Many of you know that
before I entered seminary I worked as a teacher in a prison. When I first started working there, a lot of
the other helping professionals in the prison recognized that there was
something about the culture of that place, the marbled unity of grotesque
beauty and darkness in search of light, that I needed to understand to be
fruitful there, and the only way they could explain it was through stories. This one was from a prison chaplain. I never knew the inmate the story’s about,
but it’s a pithy way of getting across in one short graced conversation what I
saw so many times, on a much slower scale.
He was young, but a hulk of a man, apparently, intimidating. By which, I learnt, the chaplain meant both
that he looked intimidating, and that
he often went out of his way to intimidate people. He’d stand at the back of the chapel
throughout Mass, defiant. After several
weeks of this, the chaplain approached him and asked: “What’s your name?” “Striker,” came back the answer. “That’s not a name, that’s a front, a claim,
a committal offense. What’s your
name?” “González.” “That’s what the COs call you, I know. But what’s your name? What does your momma call you?” The next answer, I won’t repeat in
church. That’s what his mother called him, something I won’t
repeat in church. “She’s mad with you a
lot, huh?” “Yeah. I’m bad.”
It wasn’t a confession, it wasn’t a boast; it was just a flat statement
of fact. “But, I bet that wasn’t what
she called you when you were a baby, huh?
What does your momma call you when she’s not mad with you?” “The first name on my birth certificate is
Napoleón.” “Nice name. But that’s not what I asked. What does your momma call you when she’s not
mad with you?” Out of a face, I came to
know so well, that could erupt either in tears or violence, but you knew was
about to erupt, came: “Well, sometimes… she’d call me Napito.” “Napito.
Can I call you that?” “Sure,
padre. That would be firme.”
To be
called by the name our momma uses when she’s not mad with us… isn’t that what
we all want? To feel that safety, that
care and concern, that loving intimacy, to feel known and loved not for who we
are or what we’ve done (maybe even despite those things), but because of whose we are. God is the Good Shepherd who calls each of us,
his sheep, by name, and leads us out.
In the
ancient world, there was a name for shepherds who named their sheep: “poor.” It actually wasn’t that unusual for a poor
shepherd who only had a few sheep to give them names, and call them by
name. That’s how Jesus is identifying
himself here. He’s putting himself
squarely in the company of the poor shepherds, the ones who valued each sheep
with immensely personal care and attention, who knew them by name. But, he’s not a poor shepherd. We read in Acts about one day when
three thousand sheep were added to his fold!
On a universal, grandiose, cosmic scale, the Creator of the Universe,
the pre-existent Word of God cares for us all, cares for each of us, with the
personal, loving intimacy of a poor shepherd with just a few sheep. He calls us each by the names our mommas use
when they’re not mad with us.
And we’re
changed by that, just as Striker melted when called Napito. We hear that call not to statically bask in
our Father’s love, but to be called out of our fear, our isolation, to leave
behind the stone wall of the sheepfold that was separating us from darkness and
follow behind the shepherd who calls us and leads us out, beyond the fold. The shepherd who promises us, in our psalm,
that we will not lack, but still dares to lead us through the valley of
death. The shepherd who trusts us enough
to not blinker our eyes on that journey.
The shepherd who promises us a great banquet, but also assures us that
we dine in the sight of our foes.
In Marty
Haugen’s setting of the psalm we sang, he presents us a non-literal but richly
evocative translation which proclaims the daring truth about God’s shepherding
of us: “You have set me a banquet of love; in the face of hatred // crowning me
with love beyond my power to hold.” We
can’t hold this embrace in a posture of self-interest. It’s an embrace which leads us to embrace others.
The
psalmist put it: “You have anointed my head with oil, my cup has overflowed.” Baptized flock: we have been anointed,
priest, prophet and king, and the world needs that anointing to overflow from
our cup. Waiting in a dark valley, it
needs the light that is Christ, the light shared with us at our baptism to
illumine the darkness. It needs to be
called by name, to be embraced with the name its momma calls it when she’s not
mad with it. We need to be able to walk
without awkwardness among the suffering, for we know that our Good Shepherd has
laid down his life for us, his sheep, that sin and death and darkness are
overcome. We know that we are treated to
a foretaste of that heavenly banquet here, gathered around this table, where
once again we are called by name. “Body
of Christ.” It’s not just what we
receive. It’s what we are.
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