Readings: Acts 2; 14a, 36-41; 1 Peter 2:20b-25; John 10:1-10
If you frequent the deeper, darker valleys of the internet
you may have come across someone exclaiming,
“Wake up, sheeple!”
The portmanteau “sheeple”
entered the dictionary in 2017,
defined as: “people who are docile,
compliant,
or easily influenced:
people likened to sheep.”
While it seems to have originated
as a derisive term for technological trend-followers
who lined up to buy the latest product,
it seems most often encountered these days
in a political context
as a way of suggesting that
people are listening uncritically
to so-called experts
on a range of topics
from the reality of global warming
to the authenticity of the moon landing,
to the spherical nature of the earth,
based on the belief that such experts
are systematically misleading us,
are perhaps part of a “deep state” conspiracy,
and that we need to open our eyes
and not blindly follow their counsel.
Lately you see it used for those
who think it’s probably a good idea to follow the advice
of the majority of epidemiologists and public health officials
regarding social distancing and staying at home.
My general inclination
is to dismiss anyone who uses the term “sheeple”
as a member of the tinfoil-hat-brigade,
those inclined to conspiracy theories
who confuse adopting a blindly contrarian position
with actually being intelligent and informed.
But before I indulge in an orgy of self-congratulation,
it is good to remember that we all
like to consider ourselves to be independent thinkers
and not blind followers.
Even when we trust experts
we like to think it is because
we have made some sort of independent judgment
as to their trustworthiness and expertise.
We might roll our eyes dismissively
at those who use terms like “sheeple,”
but, at the same time, we want to assert:
not me; I’m not a sheep
blindly following along;
I listen to Public Radio
and I critically evaluate what I hear.
But then we have the Gospel.
We have Jesus presenting himself
as the shepherd of the flock
that hears his voice and follows him.
He doesn’t suggest that the sheep
critically evaluate the voice of the shepherd,
or check his credentials,
or review his sources.
Is he not suggesting, instead
that a life of following is the ideal,
the model for being his disciple,
the way by which we will have life
and have it abundantly.
Is he not calling us to trust the shepherd
so that he may lead us beside restful waters?
Is he not, in some sense,
calling us to be sheeple?
Well, yes and no.
No, he is not suggesting
that we listen to and blindly follow
every voice we hear that claims authority.
He tells us that, along with shepherds,
there are also thieves who come
“only to steal and slaughter and destroy.”
We sheep, it seems, must not abandon discernment.
While a generalized stance of suspicion
is not necessarily a sign of discernment,
neither is a generalized stance of credulity
as sign of genuine faith.
But, yes, he is calling us to trust him.
He is calling us to return,
as the first letter of Peter put it,
to the shepherd and guardian of our souls.
He is calling us to listen and respond to his voice
as sheep respond to the voice of their shepherd,
to rely ultimately on his wisdom and not our own,
trusting that he knows better than we do
the path that leads to those restful waters.
The question, then,
is how we strike the balance
between an unwarranted credulity
that leaves us subject to those
who would steal and slaughter and destroy,
and a self-defeating skepticism
that refuses any wisdom
that we cannot demonstrate for ourselves?
For ultimately faith is always a matter
of accepting a wisdom we cannot ourselves prove;
it is always a matter of accepting
the limits of what can be demonstrated
and embracing in trust a mysterious truth
that calls to us from beyond that limit.
But how do we know where to place our faith?
Jesus says later in John’s Gospel
that we can identify the good shepherd
because “a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
This seems also the criterion suggested by the first letter of Peter:
“When he was insulted, he returned no insult;
when he suffered, he did not threaten…
He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross,
so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness.
By his wounds you have been healed.”
The true shepherd, the one to whom we should listen,
is the one who wills to share the lot of the sheep,
who lets himself be stolen and slaughtered
and destroyed for our sake,
so that we might have life.
We cannot rely on our own wisdom
because the path that this shepherd would lead us on
is one that runs counter to ordinary human wisdom.
It is the path of cross and resurrection.
If Corona Time has taught us nothing else,
it has taught us the fragility and unknowability of human life.
It has taught us that even the best-informed
and best-intentioned experts
only know so much.
But it can also teach us to seek another wisdom,
a wisdom beyond the limits of what can be demonstrated,
a wisdom that might at first seem to be foolishness.
The best of human wisdom is that which reminds us
of our own fragility and mortality:
that all life ultimately ends in death.
But the wisdom of God tells us a different story:
that death ends in new life in Christ.
The true shepherd’s voice,
the expert we can and should believe,
is the one that proclaims this wisdom.
May God have mercy on us all.
