Homily for Sunday, 26 April 2015– Fourth Sunday of Easter

World Day of Vocations

Readings of the day: Acts 4:8-12; Psalm 118:1, 8-9, 21-23, 26, 28, 29; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18

During this homily, the children of St. Kateri Parish were invited forward. I gave part of this homily seated in front of the sanctuary of our parish's St. Cecilia Church, with our parish's children gathered around. The children of St. Kateri School, our parish's school for students from Pre-K 3 to Grade 6, served in various ministries at the Mass during which this homily was given.

Who here has ever seen a shepherd? This is one of the difficulties we have because we live in a city. I imagine that not many of us have seen a shepherd. All the children here: Does anybody here want to be a shepherd when you grow up? Well, it doesn’t pay very well, but you get to spend lots of time outside every day. This is fine, as long as it isn’t cold or rainy. Being a shepherd isn’t a nine-to-five job. Do we remember other stories in the Bible about shepherds, like when the shepherds who found out about Jesus’ birth went to the stable in Bethlehem at night? And shepherds end up smelling like the sheep after a while. Sheep, if any of us have ever been near them, are a bit stinky to say the least! But being a shepherd is good and worthwhile because, if you heard in our Gospel reading just now, who calls himself “the Good Shepherd”?

Jesus, our God and Lord, is the Good Shepherd! And what makes Jesus not just any shepherd but the Good Shepherd? Jesus isn’t a shepherd for the money, like the “hired man” in our Gospel reading. Jesus isn’t a shepherd because he likes to spend a lot of time outside, although he was outside all the time, traveling from place to place on foot. But Jesus is the Good Shepherd because his shepherding; his service; his speaking; his teaching; his healing the sick; his looking for the lost; the sinners is always about others. It is never about him. As the Good Shepherd, Jesus is so selfless that he is prepared to “lay down [his] life” for others; for his friends; for his enemies; for us. He does “lay down [his] life” for us. Jesus died on the cross for us, to save us; to give us a chance at heaven!

Now, I don’t know about this shepherding business. I suppose I have my moments when I think of others and serve others before myself. But I am not sure I would be prepared to die for anybody; to lay down my life for anybody. What about us? Would we be able to lay down our lives for the people who are unkind to us, even repeatedly? What about people who annoy us? What about the bully at school or at work (hopefully none of us bully each other)? I might be able to lay down my life for my best friend, or for somebody I really like (like all of us here)… But, even then, I am not sure. And besides, there aren’t many chances to gain work experience as a shepherd around here. We are in a city after all. When was the last time any of us saw a real-life shepherd?

And yet in Jesus’ time, when he said “I am the Good Shepherd” and “I lay down my life” for my sheep, the people who heard Jesus would have known exactly what he meant. How is this?

In Jesus’ time, sheep pens, to keep the sheep from going too far, were quite simple. The sheep would be surrounded by a barrier of stones, maybe a foot high, in the shape of a rectangle. On one side of the rectangle, there would be an opening in the pile of stones. At night, to protect the sheep from being attacked by wild animals like wolves, the shepherd would lie down across the opening in the pile of stones. So it would have made perfect sense to the people hearing Jesus when he would say, “I am the Good Shepherd… I lay down my life.” If a wolf were to attack the sheep, it would need to attack the shepherd first. The shepherd, if he cared for his sheep, would literally lie or sit down across the opening to the sheep pen to protect the sheep with his own life. “I lay down my life” for my sheep, Jesus says. And so the people who heard Jesus would have known exactly what he meant.

[Sit on the step of the sanctuary.] To give us a better idea of what Jesus meant by saying, “I am the Good Shepherd… I lay down my life” (although there are no sheep here in the church, no piles of rocks, and hopefully no wolves), I am here, sitting on your level. But look around for a moment… What do you notice? Am I above you? No, I am on your level, but you are also on my level. To be like the “Good Shepherd”; to be like Jesus Christ in the way we love and care for each other, is not just the responsibility of us priests. We are all called to be like Christ the Good Shepherd to one another; to think of the well-being of others even before our own; to be kind to one another; not to do things that hurt one another on purpose.

We are the Good Shepherd in our world, to one another. Put another way, we are Christ to one another, each and every one of us. About five hundred years ago, a Carmelite nun in Spain, St. Teresa of Ávila, spoke about each of us as the hands and feet of Christ; the presence of Christ in our world:

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

with compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

We are, here and now, the body; the eyes and ears; the hands and feet of Christ in our world; the hands and feet of the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for us because he loves us and cares for us. Here and now, we are sitting on one another’s level. Here and now, we are, in the words of our second reading from the First Letter of John, “the children of God.” We are God’s presence; Jesus to each other.

How can we be Jesus, the Good Shepherd, “children of God” to each other? How can we be the body; the eyes and ears; the hands and feet of Christ to one another? We do not need to work a great miracle as Peter does in our first reading, from Acts, healing the crippled person. But we can speak kind words to others. We can try to get along with one another, especially people who think differently than we do; with whom we disagree or people who annoy us. We can give to the poor or spend time with somebody who is sick or sad, to console this person. We can spend time together as families; eat a meal together and pray together every day.

There are many ways that I haven’t mentioned in which we can be Christ to each other. We can keep the wolves out of the sheep pen by lying across its entrance (figuratively) like the Good Shepherd, Jesus. What are the wolves who attack the sheep? Meanness and bullying; gossip; saying things that are not true to hurt another person… How do we stop these “wolves” from attacking? We look out for one another. We show at least one person every day that we care for this person by doing something on purpose that is kind and loving toward her or him. We work to build a parish; a school; communities; a city; a country; a world where nobody is in need of basic necessities to survive and thrive.

This is how we all become like the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who lays down his life for us; who lies across the entrance to the sheep pen to protect his sheep. This is how we place ourselves on the same level as one another; lead each other by care and kindness. This is how we are “children of God”; the body; the eyes and ears; the hands and feet of Christ to one another.