“Taking Care of the Herd”

John 10:11-18

A Sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

May 11, 2003

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

            When my mother went back to her five year high school reunion, she had three kids and one in the oven.  This was the baby boom and she was booming.  Our home was a raucous place.  It was chaos.  My mom made the chaos organized, but it was chaos all the same.  Sometimes I liken being a parent to herding sheep.  Only sheep are at times a bit more obedient than children.

            As a parent, I have profound respect for my mother and all mothers, for that matter.  It’s not an easy task, being in charge of a herd of sometimes dimwitted and self-centered lambs.  So today, I honor not only mothers, but all those who attend to the herds we call family.  Please don’t get hung up on how we define that.  It misses the point. 

            As parents, our job is to be the good shepherds of our herds.  That’s a tall order.  No wonder Jesus used this metaphor for leadership and service. It occurs to me that  a church is like a herd of sheep.  Not that we’re as dumb as sheep, or that any one of us is the ultimate shepherd Jesus is supposed to be.  But we do need leadership and we do depend on our shepherds. 

            Today, we recognize two of our shepherds.  We honor Lynn as she concludes her work here as a student minister and shifts to just a normal UBC’er, whatever that is.  We honor the way she has brought us in to her learning process and shared with us her gifts of honesty, compassion, her worship leadership and the way she has shepherded the college students in her care.  We’re a better herd because of your leadership, Lynn.

And we also celebrate George who has shepherded our choir and music program for the past year and a half and now begins to prepare for the work of parenthood himself.  We recognize your expertise in playing the organ and trying to herd us wayward choristers to get to rehearsals and make the kind of music we are meant to make.  You continue to lead us with expertise, professionalism and a knowledge and passion for the great music of the church.  You have even taught us low church Baptists how to sing high-church chants.  We are a better singing herd because of you, too.

            It’s hard to let go of people you love and who have shepherded you.  It’s hard for us shepherds, too. 

            Hear these words from Mary Rose O’Reilley.  She’s an English professor, a Quaker, a Buddhist, and Sacred Harp Singer from the Twin Cities.  She’s also a mother and sometimes a shepherd.  She wrote, The Barn at the end of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd (Milkweed Editions, 2000).

            “Jude turned his head and shot me his characteristic look of uncanny intelligence ready-to-be-amused.  He was a few minutes old and gazing at me from a glass box next to the delivery table…

            “I had married foolishly in the world’s terms but wisely in the heart’s economy.  We were broke and struggling the whole nineteen-year course of the marriage; it was a traveling circus, and we were tumblers in love.  Jude was born in a big Catholic hospital ward full of teenage moms who talked on the phone incessantly in Spanish.  When the priest came to give communion, they would simply turn their heads away from the phones, stick out their tongues for the wafer, and go back to the conversation.  Jobless and without prospects in that tight economy, we went to live with my husband’s family, sharing a room with the two youngest of the ten children.  In a few weeks, however, we were able to move into our new home, a converted school bus.  And the circus rolled on.

            Julian was born into a situation of more security.  My sister, a nurse midwife, delivered her.  The birth—in contrast to our first main ring event—had been contemplative and private, and she was a quiet baby who would spend hours turning and watching her own long fingers in the air.

            We’d lived in Maine, in a fishing community, after Jude’s birth, surrounded by men in waders fighting and cutting each other’s float lines.  Without any women to tell me how to mother, I got my advice from Jane Goodall’s books on chimpanzees, which I was reading at the time.  Chimps seemed to hold and nurse their babies a lot, and as a result the young ones grew up brave and independent.  I settled on this as a philosophy:  it was I who balked at every stage of their leaving home.

            “And she will not be here.  That’s all I can think about: not how much space I’ll have in the house, or how I’ll be free to travel.  She will not be here,” I am sobbing to Peter on the phone….

            “You will be able to have a beautiful relationship with your daughter now—“ Peter tells me.  “College changes everything.”

            “But she will not be here.”  Her size twelve shoes will not lie in the doorway, her beautiful profile will not lean over a book, her long fingers will not touch my face in kindness or condescension.  She will not leave corn on her plate, sleep till one, neglect her housework, steal my sweaters and poetry books.  Her leaving looms like an engagement at the hospital, a surgery from which one may not awaken or not awaken as oneself.

            I am distracted with grief, like the church ladies, those silly ewes who do not know we’re taking care of them, that we have their good at heart.  I am incessantly bleating.

            “She’s setting you free.  You will be able to live any life you choose,” Peter tells me.

            For one day after the lambs go, the ewes are inconsolable.  The next day they bleat less and in a week they have forgotten their own young.  But human beings suffer relentlessly for what is lost…I have tried to reason with myself.  It’s foolish to fuss over a giddy girl packing for college.  But perhaps I’m also mourning for my own life.  She will not be here, and therefore I will not be here, either.  Without her, who will I be?  Who will I care for?  And where is the “we of me”? (pp.70-72)

            I know we’re far away from these kinds of concerns, Kim and me.  Still, we are savoring that early morning time when our four and six-year-olds still want to cuddle on the couch.  Our friends with older children warn how quickly those times disappear.  Our main job right now is to find ways to benevolently shepherd our young. Many of the parents in our midst can relate to the metaphor of shepherding.  We also know that there is not a set formula to it.  Most of it is knowledge, along with some improvisation, wrestling with demons or blessings of our own childhoods and trying to sort it all out.  A healthy sense of humor and a lot of patience help, too.  We can do this best surrounded by a community of people who can call us to be better than we are—who can call out the best in each of us. That’s what the church is for.  And when the going gets too tough always remember that we have a very good shepherd leading us.

All of us are shepherds in some way shape or form.  There is some flock that we are responsible to.  There is some herd that calls and listens to us in a special way.

Our herd might be our families. 

It might be our small group of like-minded people who are our supports in life. 

It might be our community. 

It might even be our world. 

Regardless, part of the Christian life is to find healthy, productive ways to nurture the sheep around us—to bring healing to a people and a world in need. 

To give the sheep the space they need to grow and to maybe even grow out of the need for us as the shepherds.

            Where we inevitably run into trouble is when we believe that we are above the need for any kind of shepherd.  When we are so in control that we don’t need our people, our herd, we don’t even need God.  Some might even say that God or church is for the weak-minded.

            Think about your flock. 

Are you being the best shepherd you can be?

Are you keeping them from harm and at the same time empowering them to be living on their own?

We are here to honor the shepherds among us today.

I believe we are all shepherds.

I honor your work as you take care of your herd.

And I also challenge us all to remember and thank on this day those who have shepherded us to be the people we are today.

For we have received the greatest gift from all of them.

This morning I called my mother on the phone right before church.  I knew that she would be at church, too in Cleveland.  So I left a message on her machine thanking her for being my mom and telling her once again that who what I do here on Sundays and who I am in life is due in large part to the way that she raised me.  I told her I loved her and thanked her for being my mom.

I hope you can take time today to thank your shepherd.

That could be your mother.

It could be your father.

It could be another family member,

Or a close friend.

That person might not be living, or there might even be some bad blood between you and them.  But I invite you in the silence that follows this sermon to take the opportunity to communicate with them through prayer and reflection.  I encourage you to tell them in your minds eye what they have meant to you.  

I invite you to thank them for shepherding you, for keeping you safe, for setting you free to be the person you are.

When you have done that, then you have really given thanks for the ultimate good

shepherd who wishes for you only the very best.