“Called to serve and care for the flock of Christ”: Shepherds who smell of their sheep

Isaiah 6.1-8 and John 10.11-16

Sermon by Rev Dr Emma Ineson, Principal of Trinity College, Bristol at the Consecration of David Williams as Bishop of Basingstoke, 19/09/14

I don’t like sheep very much. I was mugged by a sheep once. It happened when I was having a picnic with my family on Clee Hill in Shropshire. A particularly insistent sheep approached, making it clear that he would like my sandwich. When I refused, he became more and more assertive, causing us to de-camp, with our picnic, back into the car, whereupon the sheep proceeded to kick the door with his hard little hooves. There was something about the bold insistence of that sheep that was a bit disconcerting. And it smelt.

So I might object to being called a sheep myself, and I do have to wonder why Jesus so clearly paints a picture of the sheep and the shepherd to represent both his relationship with his people and, as Christian tradition would have it, the relationship of the pastor to the people of God.

Today with ministry in the church we have rightly increased our focus on leadership, strategy and systems. We are learning well from the world of business and industry some of the skills we so desperately need for mission and ministry. And we have begun, rightly, to re-discover the importance of the neglected prophetic and apostolic gifts. That is all good. But a side effect can be that pastoral ministry is looked down upon, and the model of the shepherd is not rated very highly.

But shepherds and sheep are central in Scripture, and the way Jesus talks about sheep carries altogether far more more positive connotations than my encounter on Clee Hill.

We farm sheep now mostly in this country by putting barriers around them to keep the flock in and predators out. Today the shepherd controls the sheep with sheep dogs and electric fences. But in Jesus’s day, shepherds roamed widely on the hillside with their sheep. There was no need for controlling them. There were no fences. The shepherd simply got to know his own sheep, their ways and their little habits, by staying with them day in, day out, in all weathers, through thick and thin, leading them, providing for them, protecting them with his own life - and calling to them. Each flock knew the unique voice of their own shepherd and would follow him alone, because they knew him and he knew them.

There is still something compelling about this ancient image of the pastor, knowing and being known by the flock. We will hear in a moment:

Bishops are called to serve and care for the flock of Christ. Mindful of the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for his sheep, they are to love and pray for those committed to their charge, knowing their people and being known by them.

Pope Francis, speaking at his first chrism mass after taking up his new role, urged his priests to go out among their flocks and get to know the people they serve so that they become “shepherds who smell of their sheep”. One of the things I always admired about David Williams is that he does, indeed, smell of his sheep. (in the nicest possible way!). I mean that he gets to know people, he cares about the details of people’s lives. He likes people and likes to spend time with them. You have only to watch the video produced by the staff team at Christ Church for his leaving do to see very clearly that David is known by the people with whom he has shared life for the past 13 years. They certainly have become familiar with his little ways and mannerisms! That’s because I expect David and Helen, Sarah and Mark have done there what they always do - opened their lives and their home and got to know people. David and Helen together have a wonderful ministry of hospitality and welcome, whether that be in Eccleshall or Dore or Winchester.

The challenge for you as you become a bishop, David, will be to find ways to continue to smell of the sheep. Of course you have a head start because you know and are known in this Diocese. You have already developed the smell of Hampshire. You know the people, the challenges, the opportunities, the streets, the churches, the issues, the students, the prisons, the hospitals. That is why it is so appropriate that this service is held here in Winchester Cathedral.

As he takes up this new and challenging task, I pray that you will have before you this simple image of the shepherd smelling of his flock, knowing them and being known.

But there is an altogether different image presented in our Old Testament reading; one that is no less compelling and inspiring for a new phase of ministry.

Isaiah was already a prophet in the year that King Uzziah died. But then he saw the Lord. He received a call to a new and more challenging task, to go and deliver a message to a people who had turned away from their God. In one of the most dramatic passages in the whole of Scripture, filled with smoke, shaking pillars and seraphs, Isaiah saw the Lord.

Isaiah saw the Lord in all his glory and his holiness, seated on his throne, surrounded by angelic beings crying “Holy!” so loudly that the whole building shook. I suspect these were fearsome and awe-inspiring heavenly beings, less like chubby boticelli cherubs and more like something you might expect to see on Dr Who. Together they cry “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory”.

Why do they call God ‘holy’? Generally in Scripture when something is talked of as ‘holy’ it means it is ‘set apart for God’. Holy ground; holy people; holy temple; holy mountain, holy communion. How can God be “set aside for himself”? Perhaps to call God ‘holy’ is to describe the very essence of his God-ness. When we can find no other words to use of God (because he is God and we are not) ‘holy’ is only the one left.

