written by Elizabeth Goodson,

Kipling and Windthorst United Church

Several writers in the bible compare God to a shepherd. Second Isaiah talks about the gentle care the shepherd provides and tells us that like a lamb we will be gathered into God’s arms and carried. It is a gentle and peaceful image of what it is like to be with God. Jesus told the parable of the shepherd who sought a single lost sheep until he found it. Psalm 23 talks about God, as Shepherd, guiding us to places of nourishment and safety, accompanying us through the dark valley. God as Shepherd takes care of us tenderly. God as Shepherd sees that we have what we truly need.

But what do we truly need from God? Not material things. We can get those things for ourselves. We don’t need God to put food on our table or clothes on our back. What we do need is for God to be as close to us as the shepherd is to the sheep, watching, guarding, guiding. This is what we truly need from God. And this is precisely what we get.

It is an unfortunate fact that the average sheep is not particularly aware of the shepherd’s presence. For the most part sheep graze or frolic or sunbathe or do whatever makes a sheep happy and content. Sheep pretty much ignore the shepherd. This is something we tend to have in common with sheep. We spend our time seeking happiness and contentment, and pretty much ignore God. It has become commonplace in our society for people to forget all about our Shepherd.

Centuries before Jesus’ time, being a shepherd was an honorable thing, but by the time Jesus spoke of God as Shepherd, shepherds had become outcasts in his society. They were undesirables, unclean. Although Jesus was following a biblical tradition in comparing God to a shepherd, he was also saying something which in his day would have been a little scandalous. Jesus was saying that God was like the outcast, the one whom people did not want to welcome in. This may be even more true today than in Jesus time. God is often unwelcome and God’s presence is often ignored.

We can look at our Shepherd the way the sheep do, which is to say remain completely oblivious to God until our need is great and then find, perhaps with gratitude, that the Shepherd is still hanging around and taking care of us. Or we may look at the Shepherd the way the people of Jesus’ day looked at shepherds. With contempt. Rather than spending time with the Shepherd we might sneer and avoid entering into God’s company. But perhaps we ought to stop acting like sheep or like respectable middle class humans and instead become more like sheepdogs. The sheepdog is loyal. The sheepdog is overjoyed simply being in the presence of the Shepherd. The sheepdog is eager to participate as a partner in the work of the Shepherd. There is certainly lots of work for a good sheepdog to do. There are lambs in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan who need to be protected from missiles, bombs and bullets. There are lambs in the 2/3 world who are starving to death. There are lambs in Africa who are orphaned and dying of A.I.D.S. There is lots of work for sheepdogs, and the Shepherd is calling us to get at it.