, the True Self, Christ-centered Self is revealed. This is God the Father’s call for the ministry of Jesus: be the good shepherd.
If you want to practice dying to yourself, prayer is a great way to start. Prayer is also an ongoing discipline, and changes form over time. Centering Prayer, for example, is a method of sitting in silence in order to focus on God’s Presence. In the stillness, one turns in their heart to notice God. But human brains are conditioned to constantly think. Thoughts move along like river flows to the ocean, and it’s easy to get swept away on a wave train of thinking. Centering prayer is made for this. God knows that we think, and thoughts interrupt our silence and stillness. One of the points of Centering Prayer is to raise the art of awareness, to teach mindfulness, to become awake to our constant narratives and assumptions.
In Centering Prayer, for example, sitting quietly for ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the evening, we consent to God. We set aside our personal agendas, our self-importance, and our pride, and we give God permission. We consent to God’s will, God’s purpose, God’s presence, God’s action and activity in our lives. As thoughts come, which they will; as thoughts intrude, as they do; as our minds grasp for control, we come alongside Jesus in learning the art of letting go. We let those thoughts drift down the river as we set ourselves on the rocky bottom of that stream and allow the waters to wash over us. We die and rise with Christ.
There are techniques that help us, prayer words that call us back when we find ourselves wandering. We are invited, again and again, to give our attention to God. This simple practice to sit in silence is powerful beyond words and has more affect than would appear on the surface. Spiritual disciplines, like Centering Prayer, help reprogram our operating system, help take the focus off number 13 and invites 12 to keep us balanced. The extra number, the 1, shifts, moves from a rebelious desire for separation and superiority to a humbled, unified, and tranformed relationship of love. The one emerges; that all are one is revealed.
As we celebrate the good shepherd and the blessings of contemplating Christ, may our lives, like the Psalmist, be rooted in God. This is the source. This is goodness and mercy. This is our life. God is with us, all the days of our life, and even forevermore. Thanks be to God for the humble, vulnerable love that knows us, in Christ, and invites us to follow our shepherd, Jesus the Lord. Amen.