The Good Shepherd: Part One

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The Good Shepherd

Guest Columnist

Father Michael Bergeron

(This is part one in a series of articles about the relationship of a shepherd with his flock.)

A minister once phoned in his Sunday morning sermon title to the religion editor of the local newspaper. He said, “The topic for my message is, `The Lord is My Shepherd.’” The editor asked, “Is that all?” Trying to make a spiritual point, the pastor replied, “That’s enough!” On Saturday, when the paper was delivered to the pastor’s door, he immediately opened it to the section containing the church notices. His topic for the sermon read: “The Lord is My Shepherd – That’s Enough!” And it is enough. Just knowing that one thing is medicine for our souls.

Sheep are mentioned in the Bible more than 500 times, more than any other animal. The prominence of sheep in the Bible grows out of two realities. Sheep were important to the nomads and agricultural life of the Hebrews. Secondly, sheep are used throughout the Bible to symbolically refer to God’s people. Shepherds play a significant part in the story of Jesus. They not only remind us that Jesus is descended from David, who himself was a shepherd from Bethlehem, they also symbolize the loving care that was to be central to Jesus’ ministry. Jesus would later describe himself as the Good Shepherd, knowing that anyone in Palestine would understand that the relationship between a good shepherd and his sheep was one of trust and care as immortalized in the 23rd Psalm, which begins, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” I’ll break that one open for you later.

The Sheep

First, let’s talk about sheep. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly care for being compared to a sheep. If the Lord is our Shepherd, we must be sheep. And that is not a very appealing image. Sheep are not the brightest of animals. They are constantly getting themselves in trouble and once in trouble they often can’t get themselves out.

Sheep and goats were raised for meat, milk and wool. The Scriptures are full of pastoral people such as the Israelites – sheep provided both food and clothing. Yet, sheep are highmaintenance creatures. They must be protected from bad weather and predatory animals. They must be led to water to drink. They learn the voice of their own shepherd, and refuse to respond to anyone else’s commands. When they are sick or injured, they must be carried from place to place by the shepherd. When Jesus likens the crowds to sheep without a shepherd, he is speaking to their needing help in order to survive.

The main part of Judea is a high plateau that stretches from Bethel to Hebron, a distance of 35 miles. But it’s only 14 to 17 feet across. The ground around these highlands is rough and stony, completely unsuitable for farming but somewhat useful as pasture land. There is so little grass, that the animals tend to wander and have to be watched.

That is why no flock ever grazes without a shepherd, so the shepherd is always on duty – and believe me, it’s a hard life. On the other side of this plateau, the ground drops suddenly to a desert below, so of course, wandering sheep can get lost. On top of all that, the shepherd has to guard his flock against wild animals such as wolves, and against thieves who would steal his sheep.

We’re told that sheep always travel in a straight line, which creates problems when a shepherd calls the sheep farther up a hillside: The animals will not walk around hazardous obstacles, but will walk right off the path, getting hurt in the process. This problem is compounded by the fact that sheep will blindly, habitually, stupidly follow one another . . . sometimes to their deaths.

In the Highlands, when sheep wander off into the rocks and get into places that they can’t get out of, shepherds don’t go after them immediately. The grass on these mountains is very sweet and the sheep like it, and they will jump down 10 or 12 feet from the a

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Part One

paths to get at it, and then they can’t get back to the path again. The shepherd hears them bleating in distress. They may be there for days, until they have eaten all the grass.

The shepherd will wait until they are so faint they cannot stand, and then he will go to the sheep and put a rope around it, and he will pull that sheep up out of the jaws of death.

You might ask: “Why don’t they go after the sheep when it first gets in trouble?” The answer is that the sheep are so very foolish they would be startled by the shepherd and dash right over the surrounding cliffs and be killed!

Can you imagine creatures who are that foolish and that helpless at times? Well, yes we can. Homo Sapiens. Human beings.

By nature, sheep have three strikes against them. First, sheep are dumb, second, sheep are directionless and get lost, and third, sheep are defenseless. By their very nature, sheep need a shepherd

The Shepherd

The life of a shepherd was very hard. The shepherd was never off duty. There being little grass, the sheep were bound to wander, and since there were no protecting walls, the sheep had to be watched constantly. On either side of the narrow plateau, the ground dipped sharply down to the craggy deserts and the sheep were always liable to stray away and get lost. The shepherd’s task was not only constant but dangerous, for, in addition, he had to guard the flock against wild animals, especially against wolves, and there were always thieves and robbers ready to steal the sheep. With little pay and little human contact, being a shepherd had little to recommend it. A thankless job, indeed.

Yet this is exactly how Christ portrayed himself – as a shepherd. And that is the most familiar image we have of Christ – a shepherd holding a lamb in his arms. How sweet – how tender. But a lamb is not a full-grown sheep. Its wool is not wet and matted. It isn’t caught in a crevasse. It is not bleating for the shepherd to come to its rescue.

In Palestine 2,000 years ago, shepherds rarely bathed. In that dry and dusty land, water was a luxury. It was used primarily for drinking and for

This painting of “The Good Shepherd” by Sister Mary Baptist Savoy, OCarm, was painted in 1996 as an ordination gift to Father Michael Bergeron.

caring for your sheep, not bathing. The shepherd spent most of his time around sheep, not other people. To identify God with a shepherd was hardly a compliment. A comparable picture of God might be an image of God spending his hours in flop houses where drug addicts finish out their days poking their arms with unsanitary needles. It might be a picture of God who spends his hours in the garbage heaps of a South American city where children scavenge for food. It is a picture of God stretched out naked on a cross in the company of thieves. This is how much God loves us, the picture screams out. God is the God of lost sheep. a

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The Good Shepherd

Part One Cont.

The shepherd’s lot was not an easy one. He was almost always outdoors, with only a camel-hair cloak and a simple head veil to protect him from the wind and the rain and from the burning heat of the midday sun. Generally, a shepherd ate only what he could carry with him – bread, cheese, olives, figs, dates and raisins.

You cannot think of a Good Shepherd without knowing that he must love us beyond measure if we are like sheep to him. A sheep is smelly, with an oily kind of dirt that lingers on anything it touches and soaks right through clothing to give an overall aroma long after you are away from it. Our Good Shepherd carries our stench.

At the birth of our Lord, the primary attendants are shepherds. If there is a more humble occupation in the world than that of a shepherd, I don’t know what it is. In the world of that time, faithful Jews were warned by their rabbis against entering six professions. One of those forbidden occupations was shepherding. Conscientious Pharisees would never consider doing business with a shepherd. They would buy wool and milk, but never from the shepherd himself. Shepherds weren’t even allowed to give testimony in court. In fact, shepherds were not permitted to enter places of worship. They

could not go into the temple or

synagogue. Why?

For one thing, shepherds were constantly walking among the droppings of the sheep, and this made them ritually unclean. Second, shepherds ranged their sheep throughout the countryside, without paying attention to property lines. In other words, they were constantly trespassing. They were considered thieves and liars, dirty and disgusting. They were despised and considered to have one foot in hell. Now that’s a far cry from those cute little figures you see in that Nativity Scene. Why, the Willie Nelsons of that day would probably sing: “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be shepherds!” (Father Michael Bergeron is a retired priest of the Diocese of HoumaThibodaux.) BC

Life is great~ Get busy living.

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