Do We Need Sheepdogs?

 This is the text of a sermon I gave on November 26, 2023, at Northshore United Church of Christ in Woodinville, Washington.

Do We Need Sheep Dogs?

Scripture: Ezekiel 34:11-15.

 

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer.

Let me ask you something. How many of you, at some point in your life, memorized the twenty-third psalm? Many church people have, probably as a Sunday school exercise. I’m sure we all know how it begins: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures….” Now, if the Lord is our shepherd, what does that make us? In this metaphor, aren’t we are the sheep? We are the ones the shepherd leads. Lots of Bible passages use this image of God as the shepherd and the people as the sheep. Psalm 100 calls us the sheep of God’s pasture. Psalm 95 says “For he is our God, and we are the sheep of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.” In the lectionary reading for this morning from Matthew that I didn’t use Jesus separates the sheep from the goats, with the sheep being the good guys. In the Gospel of John Jesus calls himself the good shepherd. There’s lots of biblical references to God, or Jesus, as a shepherd.

Then there’s passage we heard this morning from Ezekiel. In a way I want to apologize for inflicting Ezekiel on you. I say “inflicting” because Ezekiel is by far the worst writer in the Bible. His prose is stiff and horribly repetitive. About the only part of Ezekiel most people know is the story of the dry bones coming back to life. That story may be the only part of Ezekiel that’s worth knowing. But there’s also the passage we just heard. It has God say God will seek out God’s scattered sheep and return them to Israel. It says God will feed these sheep with good pasture. It says God will be the people’s shepherd. Even though it’s in Ezekiel, who is usually far from clear, this passage clearly uses the common biblical image of God as shepherd and the people as God’s sheep. I once gave a sermon with the title “Baa!” but I’m not going to do that this morning. Instead, I want to work with this metaphor of God as shepherd and us as sheep.

Now, I’m no shepherd, though I once had a college roommate who grew up on a sheep ranch in central Oregon. I have, however, seen images of herds of sheep being shepherded. In these images there is a shepherd, a person who is in charge of a flock of sheep. In these images, however, the shepherd isn’t usually herding the sheep alone. They have help in the form of sheep dogs. The shepherd has trained the sheep dogs to herd sheep, and the dogs get the sheep to stay together and to go where the shepherd wants them to go. The dogs, in effect, act as mediators between the shepherd and the sheep. Perhaps the shepherd could herd the sheep without the dogs, but using trained sheep dogs sure makes the shepherd’s job easier.

Now I want to ask you another question: Do we need sheep dogs? Not for literal sheep. For us. Do we need some kind of mediator between God and us, someone trained in getting us to go where God wants us to go? Different parts of the Christian tradition answer that question differently. The Roman Catholic Church says yes. Absolutely. The people need sheep dogs, and we, the church, are the sheep dogs. We know where God wants the people to go, and God has charged us with the task of getting them to go there. We tolerate a wide variety of opinions within the Church, but we set the limits beyond which people cannot go and still be Catholic. In the Catholic Church, the priest is indeed a mediator between the people and God much like a sheep dog is a mediator between a shepherd and the sheep.

In our Protestant Congregationalist tradition, however, we believe that no one needs a mediator between themselves and God. One of the Reformation’s great reformations was to realize that everyone has their own direct, personal, unmediated relationship with Jesus Christ and with God. So does that mean we Protestants don’t need sheep dogs, don’t need someone or something to direct us in our life of faith?

Well, no, I don’t think it means that. See, here’s the problem. The life of faith often isn’t all that easy. The basics of Christianity may seem easy enough. We believe in God. We believe in Jesus Christ. We believe something or other about the Bible. Fair enough, but of course both God and Jesus can get pretty complex when we really consider who they are. And the Bible is far more complex than most Christians think it is.

The life of faith can get complicated in other ways too. At some time or other, all of us face ethical or moral decisions that are not easy. It’s sometimes really hard to discern just what the Christian thing to do or to say in a particular situation is. At some point in our lives all of us feel deep pain, physical pain or perhaps even worse, emotional pain. The pain of loss. The pain of grief. Is God with us in our pain? We all face a world full of violence and injustice. Where is God in that world? The life of Christian faith cannot avoid these circumstances and these questions.

