“The shepherds stand between the wolves and the sheep.”
An Answered Prayer
Not too long ago, a schoolteacher set off on a cross country road trip to visit the places she had only taught about. She travelled alone in a truck with a camper in tow. As she approached Sacramento on Interstate 5, the water pump in her truck failed and the truck and camper stalled in the middle of the freeway. Cars began to honk and people began to yell, but she was alone, tired, and scared and didn’t know what to do. In spite of the traffic jam she caused no one offered to help.
She leaned up against the camper and prayed to God that He send an angel to help her, preferably one who was also a mechanic.
Only minutes later a large Harley Davidson pulled up, ridden by an even larger man. He had long hair, a black full beard and tattoos covering his arms. He jumped off the bike and, without a word to the teacher, started to work on the engine. After a few minutes he flagged down a passing truck, attached a chain to the disabled vehicle and pulled it off to the side of the road where he continued working.
The teacher was speechless. She didn’t know what to say, especially when she saw the back of the biker’s jacket which read “Hell’s Angels, California.” As he finished the repairs and closed the hood, the school teacher finally got up the nerve to say “thank you so much,” and carry on a brief conversation with her savior. He could see her discomfort at his appearance and finally, looking her straight in the eye, said, “Don’t judge a book by its cover. You may not know who you are talking to.” With that, he jumped back on his bike, and with a smile and a wave he disappeared back into traffic as suddenly as he had come.
Sheep and Wolves
How often do we judge people before we truly know them?
When we reduce people to categories rather than individuals, we sow the seeds for all hatred, prejudice, racism, rejection and persecution. This is what it means to objectify someone, to make them no longer a person, to make them into an object. And we are very good at creating categories that keep people at arms’ length and reduce them to a simple equation.
But Jesus is the way. He knows His sheep and calls them by name. We matter to Him personally, all people matter to Him, even those not of this fold. To overcome prejudice, and hatred, is to see as Jesus sees, to know as He knows, to call as He calls, and to forgive as He forgives.
It is common today to see self-help gurus and financial advisors say something to the effect of, “there are two kinds of people, sheep and wolves, you are either one or the other.”
And while this may sound motivating in a workshop, inspiring the attendees to be aggressive in obtaining the wealth, rank, privilege, power, etc., that they desire, I think it is missing something. I would submit there is a third group of people, the shepherds. The shepherds stand between the wolves and the sheep.
Throughout Christian history God has chosen the quiet, unassuming ones to further His plan for our salvation. These are the great teachers, doctors of the Church and awe inspiring shepherds who teach and guide and protect the people of God. More often than not they are men and women of humble origins who never aspired to take on such important roles.
It is something of a truism in Christian thought that God accomplishes great things with the most unlikely of people. One could argue that the entirety of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic, “Lord of the Rings” is based on this principle. Gandalf the wizard may well have been describing the shepherds when he said:
“I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.” (J. R. R. Tolkien ~ The Hobbit)
Look at the twelve apostles as if you were evaluating them by today’s standards. Peter is impetuous to a fault. James and John are more interested in personal gain than in a corporate mission. Andrew is too deferential to be considered leader. Thomas questions authority. Matthew is universally disliked for his business practices, and so on. Who would choose such common, ordinary men for such an important mission?
In an essay collected in the book “Tremendous Trifles,” G.K. Chesterton mused on the power of the ordinary.
“Our civilization has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
Writer Paul Cornell put it this way in an episode of “Doctor Who.” “An ordinary man: that’s the most important thing in creation. The whole world’s different because he’s alive!”
The extraordinary is all around us, hidden in the ordinary. The shepherds who protect and guide and simply help the people of God are usually the most unassuming of men and women.
To get past ignorance and assumptions about people we need to see them as people, with a name and a history. We must be more interested in people as individuals than in things that in the end do not matter at all. We must be more interested in the book than in its cover.
Christus Resurrexit!
4th Sunday of Easter