"Sheeple": A Good Shepherd Sunday Sermon by Rev. Robin Bartlett

RESPONSIVE READING FROM THE PSALMS (Psalm 23)
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 
2   He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;* 
3   he restores my soul.*
He leads me in right paths*
   for his name’s sake. 

4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley,*
   I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
   your rod and your staff--
   they comfort me. 

5 You prepare a table before me
   in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
   my cup overflows. 
6 Surely* goodness and mercy* shall follow me
   all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
   my whole life long.*

READING FROM THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES (John 10: 11-18)
11“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

SERMON
It’s good Shepherd Sunday. Did you all know that? That’s one of those things that comes up in the church every year that only the pastor really knows or pays attention to. Happy Good Shepherd Sunday. Basically what that means is that many Protestant churches around America have a minister getting into the pulpit right now to talk about all the sheep and shepherd metaphors for God and Jesus in the Bible. This happens every year. So we are singing a bunch of songs about the Good Shepherd and reading a bunch of shepherd-y Bible verses this morning. Many of my fellow clergy this morning are talking to a bunch of folks who don’t know much about sheep and trying to make sheep relevant to their experience of being Christian, which is hard enough as it is, but at least they can make stuff up about sheep because no one in their congregation knows anything about the subject anymore. But I happen to be a city girl in a farm town preaching about sheep to the entire Davis family. And that just seems unfair. 

There are many other reasons that I feel uncomfortable talking about people as sheep, and they are largely cultural. I was at a collegial meeting with the Massachusetts United Church of Christ clergy the other day—sitting around with a bunch of Christian pastors talking about their churches. And one of them said, “you know what? This denomination is always trying to get us to whip our people up about social justice. But as pastors, our first job is feeding the sheep. We need to feed the sheep.” He kept saying that. “The sheep need feeding.” 

My fellow Unitarian Universalist clergy never talk about people as sheep. They know their people would rebel. And to be honest, I got a little weirded out by these guys using that term over and over, too. I get WHY they use it. I know that Jesus said “feed my sheep.” I know it’s a totally Christian metaphor—we pastors are often referred to as shepherds, and our churches are referred to as our flocks. But I have never been comfortable with it. I think as an American fed on a steady diet of individualism and independence, referring to people as sheep feels…wrong.  

So I decided to explore what that was about for me, because I should probably fix this problem I have with sheep if I’m going to pastor well, particularly in Sterling where sheep are in abundance. 

A term that I have heard a lot on the internet in the past decade or so is the word “sheeple.” It’s basically the worst insult you can level at someone in an internet comment section right now. Sheeple. I googled it for this sermon, and pulled this definition from the online urban dictionary: Sheeple: People unable to think for themselves. Followers. Lemmings. Those with no cognitive ablilities of their own. 

So when I hear my colleagues say, “We need to feed the sheep!” I think I was hearing, “we need to feed the people who are unable to think for themselves; the followers; the lemmings. The sheeple.” 

The term “sheeple” is most often used on the internet and Fox News by Tea Partiers to refer to Obama supporters. The term sheeple is also used by a particular pernicious form of so-called “New Atheists”—people who are fans of Christopher Hitchens of blessed memory and Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett (my seminary professor calls them the four horsemen of the apocalypse)-- to refer to all religious people, but particularly Christians. The word “sheeple” is used by democrats to insult republicans, and academics to insult the uneducated. It is a BAD WORD, and anybody gets to it knows no partisan or religious bounds.

And so I think, “No wonder I’m uncomfortable! How does one preach on Good Shepherd Sunday that it is a good thing to be like sheep?” It is one thing to talk about Jesus as the Good Shepherd, but doesn’t that make us all SHEEPLE? No wonder Christianity is having a hard time surviving in this country! Here we are confirming everyone’s fear about Christianity—which is that we are all a bunch of lemmings blindly following our “dear leader.” We even have a Sunday to celebrate it!”

So I did a little bit of not very impressive research on sheep, and Doug and John Davis are going to (kindly) correct me if I’m wrong and try not to be too judge-y.

Jesus says in our reading from John, “I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me.” And I think, from what I understand from my scholarly googling, Jesus is right about sheep. Apparently, sheep are not at all stupid as they are often portrayed. They are smart. They don’t follow each other like lemmings off a cliff one behind the other, they follow their shepherd. “My own know me,” Jesus says. Sheep won’t just follow any old person, as I understand it. They like to be led from the front by their shepherd, not pushed from behind and herded like cows. “My own know me,” Jesus says. Sheep are so smart that they know the voice of their shepherd, and can hear it in a crowd of other sheep and shepherds.  “My own know me,” Jesus says. They can discern the voice of the one they should follow, and follow. That’s pretty impressive. 

“My own know me,” Jesus says. Calling a group of people “sheep” connotes not that they are dumb, but that they are a group that knows who its leader is. When did this become a bad thing? To hear a leader’s voice, discern if the leader is your’s, and follow?

We live every day with the pervasive and dangerous myth that we are supposed to go it alone in this world, that we should follow nothing and no one but our own selfish desires, to heck with everyone. I don’t need a leader! I do what I want!

