“I always knew sheep were smart.”

John 10:1-10

April 13, 2008

Rev. David A. Kaden

When I was still in graduate school, I worked part-time on a horse farm in northeast Massachusetts. With two other grad students, I took care of the grounds, drove tractors, and fixed the miles of fence in the summer, picked up the piles of leaves in the autumn, and plowed snow in the winter.

The person who took care of the horses and sheep was studying to be a Veterinarian. One week she came down with the flu and missed several days of work. So my job description suddenly was expanded to include taking care of animals. I mucked stalls for the first time in my life. And…I fed the sheep.

Now, feeding the farm's sheep was about the worst job to do, because Coolio lived with the small flock numbering about 10 animals. Coolio was the ram, and he was mean with two thick horns that spiraled around the sides of his head. Each afternoon, one of us would have to make sure the water in the sheep pen was full, hurl several flakes of hay over the fence, and dump a pile of special feed into their feed trough, which was in the middle of the pen.

There was a special strategy that had to be followed, or else you'd get bucked by Coolio (by the way, I have no idea how he ended up with the name of a 1990s rapper). On the day it was my turn, methodically, I filled their water, I threw a few flakes of hay over the fence, and then carefully opened the gate. As soon as the sheep heard the latch on the gate, they all raced over with Coolio in the lead. The strategy was to make sure, that whatever you did, you gave Coolio first dibs on this special feed because if any other sheep tasted it first, he'd go ballistic and you'd be on the receiving end of two working ram's horns.

Well, I tried to follow the plan, but the sheep came at me so fast that I got jostled and dumped some of the feed onto the ground. Sure enough another sheep tasted it first, Coolio went ballistic, and I got bucked twice in the thigh, and he was readying to give me another when I launched the feed over their heads hoping they'd chase it. They didn't. Coolio cme at me again. So, I raced back to the gate, slammed it shut, and he started bucking the fence. The other sheep just stood there looking confused with the feed strewn all over their pen.

As I limped away I thought to myself, 'sheep have to be the dumbest animals on earth.' And then I thought, 'I'm never feeding them again.'

The texts for today are about sheep and shepherds. In Psalm 23 the LORD is our shepherd who leads us beside still waters and on pathways of justice. In John 10, Jesus is the gate who welcomes us, and the Good Shepherd who knows us by name. Both texts assume that we are the sheep.

In the John text, Jesus is criticizing the religious leaders, calling them 'thieves and bandits' who prey on the sheep instead of tend them. Jesus contrasts himself as a Good Shepherd who cares for and leads the sheep with the religious leaders whom he accuses of being bad shepherds that steal and kill and destroy.

John 10 needs to be read in conjunction with the preceding chapter. In ch 9 Jesus approaches a visually impaired man, spits on the ground, makes some mud, and places it on the man's eyes and then tells him to go clean himself off. The man obeys and returns seeing.

The religious leaders-the bad shepherds-object to this outrage, because, God forbid, Jesus has healed on the Sabbath! Lifting a finger to help a blind man see is still lifting a finger, and lifting a finger is work, and you're not supposed to work on the Sabbath. Suffering people needing spit, mud, and) few healing words will come and go. But the Sabbath is the Sabbath after all-much more important than healing the eyes of one measly sheep.

Furious with Jesus, furious with the man who now sees for the first time in his life, they dismiss Jesus as a quack and cast the seeing man out of their synagogue. And how does Jesus respond? "Come follow me," he says to the seeing man. I'm a Good Shepherd who's more interested in love than law-keeping, in people than pretense, in justice than judging.

Up until Wednesday of this week, I always assumed that sheep were dumb, which explains why they can easily get lost and fall off cliffs, scatter, and get preyed on by predators. And so, I always thought that when the Bible calls us sheep, it was not trying to flatter us. But in fact, I found out on Wednesday that sheep are pretty smart. I came across a 2001 NPR story that reported the following:

" .. .lowly sheep may have gotten a bad rap. That's the conclusion of a new study on sheep behavior by British scientists, who say the easily herded creatures may be smarter than originally thought.

A study published in the Journal Nature describes research conducted at Cambridge University... {where] sheep were shown pictures of other sheep and rewarded with food if they moved toward a selected image.

As it turns out, the sheep quickly learned to recognize the face that produced a reward, and discriminated between that face and other sheep faces that didn't produce a reward. The research showed that sheep can get it right eight out of 10 times -- and the research showed that sheep remember faces for an extended period of time. Some sheep could remember up to 50 images for two years.

