Sheep and shepherds: Mark 6:30-34,53-56:Sixth Sunday Pentecost16th Sunday Ordinary Time

These days churches are tempted to mimic corporations, and pastors try to become CEOs. But these texts call us to re-imagine our life together as the people of God, and the texts’ images are of sheep and shepherds. In Mark 6 Jesus is pictured as a shepherd-king with Godlike “compassion” as he looks upon the multitude wandering “like sheep without a shepherd.”

What can we mostly urban folk know of sheep and shepherds? André Dubus wrote about spending a year in a New Hampshire farmhouse. It seemed an idyllic setting and the rent was cheap, so he moved in and agreed to take care of the landlord’s eight sheep.

The sheep-keeping proved to be more of an ordeal than he could ever have imagined. Dubus found himself chasing down sheep that found every possible way to get out of the fence and that were impossible to lead back through the gate. After a few weeks he was tackling them, sometimes not so gently, so that he could lug them back and hoist them over the fence. The biblical analogy of humans to sheep took a different turn: “We were stupid helpless brutes, and without constant watching we would foolishly destroy ourselves.”