Word to the Wise
Monday, May 16, 2011 - 4th Week of Easter - Mon
[Acts 11:1-18 and John 10:1-10 or, in Year A, John 10:11-18,905]"I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.
Yesterday [Sunday], the gospel scripture from the Gospel of John had Jesus describing the unique method of shepherding that is still practiced in Palestine. All the sheep of the village are placed in a common corral for safety at night. In the morning, each shepherd comes and makes a unique sound/call to which only his sheep will respond. They follow him through the gate and go out to pasture. This rich set of images - shepherd/thief, corral [sheepfold], gate/safety, call is used to illustrate the relationship that is possible between the individual and Jesus. The relationship is to be similar to the relationship between Jesus and his Father. We can see Jesus as protector against "wolf and hireling." We can see him as "the gate" that invites to pasture or to safety. We can see Jesus as "leader" to pasture and abundant life. The image is rich and the choices are many.
What may challenge us further in this image is the existence of "other sheep that do not belong to this fold." It is easy to apply that comment to the relationship that the Catholic church has to all other religious families that are outside the "boundary" of Catholicism. But the application is actually fraught with difficulty! Is the flock to be all in one "corral" or is the flock unified simply in the sense that all the "other sheep" hear the voice of the shepherd but in a different way? Are these "other sheep" to be seen as "lesser" because they don't come home with us to the same corral at the end of the day, even though they belong to the same shepherd? These are critical "ecumenical" questions with which the church continues to struggle. What is the unity that is expressed in the words "one flock and one shepherd?" Pope John Paul II struggled with this in his document Ut unum sint [THAT THEY MAY BE ONE]. I, for one, don't have the answers to these questions, but the scripture does challenge me to think about them because Christian life calls us to love all those made in the image and likeness of God. We are all the wounded man by the road, and we are all the Samaritan.[Luke 10:25-37] But in today's image, we are not all in the same corral! AMEN