Who needs a shepherd these days? That’s a good question. In our gospel text, Jesus asserts, "I am the good shepherd." However, in our modern and urbanized times and culture, how many of us have ever had opportunity to see an honest-to-goodness shepherd tending his sheep? Only once in my life have I seen such a sight, and that as a flock of sheep were crossing a highway in Montana. My first reaction was amazement, and then impatience, at what seemed to be a never-ending movement. Thousands upon thousands of moving animals. Nor could I associate their shepherd with Jesus. Who knows how long he had been out in the hills tending his flock? He appeared like the wild man of Borneo; a living commercial for soap and deodorant.

Circumstances today, far removed from biblical times, would have us as…