SHEEP, WOLVES, AND SHEPHERDS
Rev. Emily Meyer reflects on sustainable shepherding for the sake of a sustainable planet.
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Hymn suggestion:
In One Bright Moment (Text: Emily PL Meyer, ©2019; Tune: St Clement [ELW #563 or 569])
Song suggestion: Psalm 23 - The Three Altos, from One Voice
Words adapted and music by Bobby McFerrin (Dedicated to his mother)
Find supporting liturgical elements and additional hymn suggestion in Sundays and Seasons, 2024, pgs. 154-157
Acts 4 is concerned with ‘salvation’. Looking into the etymology of the term bears a lot of fruit: ‘salve’, ‘salver’, ‘ointment/anointing’, ‘safeguard’; the Spanish noun salvar, which means, ‘to save/render safe’, is especially intriguing: what does salvation mean to us in 2024? Is ‘the resurrection of the dead’ the same promise to contemporary souls as it was to those to whom Peter and John were preaching? For those among us who may identify as ‘predator’, is it possible that in our ‘salvation’, we ourselves are ‘rendered safe’?
In Acts 4:5ff, ‘salvation’ describes healing: Peter and John are on trial for healing a person who was lame. Jesus offers the Good Shepherd sermon immediately on the heels of a lengthy public trial that nearly got him stoned to death after healing a person who was blind.
These two parallel stories reveal the scandal of healing and re-centering persons who have been pushed to the margins and left to beg for their own well-being; and the parallel scandal of predators becoming ‘safe’ by embracing (or submitting to?) their own salvation. The scandal in both Acts and John arises from the temple authorities’ (i.e., ‘hired hands’/‘wolves’) inability to walk through the shadowy valleys of felt guilt and repentance, choosing instead to deflect/project their shame onto Jesus, then Peter and John, by invoking social, legal, and religious authority to sanction (interesting etymology there, too) their own inaction and lack of care as they penalize those fulfilling their sacred duty to protect, heal, and share compassionate provision.
Stories of Indigenous Water Protectors who were jailed for their efforts to protect the water that sustains all life sound eerily comparable to both the Acts 4 and John 10 stories. See Mark Trahant’s Yes! Magazine article, “Water Is Life: The Story of Standing Rock Won’t Go Away”[1], as one example of how the call to heal became a giant public scandal when the powerful refused to repent, invoked their authority to ‘do it their way’, and persisted in being ‘predatory’/‘unsafe’ for other humans and the planet.
Perhaps Trahant’s article helps us understand why the temple authorities found Jesus, then Peter and John, so annoying: no one wants to be publicly shamed, least of all public officials. But we cannot only point fingers at public persona when it comes to climate change: all of us who benefit from supremacy culture, consumer culture, and 21st century technological cultures are ‘predators’ when it comes to compassion and care about the planet’s well-being. (One word of caution: Despite the negative portrayal of the wolf in John 10, please take care to avoid vilifying wolves, especially as we celebrate creation and have come to understand the importance of beings at all levels of an ecosystem.[2]) For those among us who may identify as ‘predator,’ is it possible that in our salvation, we ourselves are ‘rendered safe’? That is, rather than succumb to the temptation to shift blame and avoid participating in miracles of healing, how might we walk through the shadowy valleys of repentance, set down the heavy burden of guilt, and become ‘safe’ for ourselves, humanity, and the planet, participating in Christ’s salvation for all?
A newly composed Thanksgiving for Baptism rite - found in Sundays and Seasons - is intended to be joyfully, respectfully playful and accessible to all generations. It is inspired by the Water Is Life Movement[3] and Indigenous Water Protectors[4] from around the world who call all who benefit from colonizer and supremacist systems - which encourage ravenous consumption of our planet’s ecosystems and resources - to repent, return to right relationships with earth and human siblings, and be ‘rendered safe’.
Like the temple authorities, our discomfort for walking through the valley of the shadow of shame, guilt, complicity, and ignorance (to name a few) is creating a greater and greater scandal with each passing moment: in our refusal to repent, humans are becoming more and more predatory and ‘unsafe’. The planet is in crisis! The longer we avoid the shadowy valleys of guilt and repentance, the worse things are getting.
