A sermon for 18 June 2023, Year A Proper 6: Sheep among wolves

It was a good morning for birds at my window feeder. I have it set up across from my desk, close enough that I could reach out and touch it, except that the glass is in the way, and I have a small square of reflective film taped up to make that section of window into a two-way mirror. As long as I keep fairly still and quiet, the birds don’t see me. It means that my cup of tea is growing cold while they eat – the pair of finches that dropped by yesterday were really making the most of the breakfast buffet. After them there was a pair of tufted titmice (titmouses?). I know nothing about birds, but I know that I love it when they come close, as though I were trustworthy. Is this what it is, to be cunning as a serpent, with my two-way glass to fool them close, and as tender as a dove, with my cooling cup of tea and my rapt admiration? Of course, if they could see me, they would recognize a predator. And when the cats come flying across my desk, everyone’s breakfast is all over.

When Jesus sends out his disciples, he tells them, he tells us, that he is sending them like sheep among wolves. It is not an insult, mind you, to be a sheep, not in Jesus’ mouth. Sheep are communal animals: they are God’s flock, God’s people, God’s community. Throughout the scriptures, the ancient and the merely old, God’s sheep are beloved, sought after. They are valuable, they are valued. They belong together, and they belong to God.

Wolves are fairly self-explanatory. They are beautiful, but dangerous. They are almost seductive in their wildness, their mystique, their strength; but they are dangerous. They belong in the ecosystem, because nothing, no one that God has made does not belong somewhere; and if you see one up close, you know it to be a predator.

Jesus did not call his disciples to be wolves. Predation is not one of the gifts of the Spirit. Jesus was not a lone wolf, but the Lamb of God, born into the flock of God’s own people.

This sending of Jesus’ disciples is full of apparent contradictions. Be like serpents, and like doves. Stay, and flee. Beware, but do not worry. Offer peace, and shake the dust off your feet. Raise the dead.

Life is full of contradictions, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to every situation. Except the gospel.

Be wise; be gentle. Be not afraid; cast out demons. Carry peace with you; leave peace behind you; let your peace return to you. Be sheep, for you are the flock of God; stay together, and remember the green pastures in which the Good Shepherd leads you, the deep and still waters of creation among which your Shepherd feeds you.

This morning, we had a reminder of what it is to be the flock, the sheep-fold of God. A little lamb escaped from his barn up the street. His mother came running to the church, crying for him, where she found our open doors and people to help seek him out. On the other side of the church, a man found a little one walking outside by himself and was concerned; he pulled into the church parking lot and picked up the boy, recognizing this as a safe place to seek help for a lost lamb. Because they saw us as a safe place for all sheep, we were able to play a small role in reuniting the little lamb with his mother, a little healing to our neighborhood.

In the next month or so I will not be around so much. Next Sunday, I’ll be at Chautauqua as the Episcopal chaplain for the week, taking some time for continuing education and refreshment in that meadow. Though we are many, we are one body, for we all share in the same bread, and as I break it there, I will be thinking of you.

The following Sunday morning, I’ll be back here briefly before I leave for a month’s sabbatical for the remainder of July. You are going to hear new voices: newly licensed Worship Leaders, and visiting priests; and always when you hear it you will know the voice of Jesus, the voice of the Good Shepherd who calls each of us by name. Stay together, flock, people of God, gifts of God for the world.

While I was typing this sermon into my laptop, one of the kittens did, indeed, come to join in the bird-watching. As you may imagine, that put the cat among the pigeons for real. The birds still chanced it once in a while. They have come to know that they are safe here.

The cat also did a bit of typing while she was rolling around on the desk. She wanted to add a word on behalf of the wolf. She said:

“Once, in my ancestral imagination, I was a lioness, fierce and feared. I still sometimes examine my claws in awe at what havoc they might wreak. I look at my sister’s teeth and recognize the fangs of an ancient nature. Yet here we lie, content to be coddled and cuddled by a softer species. Even if I caught the cardinal, I wouldn’t know quite what to do with him. I am not sorry, but while I am still shaped like a predator, I have become quite domesticated, tamed by love. You see, a leopard cannot change his spots, and a wolf will always have a complicated relationship with the sheep, but love changes everything. Love feeds the birds and saves me from my worst impulses towards them. Love sets a table before me in the midst of many distractions and attractions, and bids me eat.”

She made a number of typos while inputting this message, but I think I got the gist of it. I like to think that she was channeling the words of the prophet:

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, 
the calf and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together,
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox…

They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
[when] the earth [is] full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.              (Isaiah 11:6-7,9)