Dear Canon Joplin:
I write in belated response to your “Good Shepherd Sunday” sermon of May 11.  The Gospel reading on this Sunday is one of the times when Jesus refers to himself as the Good Shepherd – this particular Sunday, the reading was John 10:11-16.  The psalm assigned is normally the 23^rd Psalm, which begins “The Lord is my shepherd.”

It’s common to preach on the role of shepherds in Jesus’ time.  Many priests go so far as to describe their experience of shepherds during visits to modern Israel.   Your sermons are generally my favorites among our rotating preachers, and you did not disappoint on this Sunday. You did a better than average job of describing the shepherd's function, and of delineating the difference between a good shepherd and a bad one.

There’s just one problem.

The majority of our congregation — indeed of any average American congregation — are primarily urban dwellers.  The most recent experience most of us have had with sheep was the movie “Babe.”  Few have had any personal experience with sheep, and therefore have little inkling how insulting it is to be compared to them.

Granted, the “Good Shepherd” image is a metaphor; but if a metaphor is not rooted in one’s daily experiences, it loses its meaning and power.  It becomes romantic in the worst sense of the word — which is to say, it has no cost.  Put another way, if a metaphor is not grounded in our daily reality, our response is not likely to have any practical application.  The extreme example would be of the pew warmer who smiles to himself, thinking “Isn’t that nice – Jesus is my shepherd,” and then behaves the remainder of the week without regard to Jesus’ life and teachings.

Is there a modern parallel for shepherd which we could substitute?  One aspect of the metaphor is as protector — so one might be tempted to say “Jesus is the Good Cop.”  Unfortunately, the extension of this metaphor is the sort of legalism Jesus cautions against elsewhere in the Gospel.

Garrison Keeler, in his famous retelling of the Christmas story, compares shepherds to parking lot attendants, which is a fairly apt description of a shepherd’s social standing.  There are good (trust-worthy) parking lot attendants, just as there are good shepherds and good cops.  This metaphor would definitely lack any romantic sheen!

Honestly, I don’t have the resolution to this problem.   Because I love the language, and have come to appreciate the power of effective rhetoric, I strongly believe we must revise our metaphors.  In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Episcopal Church made the bold move of shifting from Elizabethan language to more contemporary English.  Isn’t it time we found new names and metaphors and names for Jesus which have equal contemporary meaning?  Isn’t it time to release metaphors that began to lose their potency shortly after the dawn of the Industrial Revolution?

My experience of the divine has been that it is too profound and broad to be comfortably limited to any single name or title — sometimes even the three persons of the Trinity seem inadequate. 

There are times Jesus is my heartbeat.  There are times Jesus is the path maker and guide, cutting away brush and brambles as he leads me where he would have me go.  Sometimes Jesus is my companion, and walks beside me, occasionally suggesting new directions.  Sometimes Jesus is the contrarian who challenges my unexamined assumptions.  There are times Jesus is a search light which exposes the dark recesses within, which I would prefer to pretend don’t exist.  And often Jesus is the physician who speeds my healing when that darkness has been removed.

I cannot settle on one name or title for Jesus, for He will not be limited in that manner.  And I certainly cannot be content with a metaphor for Jesus which has lost all practical meaning.

Yours in Christ,
jac