We Are All Shepherds.
Fourth Sunday of Easter
By: Rev. Dr. Beverly Bingle
April 25, 2021
My grandparents kept sheep,
and they were good shepherds
until the whole flock drowned in the flood of 1969.
Those sheep and their dog Tiger
were the animals I knew in the first four years of my life,
until my parents moved us to the country.
We didn’t raise sheep, but we had everything else to tend:
cows, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats, horses, parakeets,
turtles, fish, corn, wheat, soybeans, apples, cherries…
and, given my parents’ experience with the Great Depression
and their faith in God,
we also tended people!
A railroad track ran along the south border of our little farm,
and men walking the tracks would come to our door
and ask if they could work for some food.
Dad always came up with some task for them to do,
like picking a quart of raspberries or chopping some wood,
and Mom would put a plate of food on the picnic table
for them to eat,
then pack a lunch bag for them to take with them.
That’s not all the shepherding my folks did,
but it’s typical of ways they gave
the time and energy and goods of their lives
for others.
They tended people,
some they knew and some they didn’t.
They looked out for people in need
and did what they could to help.
Good shepherds they were, like today’s gospel says.
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The very word for shepherd is the Latin word “pastor,”
the word we use in English for the priest
who is charged to minister to gathered believers.
That word “minister” also comes from the Latin,
meaning a person who is less than others,
the one who serves.
But some pastors, and some other people in power,
act like bad wolves instead of good shepherds.
It makes news.
We see it every night on the six o’clock broadcast:
people here and around the world
suffering and dying from lack of food or shelter;
people harassed and burdened and murdered
simply because they are different from the ones in power.
We see it in the revelations of priest sex abuse,
and we see it in every new discovery
of the hierarchy’s cover-ups of that abuse.
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The good shepherd lays down life for the sheep.
As followers of the Way of Jesus,
YOU are committed to be good shepherds.
You go about your daily lives paying attention to—tending—
people who need a bit of care.
You shepherd your family—
parents and siblings and children and grandchildren.
You shepherd your friends and neighbors—
tending them when they’re hurt or sick or sad.
You shepherd strangers—
your monthly donation to Padua Center
and the Appalachian Catholic Worker;
your holding a door open for a stranger on crutches;
your handing a bit of cash
to the man in the line ahead of you at the store
when you notice
that he doesn’t have enough to pay for all his groceries.
You heal people and make them whole.
You are today’s good shepherds, tending God’s people!
Thanks be to God...
and thank YOU!