lighten our darkness

 

after a long week, with minimal time to prepare, a few random and tangled thoughts about sheep, rams especially, about tragedy, and about stained glass windows. 

SERMON PREACHED at St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN 

& St PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN,

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (April 21st) 2024

 

READINGS

 

1 John 3: 16-24

Psalm 23

John 10:11-18

You may be aware of the tragedy this past week, when a Waitākere couple were killed by a rogue ram. Our hearts go out to the next of kin and to all affected by this rare and devastating event.

How far removed this terrible Waitākere event is from the imagery that Jesus is seeking to invoke as he describes himself in terms of Middle Eastern imagery of shepherding. Or is it? The Waitākere event in all its starkness can remind us how cautious we must be in reading scriptures set down two thousand years ago. How vulnerable we are. How vulnerable the gospel and its Christ is.

In the harsh world in which Jesus was living and teaching was far removed from the romantic Europeanised scenes of Jesus, wearing an Anglican alb, walking home through meadows with a lamb on his shoulders. It was a world of danger.

Jesus was not of talking about rams turning feral and killing people. He was speaking of shepherds protecting sheep in a harsh region. There, wolves and lions were a constant threat, and sheep breeds were as tough as nails. 

That world produced brutal instinctive forces, forces that surfaced in the Waitākere tragedy. That tragedy turns our reading upsidedown. 

That horror was possible because sheep in their ancestry had to coexist with fierce predators. Every farmer recognizes the dangers inherent in animals, no matter where they stand on the food chain. My last funeral in one of my parishes was of a farmer killed in a cattle crush by a bull turned rogue. 

Jesus in this “I am” saying places himself in contexts far closer to the protective instincts of feral Waitākere rams than to the romantic scenes of stained glass windows and children’s bibles. He protects - they protect. They protect by attacking a perceived threat - who were in fact the protectors and care-givers of the ram. Life convolutes - and sometimes in convolution we may struggle to find meaning.   

As European Christians – most of us here – we need to put aside our accrued imagery. I’m reminded of the lessons that Anne and I learned in the Northern Territory, as we listened to and read the experiences of Aboriginal people, common to First Nations people from around the colonised world.

As missionaries came to the indigenous people and spoke of shepherds and sheep there was a complete breakdown in communication. What was a shepherd? What was a sheep? What was the relationship between the two?

If I were to speak of this parable in some of the more remote but still europeanised parts of the world, in which stock lived in isolated and vulnerable contexts, I would probably illustrate the shepherding of and by Jesus in terms of Maremma dogs. Originally from ancient Europe, they bond with and fiercely protect vulnerable flocks and herds. They indeed will be prepared to lay down their life for the sheep, though it would have to be a ferocious predator that overcame a Maremma.

Some farmers are rediscovering the benefits of these dogs, as they live out in the paddocks with the flocks, day in, day out. There they reduce if not eliminate predatory carnage. They are not pets, at least in their natural state, but are strongly effective tools.  The ram became the Maremma in thie Waitākere tragedy. But ram got it wrong. The victims were his and his herd's protectors and care givers.

"I am the good Maremma." It does no harm to remind ourselves of the very different world in which Jesus taught. The killer rams with which I opened these thoughts are far closer to the realities of Jesus’ pastoral world than are our stained-glass depictions.

We need to be careful how we interpret and depict ancient scriptures. I am the fierce protective ram. Two years ago I was far less tragically bolted down a hillside by a protective ram; I had not seen him in the paddock next door, where I had gone to rescue a ewe tangled in fencing wire. My good intentions bore no weight with the protective ram. 

It was no new experience for me; as a small child I shared my life with a pet lamb who became a pet ram, and while he was harmless to most people he did take a liking to knocking yours truly over and reducing him to tears on more than one occasion. I remember Jamie with fear and trembling!

I do not want to minimise the tragedy of the Waitākere family so devastated by the loss of not one but two loved ones. But I want to emphasise how raw and rough was the world around Jesus as he spoke of his responsibilities towards his people, towards you and towards me and towards countless others.

The threats faced by those who have chosen the ways of justice and light and life and hope proclaimed in the gospels were not worlds of fluffy ducks, but worlds of all too real risks. In my comfortable world I have to remember that there are countless Christ-bearers, and other justice-bearers, who speak out to proclaim their faith in Christ, or commitment to justice, whether Christ-based or not, at great peril.

Reading this passage in the shadow of the Waitākere tragedy has led me to a place of convolution. The ram becomes the wolf and the would-be care-givers, looking after the flock, become the victims, and lose their lives. Metaphors are dangerous places, but what we must extrapolate is that the Christ who proclaims himself our shepherd will be with us even in the most vulnerable times, the most tenuous and dark circumstances. That is immeasurably good news. But there is inherent in this passage an extra challenge, and that is that we too are called to be advertisements of, bearers of the strength of the shepherd Christ.

I have confessedly led you around in circles as I try to tease meaning in the 21^st century from a profound ancient image. It is an image much watered down by over-use and over-familiarity. The meaning is upsidedown in the light of the Waitākere tragedy. Perhaps all we can say is that the good shepherds themselves were killed in this tragedy; and for that there is precedent. 

The passage works in many ways, culturally dependent. I am, says Jesus the fierce defender-shepherd. I am also, says Jesus, no tame pet. I lay down my life. I go to the darkest places. Our task sometimes is to find that light, bear that light, be that light.