What kind of image do you associate with "the Lord is my shepherd"? Does your mind's eye more readily identify with the identity of "sheep" or "shepherd?" What are the responsibilities of sheep and of shepherds? What is expected of us?

Have you ever been troubled by the biblical injunction that calls for separating the sheep from the goats? The problem with the analogy is that we know from many other texts (such as this week's) that Christians should strive to be counted among the sheep. Goats, with their wicked eyes and wily ways (there is yet to be invented a fence which can successfully contain a goat), are the lost, the unredeemed. But being identified as a sheep is hardly complimentary. The meek and mild nature of a "sheep-like" person is rarely admired.

And sheep are notoriously stupid. Hold up a stick in front of the lead sheep in a procession of the animals and it will nimbly leap up and over the slight barrier. So far, so good. Unfortunately for the reputation of "sheep-sense," the remaining sheep will also obediently leap up to clear the stick - even if the obstacle is removed after that first beast jumped it. All the other sheep leap to avoid something that isn't there. The strength of their flock mentality forces them into the air.

Yet perhaps for that very reason it is good that Christians are identified as "sheep." Unlike the goats, sheep seem to need each other. The flock, their "community," is their identity. Not only do sheep need each other, but as their imitative behavior indicates, they need a leader, a shepherd they can depend on. Goats don't need anybody watching out for them; they are independent to the point of being "head-strong" (ever been butted by a goat?). The shepherd is the main-stay in the sheep's lives. Without his attention and care they would quickly find themselves in trouble.

Economist and seer E.F. Schumacher had a lovely story about an old shepherd. "Don't count the sheep," he said, "or else they won't thrive." He meant by this that counting the sheep turned each live, unique animal into an abstraction, a symbol of a sheep, each one like the next one. In this way one would begin to lose sight of them as individual sheep. One would fail to notice whether they looked healthy, acted normal, and in general were becoming their best sheep selves. The late John Holt, school reformer/ educator/amateur cellist who tells this story, concludes with the observation that "What we easily forget, in our passionate twentieth-century love affair with abstract thinking, is that to make an abstraction out of some part of reality we must take some meaning out of it." (See Holt's Learning All the Time [Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley Publishing Co., 1989], 104.) Remember: the shepherds with whom Jesus was familiar knew each of their sheep by name, and called the flock to their side each morning.

Shepherds to all "flocks" (church, family, neighborhood, etc.) must beware of abstractions. Pacific School of Religion theologian C. S. Song warns against using abstract words like "salvation," "atonement," "judgment." "Other words to use sparingly are the abstract words 'love,' 'anger,' and 'beautiful,' which are like quarters that have been spent so often we no longer see the face on the coin." (See Song's Tell Us Our Names: Story Theology From an Asian Perspective [Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orl: is, 1984], 16.) Paul Scott Wilson quotes Edward F. Markquart's Quest for Better Preaching (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985) which reminds us that "most of the laity do not have 'gut associations' with such words as 'salvation,' 'redemption,' 'incarnation,' 'gospel,' and 'theology of the cross.' Ninety-eight percent of our laity don't use these words in their everyday lives. This becomes a problem for many of us clergy because we all have our favorite words ... [Someone] said to Reuel Howe, 'If I used that much jargon with my customers, I would lose them'," as quoted in Wilson's Imagination of the Heart: New Understandings in Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988), 41.

Counting sheep is something we do when we are seeking to avoid consciousness and sink into sleep. The indistinct nature of fluffy, non-descript, repetitive creatures is supposed to mesmerize our racing brain and soothe it into slumber. Shepherding requires a completely different association with sheep. The shepherd is alert, responsive, attentive to details in the lives of each individual sheep, watching out for their well-being, and working long hours to ensure that they thrive.