SHEPHERDS AND SHEEPDOGS

A dog is a dog and maybe we do not think much more about it. There are big dogs, like Alsatians, and small ones, like fox terriers. But dogs are dogs and they are just there – part of the environment, maybe making visitors or intruders think twice before approaching a house, but not much more.

There is, however, one type of dog that always captures my interest; the humble sheepdog. Every farmer, especially those who kept sheep, in the part of the world I come from, had one. The dogs were so dedicated to their work there were festivals and shows where they would display their skills. They were ‘one’ with the shepherd and could interpret every whistle, every call and sign.

They would go out to the hillside, gather the sheep and urge them to go in a certain direction – to a new grazing ground or to the sheepfold. What is intriguing to watch is their gentle manner. They never frightened the sheep, never lead them to panic – like a wolf would. They just nudged them along.

Whenever a sheep makes a break for freedom and runs off on its own, the dog races round it and block its path, never bighting it, never touching it, but just crouching in front and staring the errant animal in the eye. The sheep would then give in and turn back and re-join the flock.

Once a year we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday and perhaps we have our own images about what a good shepherd is. This is mine. The shepherd is there watching. He sends out his faithful helpers to show people the way home, the way to nourishment and security. If one of them strays they go in search and gently nudge them back.

A shepherd is a timeless image of a guardian – patient, gentle, faithful and prepared to go to enormous trouble to seek out someone in trouble. ‘Browser’, like so many words, has been picked by technology to serve that giant’s purpose. But it is a word that goes back to Ezekiel: ‘My people will browse in rich pastures on the mountains of Israel’ (34:14).

To browse is to explore and advances, big and small, have come with browsing. Modern education, at its best, encourages exploration. But there are many today who explore dangerously. Frustrated by the inequity of our age, they wander in to the hands of drug dealers and lose their way – even their lives.

We have a need for good shepherds.

30 April 2023             Easter Sunday 4A       Acts 2:36-42    1 Pet 2:20-25   Jn 10:1-10

DISSOLVE INTO IT

 

DISSOLVE INTO IT

The late Pianist Sviatoslav Richter explained his approach to playing music as being an ‘executant, carrying out the composer's intentions to the letter. He doesn't add anything that isn't already in the work. If he is talented, he allows us to glimpse the truth of the work that is in itself a thing of genius and that is reflected in him. He shouldn't dominate the music, but should dissolve into it.’

I found these astonishing words because they explain how we are part of a reality that is much greater than we are but at the same time we each have our own individuality, enabling us to contribute to that great reality.  The ancient Greeks puzzled over the question of the ‘one and the many’. In what sense are we just ‘one of the masses’, a brick in a wall indistinguishable from any other brick? And in what sense are we unique with our own indispensable contribution so that if we are not there the wall is incomplete?

I am always amazed by the gospel stories. Jesus is never impressed by numbers – even when there were so many they were ‘trampling on one another’ (Lk 12:1). The overwhelming impression is of relating to one person at a time; Peter, Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene, the woman at the well, Zacchaeus. It is the same when we come to the resurrection stories. Again it is Mary at the tomb. Or the two going to Emmaus or Thomas. It is an essential of the Christian message that each person is unique to God and that he loves each person individually and eternally.

At the same time the witness of the mystics is that the more a person comes close to God they more they feel the draw to be ‘dissolved’ into the divine. They leave to one side, for example, the desire of what Claire Gilbert, in a recent issue of the Tablet calls, ‘pride in achievement.’ In other words, they leave behind any desire to be known or celebrated for ‘what I have done.’ They loathe the idea of drawing attention to themselves. They come into this world, make their contribution and go – a bit like Anna in the temple (Lk 2:36). No fuss, no fame.

Such people, as Richter and Anna, point the way to the beautiful harmony that must exist between the one and many. The one is for the many and the many are for the one. If we could live this balance, what a beautiful world we would have! It would be heaven.

23 April 2023              Easter 3A        Acts 2:22-33       1 Pet 1:17-21                    Lk 24:13-35

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BREAKTHROUGH

 

BREAKTHROUGH

For centuries people dreamt of flying. Then we did it. In 1903, the first plane left the ground. What a breakthrough! Less than seventy years later we landed on the moon! Who can believe what men and women can do? It is astonishing.

