I had the honor of preaching on the Fourth Sunday of Easter 2012 at St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo.  The text is as follows:

 In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

All across the world, Christians from Anglican, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and other Protestant traditions are all listening to the same Gospel that we heard proclaimed this morning: St John’s metaphor of the Good Shepherd. Also, all across Christendom, preachers are gearing up for sermons about animal husbandry. In a bizarre phenomenon, literally ten of thousands of sermons will be preached today about sheep. It’s a 4H heyday!

 So, some congregations will learn about how sheep are dumb. Some will learn how they’re much smarter than you’d think. Other parishes will be thrilled to learn about the esoteric shepherding practices of first-century Semitic cultures. There will be hundreds of references to King David, thousands to the 23rd psalm, and all across the globe, images of petting zoos, of sheep-filled moors, and Australian sheering barns will be conjured up in order to preach a la Good Shepherd Sunday.

 When I was a child, my family had goats. So, I’m not interested in preaching on sheep. No wooly imagery this morning!

 And hopefully you’ll be able to muddle through without the sheepish instruction. It gives all of us an opportunity to consider the other characters in this morning’s Gospel. First, we have a good shepherd. And second, some hired hand guy. And finally, we have the scary, terrible bloodcurdling wolves. Who cares about sheep when you can talk about wolves?

 And so, first, the Good Shepherd. St John’s Gospel includes this metaphor as part of a longer discourse in which Christ is confronting the religious leaders of His nation, and, frankly, telling them that they’re really bad at their jobs. Christ had just healed a man born blind, and the investigation by the Temple authorities brought Christ into direct conflict with the Temple He had come to replace.

Christ tells the most fervent of the followers of the Temple, the Pharisees, that they are in the most dire spiritual blindness. No friends were made that day.

 And then, Christ contrasts Himself with the Pharisees, proclaiming the words I AM the Good Shepherd. Christ uses the same phrasing that the divine voice employed when the Lord called Moses to leadership, when that same voice named Himself I AM WHO AM. Jesus calls Himself Yahweh.

And in so doing, he removes from the Pharisees any authority they may claim to hold to lead the nation of Israel. Christ claims that authority as His own, claims that the voice who called Himself I AM WHO AM is now speaking among them again, declaring I AM the Good Shepherd. Christ sunk the pharasiacal Battleship.

And thus the story continues with The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, that’s the Pharisees and their sequelae. They’re the help that God hired to tend the flock in His stead. They’re unreliable. They’re weak. They’re more concerned about themselves then the sheep. Off they go!

And now the good part: the wolves! The wolf snatches them and scatters them. Finally, some action! Finally, it’s like The Hunger Games, Gospel style. Wolves among sheep, snatching! Scattering! Pop the popcorn! It’s the Romans! It’s Satan! Run from the evil Roman Satan wolves with their scary toga cloven hoofed muzzles! 

This little exercise of assigning out parts to different historical groups is a time-honored one, and venerable in the history of Christian exegesis. It’s an nice tidy package, right?: Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the nation of Israel are the sheep, the hired hand are the lax religious authorities, the wolves are political and spiritual menaces embodied in the Romans and the Devil.

And it’s true that Christ was using this metaphor to describe a situation in His own day; but the Gospel is not a document that only sheds light on first-century Roman-occupied Palestine. The Gospel is a living, breathing, heart-beating work of redemption that carries Good News out from Jerusalem to all the world, spanning millennia, cultures, and the stony hearts of men through all times.

This Gospel is also about us.

If you think that you’re a snowy white sheep, lovingly tended by the Good Shepherd, you’re right. But not entirely right. All of us, me included, are also the wolves. We’re also the hired hands who get going when the going gets tough. We are the doe-eyed ewes, the ravenous wild pack, and the cowardly and treacherous help.

We are wolves when we care more about our own comfort than the basic needs of persons living on the East Side, less than three miles from where we worship right now.

 I am a wolf when I lie and I tell someone living on the street that I don’t have any change in my pocket.

I am a craven hired hand when I gossip, when I tear down rather than build up, when I’m lazy at prayer, when I give in to the temptation to give up.

 I am a wolf when I thwart God’s plans in my life and in the lives of others.

When being right is more important than being holy, I am a wolf. I abandon the sheep when I choose to follow my own way, rather than the way of the shepherd.

Within us, we sometimes allow the wolf to run free, and at other times, we allow the sheep in us to follow our good shepherd. We are constantly struggling to do both good and evil: to be selfless and selfish. We are our own wolves in sheep’s clothing and sheep in wolves’ clothing.

Our Patron, St. Paul, giant of the faith, great apostle of Asia Minor, Martyr in Rome, St Paul knew himself to struggle with being a wolf. In hiss epistle to the Romans, to the community among whom he would eventually be beheaded in 67 AD, he writes “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” St. Paul desired to be led by the Lord who called him to greater and holier life, but wrestled with wanting to run away from helping others just like the currish hired hand, and grappled with sin and temptation like a wolf that snaps at the heels.