One writer says:

Remember how Reepicheep, the gallant mouse, at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader sailed to the end of the world in his little coracle? Well, the word "holy" is the little boat in which we reach the world's end in the ocean of language. The possibilities of language to carry the meaning of God eventually run out and spill over the edge of the world into a vast unknown. "Holiness" carries us to the brink, and from there on the experience of God is beyond words”.

You have to wonder whether Isaiah would have so readily volunteered his services as a mouthpiece for God’s difficult message if he had not seen this awesome vision of the Lord in the essence of his might and majesty, glory and holiness; without a recognition of his own sinfulness and inadequacy in the face of it. I suspect not.

Surely now more than ever we need a heavenly vision to carry out the challenging, sometimes difficult, work of God in this world, whatever that is for each one of us, as a mother, father, plumber, teacher, lawyer, builder, or the bishop of Basingstoke? It must be the fact that he has caught a glimpse of the glory of the risen Lord Jesus that gives David the courage to offer himself in this new service and to say in his own turn “Here I am, send me”.

If we start with us, our own abilities and competencies, there is a danger that we will become very quickly stressed and disillusioned. If we start with ‘what the world needs now’, or ‘what the Church of England is like at the moment’, or ‘what is before my own nose’, our vision will remain limited. Without a vision of God in all his ‘bigness’ the tendency will be for us to feel overwhelmed by the problems and challenges.

David has an expansive vision. I was his curate when he was Vicar of Dore in Sheffield. He was definitely the ‘in at the deep end’ sort of training incumbent. By way of illustration, he took me to watch a funeral he was conducting on the 1st day after my ordination, and made me conduct one on my own on the 3rd day. All the things I was most nervous of, he gently but firmly got me doing before the fear really had a chance to take hold. So one of the things I learned from David was a sense of the awesome possibility that exists in life with God. His ministry spoke then and has spoken ever since, of the infinite generosity, expansiveness and abundance of God. He doesn’t let much discourage him.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, St Paul lists the hardships of life and ministry, and then encourages us to keep our focus rather on the eternal weight of God’s glory, so that we will be given strength to endure: He says in 2 Cor 3.4-5 “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ towards God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God.” He goes on to say that when we focus on the glory of God in Christ Jesus, rather than ourselves, “all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit”. It is this steady transformation by the glory of God, keeping our eyes fixed the eternal perspective and not on us, that gives us the courage, the inspiration, the vision, to obey his call to go into the dark places of the world for him.

Sometimes it can seem as if the glory of God seen by Isaiah in the temple is very much hidden. When we look at the terrible events unfolding in Syria, Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, it can seem as if the temple is very quiet, very still, very cold and very empty. But Isaiah too lived in dark times and if you read on in chapter 6 you will see that the message he was to give was not a picture of fluffy kittens and roses but a harsh reality check. We too must be willing to go where God sends, to speak the words that he asks us to speak, even when they are less than popular, even when they are not what we ourselves would like to say.

Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester in the 17th century said: “It is not our task to tell people what they want to hear; we must tell them what, in some sad future time, they would wish they had heard”. Isaiah could have said the same thing.

David will hear in a while that bishops are to “proclaim the gospel boldly, confront injustice and work for righteousness and peace in all the world.” Doing any of those things, especially proclaiming the gospel boldly will not always be easy, or make him popular. David has an unashamed passion for sharing the gospel with anyone who will stand still for long enough, with an unshakeable confidence in the power of that gospel to change lives and communities. Like Isaiah, David, bishops, all of us, are sent to proclaim the word of the Lord, a word that may include challenge as well as comfort, truth as well as grace, a word that will always hold out the hope of glory.

So, David, as you begin this new ministry, may you be encouraged by these two pictures - the simple shepherd smelling of his sheep and the glorified Lord with angels surrounding him crying “holy!”.

Except these are not two pictures but one.

This is the same Christ. Christ in his humility and Christ in his glory.

He is gentle and he is powerful.

It starts with him and it ends with him.

Without him we are nothing. With him - with a glimpse of his glory and the call of his voice - nothing is impossible.

It’s a sentiment summed up by the Welsh poet priest RS Thomas in his autobiography Neb (which means ‘nothing’ in Welsh):

On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, “No-one." But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. … Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet.

May that glory fall on you David, and the people of this Diocese, today and always, and may life touched by his glory be very, very sweet.

Amen.