Being Led Into Sacrifice

If you were in church yesterday, you heard the reading that precedes today’s gospel where Jesus describes himself as “the good shepherd” and lays down his life for his sheep.

Today’s reading continues that theme, and Jesus speaks more in John 10 about entering the sheepfold through the gate, letting the sheep out of the gate and having them follow the voice of their master.

Now I have spent almost no time with sheep. Heck I don’t even know a shepherd. So if you are like me, I read a passage like this and know very little about what it’s talking about. I need some help interpreting it.

Matthew Humphrey, who himself worked on a farm and has some experience with sheep, reflects on this passage and offers his readers a very challenging interpretation of these “good shepherd” readings. He says that most of us probably grew up with images of the Good Shepherd (Jesus) carrying a lamb (us) on his shoulders. The handsome, robe-clad Good Shepherd goes out looking for the lost ones and brings us back into the fold. Not much is required from us by this shepherd. He’ll come and find us when we’re lost. Awesome!

Now to be clear, part of the scriptural promise is that God will bring the lost ones home. The question that Jesus often raised, however, is do people even realize that they are lost and will they decide that they even want to go home!

Humphrey says that today’s reading might have a very different meaning than what we imagined. He writes that, “most sheep pens in the ancient world were simple and hastily assembled rock enclosures.” A simple structure would be constructed around the gathered sheep and that would keep them in for the night. But he goes on to say that “make-shift pens in the wilderness wouldn’t have an appointed gatekeeper to let [sheep] in or out.  There was [only] one place that a gatekeeper would be appointed and this is a dark and dreadful place…which is the house of slaughter.”

Wait…what? Is this reading suggesting that we, the sheep, are being led by Jesus, the shepherd, to the slaughter?

Sort of, but not really. What happens if we substitute the word “sacrifice” instead. Now it might read that the Good Shepherd leads us out of the safety of the enclosure and leads us into sacrifice.

As a teacher, Jesus was always trying to get his disciples to see the underlying reality of the world around them. He wanted them to see more clearly how the systems worked to maintain oppression and harm and to position themselves as an alternative to those systems. In those systems, certain groups used power over others to control, benefit and prop themselves up. He clearly said, “it can’t be like this with you.” And he gave us a model of what it means to take that sacrifice on ourselves. He showed us how to move from a place of safety and self-protection to sacrifice and self-giving.

Today is Earth Day. Earth Day as a formal day of celebration, protest and action began back in 1970 with the emergence of the modern environmental movement. A wider swath of the population was becoming more conscious of the disastrous impact that human activity was having on the planet. And especially here in the United States, there was a growing awareness that our convenience/consumer lifestyle, use of fossil fuels, levels of pollution and enormous waste (to name just a few things) were a significant part of the problem.

Like the sheep in today’s gospel, we are in our “enclosure.” This is the status quo life as we know it. It may work for us and be what we’re familiar with, but it is devastating for our planet and so many of God’s creatures. We may feel “safe” in it, but it is not safe for the rest of the world. 

The Good Shepherd, however, is calling us out of this enclosure. He is inviting us to face the pain of the world head on and embrace the realities of climate change in our own lives. He is inviting us to come back home.

Often in conversations related to the environment and confronting the climate crisis is that we will have to “make sacrifices.” What I have slowly come to appreciate more fully (in large part due to my privilege) is that sacrifices are ALREADY happening to so many. They just may not be directly happening to me or even be visible to me. Matthew Humphrey names that the current lifestyle that most of us maintain in the United States demands that “forms of sacrifice” be made in order to keep the world “plunging along.” I just may not see or feel those sacrifices directly. But the animals do. The rivers do. The forests do. The oceans do. Poor people across the planet do.

And so when Jesus calls us into sacrifice, he has also recognized that sacrifice is already happening. He is now asking us to take on that sacrifice and not just put it on others. Only people who are lost and disconnected from themselves and this planet would demand that other species die and the planet itself dies so that we can live the way we do. 

So the Good Shepherd comes to call us home and out of our enclosure into a new way of life. Much will be required of us as we leave this enclosure, and yet so much will become availble to us as we do.

On this Earth Day 2024, may we accept Jesus’ ongoing invitation to be led away from that which harms our world and into a greater harmony with our world and each other.