Yet we don’t need to avoid those valleys. Both Psalm 23 and John 10 reference a form of shepherding known as ‘transhumance’. Transhumance shepherding, as described in Greece’s Last Nomadic Shepherds[5], is A) the most sustainable form of animal husbandry on the planet - because it is part of the natural order in which it exists (see also this study); B) produces the highest quality dairy products - specifically because of the sheep’s mountain vegetation diet and migration patterns; and C) reveals that traversing ‘shadowy valleys’ is essential for the well-being of the sheep (who otherwise experience shock from arriving at a destination too quickly!), and for the dairy they produce.
If those metaphors are lost in translation: Jesus, the Good Shepherd is with us as we walk through the shadowy valleys of guilt and repentance (see Richard Rohr’s Learning in the Shadows, 2021, and the full week of Forgiveness, 2022)[6] - and these valleys are essential parts of our lives, for walking through them, we grow and develop the gifts the world most needs us to share, we develop spiritual resilience and growth, and we move toward a more compassionate relationship with the planet and our fellow inhabitants of it: shadowed valleys are the unavoidable route to the serene mountain pastures and cool, still waters where our souls are nourished and refreshed; traversing them instills greater trust that ‘God’s love abides in us’, brings us to our best Selves, and allows us to bring our best gifts (the ‘world’s goods’) to be utilized to enrich the Shepherd’s fold.
The pastoral images of Psalm 23 - particularly the baptismally evocative ‘still waters’ - are brought to the fore as we lean into the Good Shepherd image of Jesus leading us through the challenges of supremacist culture-induced discomfort with guilt and our ensuing reluctance to repent, allowing us to move through the Thanksgiving for Baptism with a sense of confession and renewal, opening us to give of the ‘goods’ we are gifted to share with the world, and sending us out to continue the internal work of traversing both shadowy valleys and glorious mountain passes, even as we walk more mindfully of the siblings with whom we walk and more gently amidst the lush green pasture that is this planet.
Originally written by Rev. Emily P.L. Meyer
© 2023, Augsburg Fortress; Sundays and Seasons, 2024; shared by permission
ministrylab@unitedseminary.edu
Find more from Emily Meyer at www.theministrylab.org.
[1] Water Is Life: The Story of Standing Rock Won’t Go Away, Mark Trahant; Yes! Magazine, Feb. 24, 2017.
[2] Clarissa Pinkola Estes; Women Who Run with the Wolves
[3] Learn more about the Water Is Life Movement and its numerous iterations and intersections around the world in Mní Wičhóni: Water is Life – a 2018 Bioneers Indigenous Forum Presentation
[4] Maya Shaw Gale; WATER: An Indigenous Perspective Meets Contemporary Science, July 20, 2021; Tribal Trust Foundation
[5] Dimitris Tosidis; journey with Greece's last nomadic shepherds, 02.03.2021; Deutsche Welle
[6] Richard Rohr, ‘Learning in the Shadows’, cac.org/learning-in-the-shadoews-2021-06-17 and cac.org/daily-meditations/forgiveness-weekly-summary-2022-09-17.
Rev. Emily Meyer
The Ministry Lab
Minneapolis, MN
Rev. Emily Meyer (she/her), Executive Director of The Ministry Lab
As an ordained pastor in the ELCA, Emily interned in Seaside, OR, served as pastor, liturgical artist, and faith formation leader in suburban, ex-urban and rural Minnesota congregations, created and directed the multi-congregational affirmation of baptism program, Confirmation Reformation, and was pastor of Fullness of God Lutheran Church in the retreat center, Holden Village. She currently serves as executive director of The Ministry Lab (St Paul, MN), where she consults and curates and creates resources for progressive UCC, UMC, and PC(USA) congregations throughout Minnesota and the United Theological Seminary community. Rev. Meyer leads contemplative and creative retreats and small groups. Between pastoral gigs, she has enjoyed costume designing, choreographing, and performing. She lives in Minneapolis, MN, with spouse Brian, daughter Natasha, and two Wirehaired Pointing Griffons, Kiko and Zip.