The study concluded that, like humans, sheep have special systems in the brain to discern between faces that are very similar in appearance. The results also suggest that sheep have remarkably good memory systems and are extremely good at recognizing faces. Both are signs of higher intelligence…

Dr. Keith Kendrick, one of the authors of the study, says the reason sheep may have a reputation for little intelligence is that they seem to be scared of just about everything. 'Any animal, including humans, once they are scared, don't tend to show signs of intelligent behavior. '

Now it makes sense to me, why the Bible calls us sheep. One preacher has said, 'I cannot help but think how our world might be different if we shared a little more and were scared a little less.' We live in a time when all sorts of bad shepherds are out there trying to play on our fears, manipulating us like the scared sheep we sometimes are. Fearmongering has entered our politics to try and scare us to vote a certain way. We are a nation of sheep. Hear the numbers 9-11, and the memories of a day of shock and horror, and uncertainty and fear pervade; the name Al-Quaeda, and we're reminded of training camps, gruesome bombings, three ongoing wars now stretched over five years, and all the fears of mushroom clouds and dirty bombs. It's because of fear that our nation, for the first time in its history, has sanctioned "enhanced interrogation techniques", torture, for short! When people get scared, they act like sheep.

We worry about gas prices and housing prices, sub prime loans, the stock market swings. We live on edge, asking ourselves: Is my job secure? Will my health insurance cover it? Will my marriage survive? What if my son doesn't make the team? How will I pay for college? Is social security going to be bankrupt when I retire?

I'm starting to realize that we really discover what fear is when we have children whom we're responsible for. I'm constantly on edge about my kids wandering into the busy road in front of our house, or falling down the stairs, or playing near a wasp’s nest.

There's an ancient proverb that speaks to sheep like us: 'fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.' Most of the time sheep are pretty smart and live in peace, but once they're afraid, they get led astray, wander off cliffs, get lost, become prey, and scatter.

Makes you wonder who the sheep in John's story really are. The blind man now sees, not just physically, but also spiritually. And he has peace. But the religious leaders seem irrational and silly ...scared, almost like they've been threatened by a wolf. Jesus came along and all their dearly held traditions were challenged. He said and did things that broke with custom, things they thought were immoral and antireligious and antisocial. Just plain wrong.

In John's Gospel Jesus threatens their understanding of the Temple. He threatens their understanding of the Sabbath. He threatens their understanding of monotheism. He threatens their understanding of ethnic purity. He threatens their leadership. He undermines their tradition. He disturbs their peace. Jesus was one, big, wolf. And fear makes the wolf look bigger.

When traditions and customs, moral assumptions, and religious beliefs get threatened, sheep get scared, and everything starts to look like a wolf. Gay people; Muslims; Transgendered people. People who look different, smell different, act different, speak a different language, don't have legal citizenship. They're a threat. And threatened sheep are intolerant sheep.

But for the fearless Good Shepherd, there are no wolves. Everyone is a sheep. It's a world full of 6 billion sheep needing the green pastures and still waters of peace, the straight paths of justice, and the soothing comfort of the Shepherd's voice.

Some of you have heard this story before, but when I was in college I took an elective class called 'Jesus and the African American Experience'. One of the class requirements was to attend five different African American churches in the nearby city of Harrisburg and write a report describing the experience. I remember walking into one of those churches for the first time feeling like a total stranger. My skin looked different than everybody else's, and I was nervous.

On the wall there was a stained glass window unlike any I'd ever seen, with angels, disciples, and even Jesus himself, all with dark complexions and African garb. That service lasted for hours with people coming and going freely.

In some of the churches I went to, the practice was to ask if there were any visitors in the congregation. And if there were, they would be asked to stand up in front of everyone, say their name, where they were from, and be embraced by the people nearby. In that first church I visited, the pastor didn't even ask. He just looked at me and said, 'I see we have a visitor. Stand up, son, and introduce yourself.' So, I did.

Those folks made me feel welcome, despite my awkwardness. The passing of the peace lasted about 20 minutes. And I think I got a hug from just about everyone. That preacher who had me stand up in front of everyone preached on John ch 10. He talked about the Good Shepherd. He wove in some gripping stories. But the climax of his sermon was when he talked about how Christianity had been viewed in history as a white person's religion. How Jesus had been depicted in art as a white man with blue eyes. How the gate of the church had been closed to black folks. And then he paused...and continued:

"But Jesus says, 'I am the gate...and I have other sheep.'" When those words left that preacher's mouth, almost everyone jumped out of their seats clapping and cheering. They knew Jesus was talking about them.

For Jesus, there are no wolves. There are no threats. There are no 'others'. Just other sheep needing peace, justice, love, and an open gate to welcome them home. AMEN