sheep and shepherds

I have been struggling to find something to say about sheep and shepherds this week. It is not that there is nothing to say on this very major Biblical theme, there is a lot, even a lot more than I have managed to cram into sermons on the subject over the years. But sometimes, I suppose, God just wants us to wait on Him, and so, with a growing sense of dis-ease over the week I have waited.
And then came along Psalm 80 at the office - Hear, O thou shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep shew thyself also, thou that sittest upon the cherubims.  Before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasses  stir up thy strength, and come, and help us.  Turn us again, O God  shew the light of thy countenance, and we shall be whole.
And no, before you ask we do not use BCP, we use Common Worship but my brain still defaults to the old psalter (this morning during morning prayer I swtiched to the 1662 Easter Anthems as I was distracted by a children's talk thought).
This is God, this is God who sits upon a throne with great heavenly beasts at His command. This is the God who chose Israel to be chosen, who walked with them and saved them. This is God who holds everything that is - and yet, he is called to be the shepherd of his people and to come to their aid.
The difference between a good and a bad shepherd is their motivation. A bad shepherd will seek to look after themselves first and a good one to safeguard the sheep at all costs. What makes the cry in the Psalm all the more extra-ordinary is that the people cry to God as their good shepherd when they have been exhibiting every sign of being the most wilful and dangerous sorts of sheep.
Jesus is already skating on thin ice in John 10 when he calls himself the shepherd. Shepherd is often used for God in the Old Testament - and it is bad enough that Jesus would call himself God - but what makes this metaphor worse is the fact that shepherd, in Ezekiel, is linked to David and the idea of messiah -claiming to be both God and messiah was a road to a very nasty and public clash with the Jewish authorities.
For anyone with pastoral scenes of gently rolling hills in the back of their mind Jesus is describing himself as a shepherd but he is a shepherd in driving rain trying to get the flock to safe shelter, he is already paying the price for his choice to shepherd and his choices will lead him into even worse storms. As the cry of Israel in Psalm 80 is anguished so is this plea of Jesus for those who are beginning to pursue him so viciously to turn about.
If you just take the headline words in the Gospel Jesus is Word, light, bread, water, messiah, shepherd and then in chapter 11 he will offer himself as resurrection in the raising of Lazarus. There is little wonder that the authorities were furious but I sometimes feel stumped as to why they did not just get the message that this Jesus, was the one they had been hoping for and so much more.
The tone of Psalm 80 is the tone of people who know they are loved, it is the song of people who have a God who is bigger than they are.  Jesus offers us something much bigger than ourselves to, He is the one who knows us, he is the one who will keep us safe, he is the entrance to the safety of the place of god and that entry is bought through his own death, his own good-shepherdness.
And these are big and powerful things to offer. I wonder how often we consider what it really means to be loved so much, each and every one of us, by a God who loves this much. A God who is all these wonderful things to us and so much more. How are we as sheep in the fold and as importantly how are we as shepherds. At the end of this same Gospel, Jesus hands over this shepherding task to Peter and thereby to all of his followers. We are then both those tended and those who tend.
How are we at either of those tasks - do we long for long quiet walks on sunny days either as leaders or as followers or can we look at Jesus and see a shepherd who endured inhospitable terrain and weathered rough storms to bring his people to safety.
Our calling may be to enjoy the quiet moments but for the most part we do not make very good sheep and we tend to be self-interested and stubborn when it comes to being shepherds.
There is still, in the back of people's minds, a sort of country idyll of church - although I doubt that life was ever really like that. Even George Herbert, that most country of parsons, expresses doubt and anger at God in some of his writings - sheep and shepherds are not easy currency to deal in.
And yet that is where we are called - to a place where we are loved as those who are called and precious to God - where we are know by name by the God of all life and all time. We are called to that place of receiving but also to a place of giving - a place where we must lead and tend those around us. This mutuality must all be accompanied by a self-giving to which most of us spend a life-time aspiring. But this is the model - God and Messiah, giving all for us and asking all from us.