The Voice of the Shepherd

Fourth Sunday of Easter Year A
Good Shepherd Sunday

Preparing a homily can be a real uphill task. Not because we lack inspiration or the words of scripture are dull and uninspiring. On the contrary, there is so much fodder in scriptures to build upon. The real challenge is our audience and their receptivity or lack of it: Do I tell them what they want to hear or do I tell them the truth?

Sadly, in our culture today, these two options are often mutually exclusive. The truth is hard to hear, so we prefer to hear what we like, even if it’s not what we need. Ours is an age that flourishes in compromise, steadfastness to the truth is hardly tolerated. Thus, the pastor is often faced with tension of either preaching the uncomfortable truth of God’s Word or watering it down to make it more agreeable to the listener. As it says in 2 Timothy 4:3, “The time is sure to come when people will not accept sound teaching, but their ears will be itching for anything new and they will collect themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own tastes.” Sadly, we are living in such times!

Here’s the paradox of preaching: If I were to tell the audience what they do not wish to hear, would I risk not having my voice recognised as the sheep recognises the voice of the shepherd? Or if I choose to pander to the crowd and tell them what they want to hear, am I not robbing them of their right to receive “sound teaching”? In this sense, would I not be more a “brigand”, a robber, than a shepherd?

On this Good Shepherd Sunday, I want to set out several uncomfortable topics which are listed by the readings as sine qua non to the preacher’s arsenal of homiletic themes. As much as these topics seem unpopular and triggering, they provide the necessary nutritious sustenance to our hungering flock. To provide them with anything less or innovatively different would either be to starve them of solid spiritual food or provide them with theological indigestion.

First on the list is everyone’s favourite - Sin! Now you may think that this is stating the obvious - isn’t sin one of the essential themes of religion? It is but the truth is that in recent times, most of us attempt to skirt the topic or try to soften it by using some wish-washy euphemistic substitute. We preach consoling, encouraging and invigorating sermons but avoid making mention of sin because we fear that this would make our audience uncomfortable. We have transformed our funerals into rituals of canonisation whilst ignoring the fact that one of the main reasons for a funeral is that the deceased sinner needs us to pray FOR him and not pray TO him. We hide sin under the cover of every psychological concept or newly minted syndrome, thus taking away all culpability and liability from the individual.

So many, including many shepherds, have forgotten this simple truth - if we ignore sin, salvation is meaningless. The good news of the Lord’s death and resurrection means nothing if we don’t have a clear picture of our desperate sinful condition. Christ came to save us from our sins, not just to inspire us and make us feel good. Many of us priests have forgotten that we are called to be shepherds of souls and not just motivational speakers or counsellors. St Peter in the first reading fully understood his role as a shepherd of souls - convicting his audience of their sins, calling them to repentance, and saw his mission as participating in Christ’s mission to save his audience from this “perverse generation.” In saving souls, he knew he had to risk losing his audience’s approval and even far worse, losing his own life, which he did.

The second topic is suffering and the cross. Now, most people are keenly aware of their own sufferings and that of others. This often leads either to resentment or despair. One of the most common manifestations of narcissism is playing the victim: “poor me!” We complain that we have received a raw deal despite our attempts in following Christ and obeying His commandments. The reason for our complaints is that we expect to be rewarded. Many Protestant pastors would, therefore, choose to offer a Christianity without the cross - what is pejoratively known as the “gospel of prosperity” - and sad to say, many Catholic preachers have likewise jumped on the same bandwagon. The popularity of the prosperity gospel is understandable. Who would not wish for an alleviation of one’s pains and sufferings? The gospel which preaches the cross as inevitable is naturally unpopular.

And yet, this is what we must do, as St Peter spells out in the second reading: “The merit, in the sight of God, is in bearing punishment patiently when you are punished after doing your duty. This, in fact, is what you were called to do, because Christ suffered for you and left an example for you to follow the way he took.” The truth is that we all suffer to a greater or lesser degree, whether we like or not. But how we suffer and what we do with that suffering makes all the difference. Suffering for a Christian is a priceless opportunity to draw close to the suffering Christ, to carry His cross and consciously share in His redemptive suffering.

Third, the Good Shepherd offers us objective truth instead of just one opinion or direction or path among many. Living in an increasingly globalised and multicultural society, there is a great temptation to just succumb to the heresy of relativism - that all truths - even those which seem to contradict each other - are equally valid. Ironically, the heresy of relativism has been established as a new form of orthodoxy, and anyone who disagrees with this position would be summarily cancelled, the modern version of excommunication. The gospel provides us, however, with an important but uncomfortable truth - in a marketplace of ideas, only the Good Shepherd, the true Shepherd, can offer us saving truth “so that they may have life and have it to the full.” Beware of false teachers who pander to our “itching ears” and give us what is according to our respective “tastes.”

Now if this is what we shepherds are called to do by virtue of our vocation as pastors, shepherds, what does your vocation entail? Being described as “sheep” doesn’t sound flattering. In fact, it often invokes an image of mindless clique behaviour, having to be sorted out, constantly losing our way, and having to be minded and controlled by others. Unlike the parables involving shepherds and sheep found in the Synoptic Gospels, St John provides us with a more nuanced and mature image of the sheep. His are the sheep which recognise the voice of the shepherd and knows how to distinguish between counterfeits and the real thing. His are sheep that are so tuned in to their shepherd that they will follow him, trusting him that he will bring them to no harm. His are the sheep who understand that they will enjoy true freedom only when they submit themselves to the authority of the Shepherd. And they do so knowing that only the Good Shepherd alone can offer them “life and have it to the full.” As your priests, we too are not exempt from being sheep within the fold of Jesus the Good Shepherd. As we pray for our shepherds in the church, the bishops and priests, that they will take after the heart of the Good Shepherd, let us also pray for ourselves that we will all have the confidence and faith to place our lives in the hands of the One who alone has assured us that we will be safe.