So, do we need sheep dogs to nip at our heels until we get the right answers? Well, no. Of course not. But we do need something or someone to help us as we face the questions and the difficult times of our lives. That something can be many different things. We read the Bible, and we come to some understanding of what it means. We pray to God in the name of Jesus Christ, and we listen for what we think God’s answers to our prayers are. We gather in Christian community, where we can share our joys and concerns with our friends and other members of our congregation. All these things can be guides for us in our life of faith.

And we Christians who belong to and attend a church usually have an ordained pastor to whom we can bring all those joys and concerns. Northshore certainly does. We can make an appointment and come in to spend some time with our pastor. (And when you do, please don’t say “I don’t want to take up your time.” When people say that to me, I always respond, “What do you think I’m here for?”) Will the pastor give us firm answers to our questions? Probably not. It is only occasionally appropriate for a pastor to do that. But the most important thing I learned in my years of serving as a church pastor is the power of listening. Knowing that someone has heard us can have a powerful healing effect as we struggle with difficulties in our lives. In the speaking and listening between a pastor and a parishioner, new insights can arise. Questions can be reformulated. Answers can be suggested, often not by the pastor but by the parishioner themselves.

None of those things is a sheep dog exactly, but at some point in our lives and in our lives of faith we all need help. (Trust me, we pastors need help too. That’s why in seminary they hammer us on selfcare. That’s why it is so good for a pastor to have a group of colleagues to meet with regularly and discuss thing with.) We all need help, and, mercifully, there are many things that can help guide us through that need. Bible study. Conversations with other Christians. Conversations with a trained pastor.

And perhaps most of all our own conscience. We all know the basics of right from wrong, don’t we? I’m sure we all do, at least in general terms. The Christian answer to a question is rarely one that clashes with our conscience. We can all turn inward, sit in silence, practice meditation, or use some other prayer practice. We can seek the knowledge of right and wrong that lies deep within each one of us. Will those things give definitive answers to our questions, definitive responses to our needs? Maybe, but maybe not. Still, doing those things can certainly point us in the right direction as we make decisions in our lives.

We may be the sheep of God’s pasture, but we don’t need sheep dogs. Neither, however, must we be left entirely on our own. I suppose it’s possible to be a Christian in isolation. Some people have done it. Some have sought isolation as the only way to do it. But one of the great gifts of a life of faith is the gift of community. For me and, I know, for a lot of people, being Christian is a lot easier in Christian community than it is in isolation. Being part of a congregation of God’s people who have committed themselves to living their relationship with God through the Christian faith is an immense blessing. Sadly, fewer and fewer people do it today. But you’re all here this morning on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when church attendance is usually lower than normal. Perhaps we have made a commitment to the Christian faith. Perhaps we are still seeking a way of relating to God that works for us. Either way, Christian community can be a great gift in our lives.

We all need help. We all need guidance. But we don’t need sheep dogs. One of the great gifts of Christianity is the gift of freedom. We don’t need a church to dictate truth to us. Heck, even God doesn’t dictate truth to us. As Christians we live with the freedom to seek the guidance we need in any way that is constructive, that is helpful. We are all free to reach our own conclusions about what Christianity is and what Christianity means. We are free to make our own decisions about our lives. Freedom is one of the greatest of God’s blessings.

So, sheep dogs? No. The shepherd uses sheep dogs to take away the sheep’s freedom. God never does that to us. Do we sometimes need help? Yes. Absolutely. But we don’t need to be barked at. Nor nipped at the heels. Nor forced to go where we don’t want to go. Nor forced to say we believe in God or understand our faith in any particular way. Guided yes. Commanded, never.

We can go it alone if we want, but one of the parts of the good news of Christianity is that we don’t have to. There are lots of things and lots of people out there who can guide, not force, us as we live our life of faith. May we all have the wisdom to seek out not sheep dogs but those things that are truly helpful as we strive, as best we can, to be faithful to our God of unlimited grace. May it be so. Amen.