Sermon preached by The Revd Neil Fernyhough, 4th Sunday of Easter (May 3, 2009).
Readings: Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3: 16-24; John 10: 11-18
By now you should all know that I like hats. Which may be why I end up wearing so many in the church. One of the hats I wear is as co-chair of the diocesan Ecumenical and Multifaith Unit. We used to labour under the unwieldy name “Inter-church and Interfaith Relations Commission” or ICIFRC until I proposed this change both as being more streamlined, and also because the acronym EMU well-represents the difficulty in getting dialogue and cooperation between faith traditions off the ground.
Exposure to other paths of faith, Christian and non-Christian, can open your eyes in strange and sometimes unexpected ways. I’ve found that it highlights the infinite variety by which people approach the divine, distilling distinct beliefs into beautiful variations of worship, praise, music, and prayer. For instance, I recall walking into a Buddhist temple in Richmond, and seeing an altar on which pyramids of oranges had been placed. Nuns with shaved heads welcomed us, while sonorous, metronomic chants could be heard from another room. Or the Baptist and Pentecostal churches I’ve visited, where musicians with guitars, drum, and keyboard are found where we would expect the altar to be.
But exposure to these different traditions also reaffirms the many things we have in common as spiritual beings. After all, human nature is human nature; and while we derive different understandings of the world, of God, and of God’s will for us, what separates us is so often simply the vagaries of culture and our own upbringing. This first began to dawn on me when I took a course in religious philosophy as an undergraduate student. I prepared a paper comparing Buddhist and Christian ethics, and discovered the Five Moral Precepts of Buddha. They are: Do not kill, do not steal, do not commit sexual immorality or sensual overindulgence, do not lie, and do not get intoxicated on drugs or alcohol. With very little tweaking, this ethical code could be applied to just about any major religion you’d care to name – including Christianity.
Given the convergences as well as the deviations between the faith traditions of the world – never mind between the countless strains of Christianity – it makes me wonder what it means to say that we should be one flock, under one shepherd. That imagery, from Jesus’ discourse to the Pharisees following the healing of the blind man, represents the most resonant of the many “I am” statements found in John’s Gospel. It invites us to ask whether that metaphor still has any relevance for us in a pluralistic, post-modern, and increasingly post-religious age.
Given that we don’t see them around here at all, I think it’s fair to ask what a shepherd does. Essentially, he or she protects livestock from predators or thieves, while making sure the herd doesn’t scatter and that it grazes where it is supposed to. In the early church, the symbolism was potent. It hearkens back to Ezekiel’s portrait of God as the ideal shepherd, in contrast to wicked ones who plunder the flock and allow them to become lost. It also reminds us of a yet more ancient narrative – that of the shepherd-boy David, risking his life against bears and lions to protect his family’s flock, before Samuel was directed by God to designate him as king of Israel. The uniqueness of this allegory in John is, obviously, the shepherd’s readiness to die in order to protect his flock.
For an early community seeking cohesiveness and direction from above, and struggling in an oppressive and dangerous milieu, the image of the shepherd would have been a comforting one. And it remains a comforting one, still. Psalm 23, a setting of which we sung this morning, remains an immensely popular passage of scripture for those who are critically ill as well as for those who mourn. The human desire to fall back into the arms of an infinitely wise, powerful, and loving God, as a child would a parent, becomes stronger the more extreme our circumstances become.
But one thing we do know about sheep is that (a) they have few natural defences against predators; and (b) they will go exactly where taken by a shepherd. For a church that has evolved, sometimes painfully, from a model of institutional hierarchy towards the empowerment of laity, this is a hard allegorical animal with which to identify. And, returning to my original point, what are we to do about those who adhere to other faith traditions, or to none at all? Are they wolves? Thieves? Sheep under other shepherds? Do we even care about them at all?
In my thinking, this allegory operates on many levels. We don’t need to take the ancient, hierarchical one as a given. We can, as Jesus did so often, move beyond the literal approach to something more affirming of our partnership with God. For example, we can view our relationship with Jesus the shepherd as one of trust. In other words, we can live our lives secure in the knowledge that, regardless of the challenges we might face, Jesus stands as a barrier between us and hopelessness. For the true predators for us are not Roman officials or rapacious landowners and tax-collectors. They are not even those from other cultures, customs, or beliefs seeking to steal us away like helpless, voiceless, senseless livestock. No. The true predators are death and despair, moral and psychological violence, and all those things which deny the fullness of life and love. In a death-peddling culture of consumerism, militarism, and institutionalism, those things aren’t too hard to find.
For me, as one passionately committed to interfaith and ecumenical dialogue and cooperation, what this means is that all people of faith are truly under one shepherd. In fact, everyone is. It reminds me of the story shared by Bishop Michael from his trip to India a few years back. Visiting a Roman Catholic school, he noticed a sculpture of a spinning wheel, the national symbol, with the symbol of the six major religions of India between each spoke. The bishop quipped to the principal that, given then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s pronouncement of the exclusive truth of Catholic Christianity, he would have expected the cross in the centre. “Not at all,” replied the principal, “With all due respect to His Eminence, the centre is empty, since at the centre is God – and all the religions revolve around Him.”
As we follow our shepherd along the path he treads before us, let us be always aware of the humility, concern, and compassion he calls us to emulate; a calling issued to all, regardless of creed, culture, or custom. For it is only as one flock – the flock of the children of God – that all people may graze peaceably. Amen.
© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009.