The truth is, following is what we are called to do. We belong to each other, and we are not meant to go it alone. We are called to be selfless. We are called even to lay down our lives for the Good. However, we must be able to know what’s good—to follow the right leaders. That’s not easy in a world in which a lot of different people and things who look a lot like shepherds would have us follow them instead. And so we need to be discerning like sheep are—to listen for the voice of God--amidst a deafening din of other voices asking us to follow them instead.

How do we know if we are hearing the voice of God—The Good Shepherd--over the voice of the many Bad Shepherds that want to lead us into a field of disconnection, mindless consumerism, the empty promises of the marketplace, the empty promises of addiction and false love? Are we smart enough to know our Shepherd’s voice? I contend we are.

Shepherd metaphors are used all the time in our scriptures because in Biblical times, the work of shepherding was vital and necessary to the economy. Poor people did this work, often teenaged boys. And it was hard, back-breaking work. It is the shepherds watching the flocks by night that first heard of the Christ child’s impending birth; were visited by an angel. Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd. His followers were referred to as his flock. So much art and stained glass, and particularly art from early Christianity, shows Jesus with a staff and a collection of sheep at his feet. And God as a shepherd was used as a metaphor in the Hebrew scriptures first. Perhaps the most beloved of all psalms, the 23rd psalm we heard this morning— 

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 
2   He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;* 
3   he restores my soul.*
He leads me in right paths*
   for his name’s sake. 

4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley,*
   I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
   your rod and your staff--
   they comfort me. 

5 You prepare a table before me
   in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
   my cup overflows. 
6 Surely* goodness and mercy* shall follow me
   all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
   my whole life long.*

We know this passage brings tremendous comfort to people when they are mourning a death, or in fear of their own death. It is comforting to follow—to be led beside still waters, to be led even through the darkest valley without fear. 

To be led is to be comforted, but it is also to be brave.  To follow is brave.

Sometimes it means being brave enough to listen to the still, small voice inside of you—to be led to love yourself the way God loves you.

I have a friend who hit rock bottom with his addiction to alcohol when he was arrested for DUI. And he finally agreed that he needed to surrender to a different leader other than the voices in his head telling him he was boring and anxious and not enough without alcohol. He had allowed himself to be led by a Bad Shepherd—one that told him over and over again that he needed alcohol in order to feel right or good or normal or at home. He didn’t listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd, the one telling him he was God’s own beloved, the voice telling him that he should follow to a place of peace beyond the numbness of inebriation. Somehow through the fog of addiction he heard a different voice—a voice that was there all along, offering to lead him back home. And he got sober, and it’s a struggle to listen to that voice every day, so he takes it one day at a time with the help of others, who are the hands and feet of God to him. He doesn’t go it alone. There’s no such thing.

And I have a friend who used to starve herself until she weighed 80 pounds because that was the one thing she could control—what went into her mouth. The Bad Shepherd she listened to was the one who told her that she was the one in control—and that she didn’t matter unless she was thin and beautiful; that being invisible was better than being seen for who she really was. She didn’t listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd telling her that she was God’s own beloved. That God knows her own. That she was worthy of taking up space in the world. Somehow through the fog of starvation she heard a different voice—a voice that was there all along, offering to lead her back home. And she gained weight and got healthy enough to live, and it’s a struggle to listen to that voice every day, and so she takes it one day at a time with the help of others, who are the hands and feet of God to her. She doesn’t go it alone. There’s no such thing.

Maybe you are having trouble hearing the voice of your shepherd over the din of other voices. I don’t blame you. It’s hard. But you are smart like a sheep, and you are God’s own, and if you really try you can hear God calling you home. I promise you that. You are brave enough to trust that voice, too. I promise you that, as well. I tell you all the time that there is a reason why “Do not be afraid” is one of the most commonly uttered phrases in our scriptures. 

Following is certainly not for the weak and the unthinking and the unoriginal. It is for the courageous. 

In our consumer culture that puts money far above people, where we are expected to live the greatest lie ever told—the American Dream--with its individualistic, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps ethic—in a culture that thrives on isolation and personal achievement and the acquisition of things—in a culture like that, being called “sheeple” is the greatest insult of all. 

But it should be our greatest compliment. 

Because we inhabit the kingdom of God. And we sheeple can discern the voice of our Good Shepherd. So I will bravely allow myself to be led; to be a proud and strong follower, to trust and know a different voice rises above the cacophony of voices that tell me I am not enough; that I need more; that I don’t matter; or that I matter more than anyone else. In God’s kingdom of heaven here on earth, allowing ourselves to be led actually means refusing to believe the lie that says that buying more stuff will make us more lovable. In God’s kingdom of heaven on earth, allowing ourselves to be led means loving our neighbor as ourselves. In God’s kingdom of heaven here on earth, allowing ourselves to be led means standing up against the destruction of the earth by those who are more concerned with profits than people, and taking care of the creation that was God’s from in the beginning. Allowing ourselves to be led means forgiving others—leaving the judging up to God and the loving up to us.

Be brave and strong enough to be led beside still waters and green pastures, on right paths for God’s name sake, and yeh, even through the valley of the shadow of the darkness. Can you hear it? Listen for the voice calling you home. Don’t you dare try to go it alone. There’s no such thing.

Amen.