Eighth Sunday after Trinity

Sheep and Stones 

Two contrasting images dominate our readings this morning. The most vivid is the one given in the gospel, of the sheep without a shepherd. Here is Jesus, trying to take some time out with the twelve, going by boat to a quiet place where they can all recuperate. But when he gets within sight of their destination he finds he has been followed and a great crowd is waiting for him on the shore. They are as he puts it, ‘like sheep without  shepherd’, and, putting aside his own need for rest,  he responds to them. 

The Gospel, in the way that it is set for today, then skips over twenty verses, leaving out the miraculous meal of bread and fish that follows, and then the return across the lake by boat, and Jesus coming across the lake walking on the water We join the story again as Jesus lands on the other side of the lake to find more needy crowds, this time carrying sick friends and relatives. More desperate, needy people. More healings. The sheep have found the shepherd. 

The other image comes from our first reading from Ephesians. This is the image of temple, a place of worship, peace and reconciliation, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, a structure joined together and held together with Christ as the corner stone. 

If in the Gospel the flock are scattered and on the move, hurrying to get to Jesus; in the Ephesians reading people who previously lacked identity and purpose are integrated and connected; they have become a building constructed as a temple, stone upon stone, founded on Christ. 

We can turn these two images into questions to reflect on. The first is How to be a Sheep? And the second How to be a Stone, not in the sense of being without feelings, but in the sense of being stable, integrated, part of a structure. In some cathedrals and great and ancient churches, the faces of significant figures are carved into the stonework like Gargoyles. I remember when Robert Runcie, the Bishop of St Albans before he was Archbishop of Canterbury, was carved into the cathedral roof, recognisable even from the ground with his characteristic spectacles and wavy hair. 

Being sheep and being stones go to the core of our lives both as individuals and as a community. 

Back to the sheep for a moment. It is no accident that the 23rd psalm is so popular and so much loved. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”. From Crimond to Stuart Townend the psalm has been sung and prayed from generation to generation. It responds to our experience of bring sheep, the green pastures and still waters as places of refreshment and contentment, the valley of the shadow as the place of loss and bereavement, the fear of deathand the hope of heaven. 

Of course, the notion of being a sheep could be a bit humiliating if you take it too far. Are we really meant to compare ourselves to woolly creatures brought into line by barking dogs, creatures routinely sheared, and sometimes eaten? Like all Biblical images and metaphors the trick is not to be literal. Today’s Gospel suggests to me that the thing about being a sheep is that they don’t pretend to be brave and strong and in control of everything. They know they have needs. Our wants, our hungers, both physical and emotional, are not weaknesses or deprivations. They are instincts implanted in our nature which draw us close to one another. Anthea and John Hill who will shortly renew their marriage vows know what a  gift it is to need each other and to be needed by one another. We are made for love, to give and receive. 

And though we fail often in the human game of loving and being loved, our Gospel shows that Jesus does not fail in loving and caring for us, his flock. The compassion of Jesus is simply inexhaustible. He responds to the need he encounters even when in his human nature he is tired out, because the depth of God in him will always respond to human need with love, with kindness, with food for the human journey and balm for our human wounds. We can’t always do that. Being a sheep, at its simplest, means being humble, being ready to ask for strength and forgiveness and having confidence that our Good Shepherd does not leave us alone to perish in the wilderness but gathers us up and gathers us in.

So if that’s how to be a sheep, how do we become stones, reliable, dependable, parts of a greater whole, carved, polished, unique in ourselves but also connected to one another and something greater? Our reading from Ephesians describes the plight of pagan converts who lack the spiritual advantages that the Jews have through their law, their faith in God, their history, ‘Remember that you were at that time’ (that is, before you became Christian) ‘at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world’.  

The plight of the pagan in the first century was not so dissimilar from that of so many in our own time, who have no hope and are without God in the world. It is so easy to be caught up in our culture’s  prevailing mood of scepticism, perhaps proud of our agnosticism, spiritual maybe, but definitely not religious, happy to take life as it comes and to enjoy its opportunities, but with no ultimate purpose apart from the restless compulsions and competitiveness stirred up in us by the way we live. To this, Christ says: Peace, to those far off and those who are near. You are no longer strangers and aliens, you are built into a holy temple in the Lord. 

So the answer to the question How to be a stone is ‘Belong’. Belong by being in right relationship with Christ’s Church, belong by being in right relationship with yourself: your body, your soul and your history. Belong by being in right relationship with one another, loving one another as you love yourself. We all have a part to play in the living temple. Do look at the clay figures made by local schoolchildren in St Thomas’s chapel. A stream of humanity, all unique and yet all connected. Sheep and stones gathered around the cross. 

In this temple, this living temple of faith, we find we are welcomed not only as lost sheep, not only as random pebbles, but as much loved children of the living God. This is where we renew our covenant with the one who invites us to feast at his table, our Host, our Good Shepherd, our Great High Priest, our loving, forgiving Lord.  

And so that psalm, perhaps you could return to it this week and meditate on it: And sothrough all the length of days, thy goodness faileth never, Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise within thy house for ever.

Canon Angela Tilby