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Ever since I have been at the Church of the Good Shepherd, I have been impressed by the evident love that members of this congregation have for their church, a love, I would like to suggest, which reflects the Good Shepherd’s own love for his sheep. In each case, it is a love based on personal reciprocal knowledge: "I know mine, and mine know me."

Your love for the Good Shepherd is based on a knowledge of the church and of its history which, in many cases, has been acquired over the course of a lifetime. Love for this church remains even with some of those who have moved away and are unable to attend services: they still consider the Good Shepherd to be, in some sense, their church. For those who have come to love the Good Shepherd, this church is not a spiritual filling station which can be exchanged, without a backward glance, for another church which is closer to hand.

This abiding personal love for the Good Shepherd is what has kept this parish going. It is epitomized in the familiar hymn: I love the place, O God, wherein thine honor dwells. To be sure, "no man is an island," and we need to remember that our parish is part of a diocese, just as our diocese is part of the national church. But love is what makes the world go round, and it is much harder, sometimes, to love a diocese or a national church than it is to love our church, the Church of the Good Shepherd.

The Good Shepherd puts a human face on our church, a face which we can know and love. All our efforts to make the world a better place can only succeed through the energy and commitment motivated by love. Without love, we all succumb, sooner or later, to "compassion fatigue."
In the 23rd Psalm,

The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside the still waters.

Nourishment, rest, guidance: sheep need all these things, but so do we. There is a lot we can learn from animals, who do not share our false pretensions to autonomy.

He restoreth my soul.

"Soul" is what it is all about, where human beings are concerned. Our epistle call Christ "the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls" (1 Peter 2:25). "Soul" is indispensable for our thinking and discourse, if the human spirit is not to be limited to the rational functions of thinking and willing.

To be sure, "soul" is a paradoxical concept, and our rationalistic way of thinking abhors paradox. And yet, the absence of soul is at the root of the emptiness and aimlessness from which so many men and women suffer today. For soul is the uniquenss we are born with, which demands to be lived. We are bound to pay attention to it, for it is both a gift and a responsibility.

Mere admonitions to believe or to performs acts of charity do not give people what their soul is yearning for. If Christ is our Shepherd, this means, not that we should copy his life, but that we should strive to live our lives as truly as he lived his. It is God’s will that each individual life be fulfilled at all costs, and this is what the Salvation Army refers to as "saving the world, one soul at a time."

April 14, 2002

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