April 26, 2021
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily for the 4th Sunday of Easter (Year B) on April 25, 2021 at St. Austin Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Acts 4:8-12; Psalm 118; 1 John 3:1-2; and John 10:11-18.
Throughout the Bible, most of the metaphors about sheep – with both positive and negative qualities – are applied to all people. We are vulnerable, communitarian beings. Most biblical metaphors mentioning shepherds are about kings, priests, and prophets taking on leadership roles within the flock. It does not mean that these people are no longer vulnerable, communitarian sheep themselves.
We have all been baptized as kings, priests, and prophets within the kingdom of God, which means that God calls each of us to be both a sheep and a shepherd of sheep. A good shepherd is someone who journeys with the sheep in a relationship of love, care, and wisdom. While Jesus may be the ultimate Good Shepherd, all baptized people are called to share in this shepherding ministry.
Unfortunately, because the Bible was written in cultures where almost all kings, priests, and prophets were male,1 and because we belong to a church with an exclusively male clergy, we tend to overlay the metaphors of sheep and shepherds with implications about power and gender. Today, let us try to shake the patriarchal shackles from the metaphor and listen in new ways. May we each assist in extending the love and mercy of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, to all people!
Jesus is the Good Shepherd and we are the sheep. However, the Holy Spirit empowers all of us to exercise a shepherding role in loving and caring for our fellow sheep with wisdom. We usually call this “pastoral ministry.” While ordained priesthood is a wonderful, life-giving way to exercise a shepherding ministry, it is only one of countless wonderful, life-giving ways to exercise a shepherding ministry. Probably the best example is to be a parent or guardian of a child or a vulnerable adult. The Holy Spirit calls many of us to helping professions – including teaching, medical care, and counseling, of course, but also many other fields where we truly serve our brothers and sisters in ways that make the world a better place for everyone. But even for those of us not in “shepherding” careers, the Holy Spirit invites us to give some of our time, talent, and treasure to the love and care of others, both in one-time charitable acts and in longer-term volunteer and advocacy roles.
In some ways, the pandemic has scattered us all as sheep without a shepherd. Thank God for the connections we can make through video chats, phone calls, and email, but since at least 70% of all communication is nonverbal, we’re operating at a deficit when we’re not physically present to one another. Every teacher, student, and school parent can tell you how much harder education is in the hybrid model. It is harder for medical professionals to bond with patients through the barriers of masks, face shields, gloves, and gowns. So many volunteering opportunities have vanished during the time of social distancing.
We have a long way to go before we can gather in-person as we used to. Many of our neighbors and most of our children are not yet vaccinated. The virus continues to replicate in the United States and around the world, increasing the risk of more resistant and more deadly variants developing. In the past week and a half, Covid-19 hospitalizations in Travis County have begun increasing again, after declining for several months.
At the same time, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel, so we can each pray about how we can expand our shepherding activities when it becomes safe to do so. Almost everyone initially approaches pastoral ministry with fear and trepidation. How can any of us be worthy to stand in for Jesus the Good Shepherd? And yet, almost everyone in a pastoral role soon discovers that they receive so much more in their ministry than they give.
While we have continued to function as a parish community during this period of isolation, it’s been hard for anyone to give or receive gifts as effectively as before. Many of our liturgical ministers – especially those who sing in musical ensembles and those who take communion to hospital patients – know that it’s not yet safe for them to return to their pre-pandemic ministry roles. Because faith formation needs to be done in the home and online, our dedicated catechists can’t serve in their usual role among a roomful of children. Our volunteers for Gabriel Project, Thursday Outreach, and St. Vincent de Paul are helping record numbers of people, but because we’re offering the assistance remotely, the most important and satisfying part of the ministry – showing care and compassion through body language – is not happening. In this time of being “together apart,” it’s harder for us to communicate messages, to thank everyone for their contributions, and to maintain a sense of community. We have new volunteers anxious to jump in, but because of restrictions on in-person EIM training, it’s difficult for them to get started.
How can we effectively care for the suffering, the sorrowful, and the anxious when our ability to use nonverbal communication is drastically reduced? It’s easy to focus on what we can’t do, rather than on the opportunities we have to continue to express God’s love. Even if we’re caring for people with our faces and hands covered or behind a screen, the Holy Spirit is still using all of us as instruments to communicate God’s love and mercy.
People who work in the helping professions do not do it for the glamor, for the fame, or for the paycheck. People who volunteer do not do it for the attention, for the commute, or – especially at Paulist parishes – for the parking. Yet, there’s something extremely rewarding about pastoral ministry: a sense of purpose. Someone breaks into tears in my office, on the phone, or in a video call almost every day, and those tears indicate the significance of the ministry. We interact with people at their moments or greatest joy and greatest sadness… and in this time of isolation, a lot of us have left the necessary emotional processing undone!
However and whenever we’re each called to pastoral ministry, it’s easy to fear that we’ll be more like the hired person than the Good Shepherd. But that is not the case! We might not know all the names and all the quirks of our fellow sheep, and not all of them may recognize our voices, but we can still express care and compassion. That’s what matters. Every time we make eye contact with a stranger, provide an opportunity for social connection, or console a grieving family member – whether online or in-person – we are good enough in our imitation of the Good Shepherd.
Podcast art: Anton Mauve, Shepherdess with Flock of Sheep (c.1870-88). Sourced from Flickr/Gandalf’s Gallery/CC-BY-2.0.
Notes:
- Exceptions to each category: Athalia was queen of Judah (2 Kings 8:16 – 11:16); Miriam may have served in liturgical leadership (Exodus 2 through Numbers 20); Deborah was a prophet/judge (Judges 4:1 – 5:31). ↩