Easter is moving from ignorance to enlightenment. From one way of being to another. We tend to make Thomas a scapegoat for our unbelief. ‘Doubting Thomas’. But does he deserve the description any more than we do? Everyone who appears in the resurrection narratives in the gospels ‘couldn’t believe it’ at first. They were all doubters. Then they moved to a new state of knowledge which allowed frightened Peter to stand up and address ‘the whole House of Israel.’ It was a breakthrough for him, for them and for us.

The gospels are replete with stories of breakthrough. The woman at the well was a frightened broken woman, the target of derision in her community. Then she listened to everything Jesus said to her and slowly she was lifted out of herself. She dropped, not just her water jar, but her whole earlier way of life. It was a breakthrough.

It is hard for us, Easter after Easter, to grasp the newness of the Easter event. We get used to it. Yet occasionally you see a spark that lights up the scene. This week. I watched a video interview on you tube with Amai Takura, composer of many of our bast known Shona liturgical music. I learnt a lot about what she has actually done but I was even more touched by how she did it. Her faith bristled with life. Every sentence was an acknowledgement that her work was a gift. Her part was to receive and do the hard work of crafting the gift into a composition that resonated with people. Faith has broken through into her life big time.

Early on in John’s gospel we have the awful words: ‘though the light has come into the world, people have preferred darkness’ (3:19). Easter is the proclamation of opportunity, of choice. Every generation intuits this. Thomas could have persisted in his stubbornness, his darkness – ‘unless I see …’ – but he didn’t. He grasped the gift that was offered.  That is the joy of Easter; to lay hold of the gift that is ours, to allow it to percolate into our being, to witness to the breakthrough in which we share.

‘Oh! That you would break through the heavens and come down!’ (Is 63:19) That is exactly what he did.

16 April 2023        Easter 2A    Acts 2:42-47         1 Pet 1:3-9      Jn 20:19-31  

HAPPY EASTER!

 

HAPPY EASTER!

Happy Easter! What is the content of this greeting? Christ has risen! We do not have to understand exactly what that means but it helps if we do! We go further. Jesus has shown us that death has no ‘sting’ (1 Cor 15:55). We do not have to fear it. It is tamed. It is almost a friend. And what is more: its source, sin, has no more power to enslave. We can be free. So, let the Halleluia chorus ring out!

But how did Jesus do it? How is death tamed? How did he free us from sin? He walked our roads and invited us to follow him. He raised us from our ‘daze’ (Mk 10:32), lifting us to believe that if we choose him he will show us the way.

He was determined, setting his face like ‘flint’ (Is 50:7), facing whatever evil could throw at him and never giving in. Evil crushed him, but only physically. It tormented him and killed him, but it could do no more. He showed that, although we are ‘body’, we are more than body. We are spirit. Nothing on this earth can crush spirit.

The spirit of a person, of a society and of the world grows and grows - like a mustard seed. This is beautifully shown in the most recent Council, the meeting of two and a half thousand bishops at the Vatican in the 1960s. The Council placed the Church at the heart of humanity and, perhaps for the first time, claimed that the secular is the proper realm of God’s dynamic and saving love. The Church manifests Christ as the soul of humanity, the life-giving leaven of creation.  

And, also for the first time, the Council welcomed the achievements of the Enlightenment, the age of reason, which broke upon the Church in the seventeenth century and seemed such a threat then. As the centuries passed, the Church acknowledged the fruits of that age in, for example, the emphasis on human freedom which the prophets of reason proclaimed, And, as James Hanvey strikingly wrote, ‘the Council out-thinks the secular atheistic view and asserts that secularism is an integral part of the incarnation’. Freedom is not claiming our absolute autonomy but recognises that we are called to go beyond ourselves. This is not a limitation but a fulfilment.

All this is contained in the Easter message but now there is something more. The Church must listen and learn from secular research. It was not priests and bishops who laid bear our sins in the abuse scandals but the journalists. It is they who fearlessly battered us, like the widow with the unjust judge in the gospel. Finally we paid attention. It has been painful but now we – insofar as we have listened - , and those we abused, are free. We are humbled and purified like brash Peter when Jesus ‘looked at him… and he went out and wept’ (Lk 22:61).