How sheep protect each other

A Reflection for Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent

Find today’s readings here.

When Patrick J. Ryan, S.J., died earlier this year, many of his friends remembered fondly his wry sense of humor, informed by the rare combination of earthiness and erudition that was such a part of his personality. Many years working in Africa, oftentimes in somewhat rural settings, had also given him an understanding of many biblical images of animal husbandry that can be somewhat foreign to urban dwellers in the 21st century. For example, he was fond of pointing out to American students that there’s a bit more going on when Jesus or the Psalmist talks about all of us as God’s special flock. Sheep, Father Ryan observed, are actually rather dumb.

“Throw a rock at a sheep,” he said once (from the pulpit!). “It will simply go baaaa and move two feet to the left. Throw a rock at a goat? It will charge you with every intent of head-butting you into unconsciousness.”

And yet the hapless sheep get all the good press in the Bible; the smart, capable goats, not so much. I suppose there’s something comforting about that—God telling us “you’re not always all that bright, and you don’t get the message, and you’re always getting lost, but I care for you anyway.”

Many a preacher has used today’s famous parable of the lost sheep to stress God’s care for each of us individually; the message is that the one lost sheep is just as valuable in God’s eyes as all the sheep together. There’s something suspiciously American in that formulation though, isn’t there? The Gospels are otherwise not really how-to manuals for rugged individualism. Maybe that’s because we don’t ask what the other 99 are doing while the shepherd is off chasing the stray.

That lost sheep has little chance of finding its way back to the herd, and so is likely doomed if the shepherd doesn’t track it down and bring it back. A sheep alone has no defense against a wolf, a lion or even an opportunistic thief. But the shepherd is putting the other 99 in danger by leaving them behind, isn’t he? Don’t they also deserve protection?

They have it, in the form of one another. Their strength is found in the herd. So the shepherd can consider them safe if he tucks the herd away in the hills while he conducts his search, knowing they’re looking out for one another.
That’s a different emphasis from “God cares about each of us as individuals,” but it’s an equally important one. The Good Shepherd promises to look after each of us as our own special child of God, and that Shepherd also wants us to look out for one another while that search is taking place. There is always time to bring back the one who has gone astray if the rest of us stick together.

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