In his novel, The Chosen, Chaim Potok writes of a Hasidic family in Brooklyn in the 1950s. Reb Isaac Saunders had led his community from Russia to a four-block radius in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. His leadership literally saved the lives of hundreds of his people, and they flourished in mid-century New York.

His son, Danny, was to take his father’s place as Rebbe and to ensure that the people lived in peace and faithful obedience to the Lord of the Universe who had sheltered them and brought them to a place of safety.

Danny, though, felt called in another direction. He heard within his deepest self an invitation to study and to learn psychology. He heard a clarion call to do other than his father’s deepest wish.

The discussion about that went poorly.

Reb Saunders had sacrificed everything for his people, had dutifully raised his son and given Danny the finest education in the Law of Moses possible. Father and son spent hours studying the Law, learning together how God had saved their people, and called them from hopelessness to unfathomable joy.

It took Reb Saunders a long while to think, to ponder what his son was doing. About how hard it had been for Danny to quietly say no, to turn down becoming Rebbe. At first blush, our good shepherd metaphor today would likely have cast Danny as the hired hand, running at the first chance. But the novel doesn’t end there. For you see, not only did Reb Saunders know and love the Law, he knew and loved the Author of the Law. He slowly recognized that his desire to see his Hasidic community continue in safety was blinding him to what God was calling Danny to do. The Rebbe wanted Danny to succeed him. The Almighty had other plans.

And because He loved the Living God, Reb Saunders gave Danny his blessing, though it meant forsaking his heir, leaving his scion to go another way.

Reb Saunders was a wolf. He was driving Danny away from the One who was leading him. Even with the best intentions, Reb Saunders was harassing the plans of God for the destiny of one of his sheep. Once he realized it, Reb Saunders killed the wolf inside his heart and did the unthinkable, he blessed his son, and permitted God to be God, and to take Danny on another path.

In our own tradition, and in our Scriptures, we heard this morning the example of St. Peter recorded the Acts of the Apostles and his declaration of Jesus Christ: There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved. St. Peter knew who his own Good Shepherd was. He pointed to Christ as his Lord, as the one who called him to pasture, to joy, to completeness. Peter was able to lead the Church as an apostle because he sought Christ first.


We are still shepherded by those who followed in the ministry of the apostles. We, as the Church, are led by bishops, laypersons, deacons and priests who are true and faithful leaders because they seek not their own glory, but the glory of Christ who saves us from eternal death. The best leaders among us are those who silently, solemnly, and humbly point to Christ. To paraphrase a sermon from Fr. Andy Newbert this past Advent, we should leave church humming the tune of Christ, not singing the praises of the one who led us in worship.

And just as we are still shepherded by Christ’s abiding presence among us in the leadership of His Church, most preciously also are we guided by Christ through His presence among us in the sacraments. These sacraments reveal our wolfish ways, and help us convert from lupine to ovine.

We are shepherded by the Eucharist, wherein the shepherd lays down His life for His sheep, and becomes the very sustenance and pasture to which He led them. He is our true Lord, our Good Shepherd, and our daily bread. He calls us to cling to Him, to hold fast to Him, to never lose sight of Him as He guides us to lush fields.

And this morning, the life He gave for us is given to us again in the Eucharist we will share.

On Easter morning, St Augustine, the fifth century bishop of Hippo in North Africa, preached to the adults who had been newly baptized the evening before at the Great Vigil. He preached about Christ’s call to them to be changed, to be conformed to Christ’s image. St. Augustine told those newly baptized, that as they receive Christ in the Eucharist, they were to pray that they would become what they receive. They were to pray that they themselves were to become Eucharist to others. Like Christ in the Sacrament, like Christ as the Good Shepherd, they were to lay down their lives for others. They were to be broken and shared. They were to communicate the grace and power of Christ’s presence under the veil of their ordinary lives. Eucharist was not just a personal gift to them, nor is Eucharist just a personal gift to us: it is grace to be communicated to others. We are to take that grace to a hurting world, a world of running wolves, and to bring Christ to the darkest places. We are to think not of the cost to ourselves, but are to think of the gain to Christ.

Christ tells us that he came into the world for those who are in need, that he came for the sick, not the healthy. We are among the sick. Christ comes to us as our shepherd in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, and sends us out to be sacraments to others. Like St Peter, it is our call to confess that Christ saves, that Christ heals, that there is no other name under heaven for healing and for life.

And in the Eucharistic Prayer, we are reminded ”Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Sacrament for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” It’s time to form a deeper and more meaningful relationship with Christ, and to meet Him in the Sacrament He gives us. It’s time to get Him off retainer and get Him into our lives. We all have wolves prowling around in our hearts, and without Christ, we will continue to hurt others and hurt ourselves.

Christ comes in the Eucharist this morning to rip the wolfskin off each of us and to bring us to a safe and holier place, a place of glory, of awe, of service to and unity with the poor and forgotten. This is the day of our salvation, the Eucharist is the nexus between Heaven and earth, and this morning to each of us, Christ extends healing, joy, and the loving leadership as the Good Shepherd whose life is given for our life.

 Amen.