My father began teaching me how to be a farmer when I was two. I went with him to the chicken coop to feed the chickens and gather eggs. At three I began to help feed sheep and tend garden. By fourteen I had my own farm business raising strawberries.
These memories have been on my mind this past week as I planted a garden for the first time in several years, and as I watched my son, who now runs our farm, teach his sons how to work from dawn to dusk.
Jesus, the Good Shepherd
Our Gospel today says, “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them.”
What is a good shepherd? How does he lay down his life for his sheep? When I think of those questions, my tendency is to see a shepherd quietly, peacefully watching his sheep safely graze. Then, a wolf sneaks up, but the shepherd is right there. With his rod (a big stick to whack at wolves) and staff (to grab sheep out of the way) he risks his life, succeeds, then returns to a very pastoral scene.
But that is not reality. That is not how a good shepherd shepherds. A good shepherd risks his life for his sheep in a crisis, but his days are not so pastoral. He, a farmer, works hand in hand with God long hours to do what it takes to have pastures of good grass, ample good water, additional feed, and safe fences and barns. He seeks sheep who wander off and get lost, who are lambing, who get turned upside down—who need his attention. In open country, he lives with his sheep. He smells of them.
On a more typical family farm, he may not live with his livestock—but almost. Vulnerable livestock live very close to the house so he can take care of coyotes, dogs, foxes, or buzzards who might have a taste for calf or lamb. A good shepherd today also adjusts to the times and their demands. He collaborates with neighbors. He thinks of things like “Is organic better? Is it possible? How do I farm in ways that nurture the land and the common good?”
Jesus, Our Example
On Holy Thursday in his homily, Abbot Kurt at St. Meinrad tied together what Jesus did in the desert after his baptism with what he did on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Abbot Kurt said, “Jesus would not yield to temptation to turn stones into bread to satisfy his hunger, but he made himself into bread to satisfy our hunger for God. Jesus would not assume that the Father would take care of him if he jumped from the top of the temple, but he offered himself to the Father for remission of our sins on a cross on Good Friday. Jesus would not bow down to Satan in exchange for having the whole world bow down to him, but he bowed, he knelt, and washed his disciples’ feet, so they might know how to treat each other.”
Those words and the pictures they form in my mind have stuck with me since Holy Thursday. They have fed and fed and fed me. They challenge and challenge and challenge me.
Learning as a Child of the Good Shepherd
My father taught me to be a good farmer. Jesus teaches me to be a good shepherd. How well am I learning? As pandemic isolation begins to move to a new normal, how do I give myself as bread for others? What difference will pandemic precautions need to make in communion ministry? Will it greatly expand these next months because high risk people will need to remain at home? What (probably bothersome) precautions will I need to take? In my community, we flattened the curve, but danger is not over. How do I keep the discipline of social distancing, of hand-washing, of carefulness to avoid contagion while I also recognize and accept that next time we might be hard hit and I might be called upon to care for those who are infected? How do I make sure I am ready and willing to do whatever God asks of me?
Peter Learned by Doing
All in all, how do I bend down and wash feet? How is Jesus forming me now to better serve in a world that is likely to ask me to farm and shepherd differently? I think of Peter in today’s first reading. Jesus told him clearly post-resurrection, “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.” In other words, Jesus told him, “Be a good shepherd.” Then, through the Holy Spirit, Peter got a picture of how he must shepherd with a new, radically different, mind-set. (The whole story of Peter and Cornelius is in Acts 10, not included in the daily readings this year. You might want to read it to more fully understand today’s reading).
As of today’s reading, Peter must shepherd Gentiles, too. While Peter clearly didn’t understand what God was asking when the vision of a sheet full of animals came in his prayers, he recognized the Holy Spirit in the vision and the request of the men who asked him to come with them. He went. He followed the Good Shepherd—which enabled him to become a good shepherd. Perhaps he remembered when Jesus said, “I have other sheep who do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
Whether he remembered or not, he went.
There were times when my father was teaching me to be a farmer that I didn’t want to go with him. I didn’t want to learn. But, earthly fathers being who they are, my father had ways to get me out in the field or barn. I learned to be a farmer by farming as the daughter of a farmer. I, like Peter, learned by following and doing.
In a very real way Peter washed Cornelius and his family’s feet when he followed the Holy Spirit and went to them. Peter learned to follow Jesus by obeying the Holy Spirit in the here and now of AD 39. And so, Christianity leaped into a whole new opportunity.
Prayer
Lord, you know how I am my father’s farmer-daughter. You know, too, that I am your adopted daughter, called also to be a good shepherd. Holy Spirit, teach me how to follow your guidance as Peter did. Good Shepherd show me how to lay down my life for your sheep—all of them—by following you. Lead me, guide me, Lord.
