4 EASTER, YEAR B
SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE
THE REV. ANNE STANLEY
3 MAY 2009
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
Let me admit to you that I know very little about sheep. I’ve been to barns and patted enough sheep to know that their wool is surprisingly oily, I’ve ogled newborn lambs and I have a sketch of Jesus snuggling with one. I’ve listened to sheep bleating and I’ve walked over moors in England so I know that sheep are wary of strangers. I know that if a sheep flips over onto its back it can’t get up and will die unless somebody turns it over. But I don’t have a real “feel” for sheep. So hearing about Jesus as the good shepherd is pretty academic for me. I almost get it…but not quite.
I know even less about elephants. Except for their size and the fact that when they’re happy they walk with their trunks sticking straight out.
I know even less about elephants than I do about sheep. But when I read a story last week about elephants and the way adult elephants shepherd the “flocks” in their care, their herds, then sheep and Jesus the good shepherd began to work their way into my heart in a brand new way. It’s elephants who have helped me understand sheep. Elephants have helped me understand Jesus our shepherd. And elephants have helped me get a grip on OUR job as shepherds of the flocks we’ve been given to take care of.
Elizabeth Canham is an Episcopal priest who has put together a collection of observations in a little book called Ask the Animals. Her stories give us a peek at the spiritual wisdom we can get from various ones of God’s creatures. A bull, a kitten, a blue heron, baboons, crows---and elephants. A herd of elephants and their shepherding instincts.
In a chapter called “Compassion” Elizabeth Canham writes about a trip she once took to a game preserve in southern Africa. “Elephants live and travel in family groups,” she writes, “and (they) care deeply for one another. The young are protected by the mother and several ’aunts,’ and the bulls will charge at anything that threatens their offspring…..(Once) we came upon a long line of vehicles and had to stop….the cars…all had to reverse slowly, those of us at the end wondering what was happening up ahead. It turned out that a very angry bull elephant had taken exception to visitors approaching too close to the family he guarded, and was preparing to charge at the closest vehicle.” Fortunately the attack never happened. But he was prepared.
“I am the good shepherd,” says Jesus. “I know my own and my own know me…the hired hand sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away….I lay down my life for the sheep.” Jesus the bull elephant.
Elizabeth Canham goes on. “Elephants provide a wonderful example of compassionate care for one another.” (They) mourn the loss of one of their own in a way that is akin to human grieving, gathering around the corpse and keeping watch. They have burial grounds and seem the sense when they are close to death, making their way to one of these sites. Hunters learned that a bereaved elephant would often visit the burial place of a spouse to grieve, and they used this knowledge to track and kill big ‘tuskers’ for their ivory….” Elephants take compassionate care of each other.
But there is joy and pleasure, too, in the life of these gentle giants. Elizabeth Canham’s story describes a moment when a big bull-shepherd went off by himself for a bath. All was quiet on the home front, apparently. The human observers were well hidden in an underground hide, but they could see many animals coming in sequence to drink at the water hole: birds, buck, baboons, zebra.” (“There are other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also.”)
The large male elephant waited. Finally it was his turn. “He lumbered to the edge of the pool,” says the story, “and drank deeply before throwing water back over his body through his trunk. Then he began to circle the pool, and I found myself a few inches away from his large foot and could hear deep breathing as his highly sensitive trunk vacuumed the ground. He went on his way to the far end of the pool where he settled down for a dust bath until his body was covered with clouds of dry, sandy soil. He seemed to…enjoy this playful activity, and I watched until he got up and made his way back through the brush and trees, tail swinging between his great hips.”
What is it that elephants show us about pastoral care, and shepherding, and love? About Jesus our good shepherd and about us, imitators of Jesus? Don’t they show us about knowing one another by paying attention? About deep compassion through shared experience? About living peacefully with others who are not of our fold, sharing the water hole with them? Don’t they show us about fiercely protecting those we look out for when they are threatened? “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” writes the author of the First Letter of John.
It gets tricky sometimes, though, this shepherding. Gospel love isn’t sentimental and drippy. There are times, for humans anyway, when love means saying no. Even Jesus did that. Jesus did a lot of healing, but he didn’t heal everyone who came to him. It’s like when a woman came to some of our churches last week asking for food. But she wouldn’t accept a voucher for the Food Pantry. A Hannafords’s voucher was what she wanted. We give Hannaford vouchers only when the Food Pantry shelves are bare or the person has special dietary needs or some other emergency that the Pantry can’t provide for. None of that was relevant in this woman’s life. So she went away with nothing. We wondered how hungry she really was. Our community of clergy talked to each other over a period of days about this. It was not fun. But in the end we realized that such dilemmas are a necessary part of our faith. These dilemmas keep us alert and make us truly mindful of every decision we make, and careful with every decision. And when we work together, we are strengthened in community.
There’s one last thing about the elephant story. Compassionate shepherding is about knowing how to savor the life we have been given. Elephants show this to us. It’s about doing adequate self-care, by taking time to slip off for a good soak every so often and then taking a playful dust bath. So that we can come back refreshed, having reveled in thanks to God for the life God has given us so that we can help others do the same.