Believe it or not, it’s actually kind of difficult to learn much about modern shepherds from the Internet. 

Of course, that information must be out there, somewhere.  

I really tried.  

I really wanted to come in this morning and tell you about the blog I’d found – or the chat room where the shepherds all go to compare notes, but no such luck.  

If you Google “shepherd,” what you get is screen upon screen upon screen of sermons about the passage you just heard, and then screen upon screen of blog posts about pastors…particularly as written by pastors.  

As you might guess, this all goes south soon enough.

For example, I learned that there is a whole argument out there between Evangelical writers about whether a pastor is supposed to be a “shepherd,” or more like a “rancher.”  

And when I say it’s an “argument,” I mean it.

From what I could gather, a lot of people who went to seminary in the 90s were told they should strive to become ranchers.  

Management consultants apparently came in the schools to tell them this.    

But as one pastor responded, a “successful rancher is someone who checks out his flock from a helicopter via helicopter and satellite. He has hired hands, who actually handle the flock and its problems.”^[1]

Another made a point of the fact that the Bible has a few words for shepherd, but none that really correspond to rancher.  

Depending on how you read your Bible, that can be a real put away shot—and I got the feeling as I was reading it that the author most certainly thought it was.  

I didn’t really find any current spirited defenses of being a rancher, although I gather there must be some.  

Hold that thought for a minute.  

Now, shifting gears in order to come at shepherding another way, I did read, somewhere, that in 2005, a Turkish newspaper reported 1500 sheep had ran over a cliff, exhibiting a behavior known as “flocking.”  

You can probably guess what that is.  

When it happens, things can get pretty bad, pretty fast.  

Apparently, if even one sheep shows a little gumption or moves quickly for whatever reason, it can trigger this “flocking” instinct, even to the point of luring the others right over a cliff before anyone knows what’s happening.  

You’ll be glad to know that in the case of the Turkish sheep, only 450 of them died, because as it turned out, the ones on the bottom of the pile cushioned the fall for all the rest.  

I mention it because the danger of “flocking” might suggest why shepherds are so attentive to the ones that wander away.  

Maybe the problem isn’t just how vulnerable a sheep becomes if it wanders off alone and gets lost (though that’s true, too). 

The problem with a wayward sheep is also about how quickly and catastrophically everything can unspool if the others follow.  

When you put it that way, it sounds as if shepherds can’t drop their attention for a second.  

They can’t because the sheep sure won’t drop theirs… they won’t stop to figure out what’s happening…they won’t stop to ask who’s leading this charge… they won’t stop to google monthly wolf sighting statistics for their particular geo-location. 

They just react.  

Doesn’t it make you wonder about what it’s supposed to mean when Jesus refers to us as sheep? 

I always thought he was naming how he sees something lovely and innocent in us – and maybe he is.  

That’s part of what he sees in us. 

But all that notwithstanding, in calling us his sheep, I wonder if he isn’t also reminding us about just how powerful, and even dangerous, our reactivity can make us. 

At the drop of a hat, the snap of a twig, the glitter of something over there that happens to catch our eye, we can turn into a menace for ourselves and others, no matter how big or small the flock might be.  

That’s also part of what it means to be sheep.  

For one thing, this goes a long way to explaining why we need him. 

He’s not just a broad source of inspiration or even comfort, but the guide we need to listen and look for, particularly whenever we are overwhelmed.  

…Particularly when that may be hardest for us to do….

It may be that coming to believe in ourselves (in the best sense) is actually to learn not to trust ourselves entirely – we need to remember just how quickly we are capable of leading ourselves astray and taking others with us as we go. 

Instead, we need to take our cue from Him. 

Because the point is not just that we are sheep, but also that we’re his sheep.  

And this is where I can identify something worth taking away from my Internet research this week.  

Because the world seems to imagine God as a rancher, somewhere way up there, flying around in a helicopter, or vaguely following us by satellite. 

And what Jesus wants us to know is that he’s the shepherd. 

He’s down here at our level to handle us and our problems, even if and even when that means crawling through the muck to save us, most especially from ourselves and from our own worst instincts. 

The challenge for us to learn to listen for his voice, to wait for his guidance, to trust when we go astray that he is already coming in search for us…that he already knew we were missing even before we did. 

It’s a story that the Church tells after Easter, just as the disciples were first grappling with what it would mean to listen for Jesus in this new way, and to call the world to flock to him.  

It’s a lesson we might learn (or learn again) with every comment we soon realize that we were too quick to make, with every email we were too quick to send, every suspicion that were too quick to indulge, every bad report we were too quick to take at face value, every fear we were too quick to make into a wolf about to strike.  

We see the power of that pull away from what is lovely and innocent and kind and giving in us.  

We can’t entirely help it. 

But while we may be sheep, the point Jesus wants to make is that we’re his sheep.  

He’s calling to us…looking for us…crawling right into whatever brambles we’ve managed to get ourselves stuck in, working to bring us back to green pastures and still waters…to the places where all may safely graze. 

As the Psalmist says “Oh, that we might listen for his voice….”  

Amen.

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^[1] R. Scott Clark, “Choose Your Metaphors Carefully,” The Heidelblog. https://heidelblog.net/2019/04/choose-your-metaphors-carefully-the-church-is-a-pasture-not-a-business/.