Are We Like Sheep

Yesterday was Good Shepherd Sunday in our church calendar.  The readings, including the 23^rd psalm – you know the one the begins, the Lord is my shepherd, were all about Jesus as the good shepherd.  That left us – the people who follow him - to be the sheep.  Not that complementary when you think about it.  However, there are lots about that analogy that is true. 

What comes to mind in this vein, is the quote from Isaiah 53:6, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray.”  Actually, it comes into my head – or my ear – as the line from Handel’s Messiah which states emphatically and in great music, “All we like sheep.”   Here’s a link to a version on You tube if you would like to sing along, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOaSa78_NM0.

In our weekly bible study last week, in preparation for Sunday worship, one of the participants asked a very good question.  He noted that since Jesus used, as he often did in his parables, the  common things in his society – sheep being something that was very important to people in his day, rather than sheep, what would he use if he was speaking and teaching today?  The thought came to me that he would probably use algorithms which will often lead us down rabbit holes to dark places if we follow them.  Most everyone who spends time on social media, has the experience of being fed suggestions which would lead us down – shall we say to interesting, if not dangerous places.

In the Gospel reading from John 10, Jesus tells us that the sheep – that’s us – “will not follow a stranger, but they run away from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”  That may be true of sheep, but it is not true of us today.  We have, I think, forgotten what the Good Shepherd’s voice sounds like. With all the noise and distractions on social media today, it is very easy to mistake the voices out there as the voice of the Good Shepherd. 

So how do we know that a voice we hear is the voice we should be listening to?  Well, the simple way is to pay attention to what it is saying.  Is it giving us a message of love or is it giving us a message of something else such as envy, or lust, or hate.  As Bob Dylan sang, “Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, But you’re going to have to serve somebody.”

So, I guess it is up to us to decide who’s voice we are going to listen to.  Remember that the next time we are tempted to listen to the myriads of voices on social media or elsewhere.  May we be blessed to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd beneath the tumult.