24th Sunday Year C - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2010

For the past week I’ve been staying with a family where there’s a little girl about two years old – much loved. Each day she watches the same DVD. It’s an animated cartoon, Walt Disney style, about a funny, wise old lion and a host of other animals. It gave me the idea to look at today’s story “Walt Disney style” – a bit of a change from most sitcoms where humans behave, by and large, like sheep, to imagine, this time, the sheep behaving like humans.

The lost sheep. It’s getting dark, shadows lengthening – and it realises that it’s alone, with no idea where it is. In the distance it can hear the howl of a wolf.  Suddenly, panic. It feels acutely its loneliness, its isolation, its danger. It longs to be back with the other sheep, safe under the watchful eye of the shepherd. It realises its own stupidity – it’s all its own fault. It feels desperate. And then, it hears a branch crack – close by. Its heart misses a beat.  Suddenly, out of the growing darkness, the shepherd appears, and runs to it, and picks it up in his arms, lays it across his shoulders – and back to the flock! Sheer bliss fills the heart of the little sheep.

The flock – what about the 99? They realise the shepherd’s not there. They begin to feel insecure. Besides, they’re thirsty; they’re tired. They want to settle down for the night, safe, protected. They, too, hear the distant howl of the wolf. They’ve got each other – but they need the shepherd. Where could he be?

The resentment, always there in their hearts (but below the surface) begins to stir. "That stupid sheep that wandered off.  The shepherd’s gone looking for it, and left us defenceless, vulnerable. If it got lost, then that’s its own fault. But what about us – we stayed together, we did what we should have, we gave no trouble. It deserved to get lost. It deserves to get killed. But us? How could the shepherd neglect us? It’s not fair! It’s not right!"

The shepherd – spent his life for all the sheep. Let’s say he loved them all. Of the hundred sheep, who came to realise the wonder that they were all precious? that they were all loved?  The answer is obvious.

I don’t know if the sheep shared in the party that followed. If they did, I imagine only one enjoyed it and, indeed, enjoyed it immensely – not just because it was rescued but because, for the first time, it really knew the shepherd.

I think that most of us, at some stage of our lives, have been like the 99 sheep. We’ve felt safe enough; we’ve been careful not to stray too far – even been a bit smug, content simply to be one of the flock, indeed, of a prize flock. We’ve felt at home with God – but a bit uneasy that God might be a bit soft on sinners. If the truth be known, we may have felt a bit hostile that others who haven’t done it hard like us might eventually make it across the line along with us.

Perhaps … we have never discovered God, never been swept off our feet at the sheer wonder of his love – his love for us, for us!, and his love, too, for everyone. Only people in love truly know each other – and when they do, they know that the rules of the game are different.

To know that we’re loved, that we’re precious – that’s the question. The truth is that we are – but we need to have our antennae up to have any chance of picking it up. I think we first need to feel we’re stupid, to feel that it’s partly our fault. We need to feel our emptiness, our confusion, our thirst – our thirst for more.

The rest is up to God – but provided that we don’t back off from our thirst, that we don’t set about distracting ourselves to cope with the void, or, perhaps, in our modern world, we don’t let the busyness and the glitz drown out our thirst, God will do the rest – that is what God is all about, really.  And the discovery that God loves us, the discovery, even better, of God who loves suddenly gives meaning – and it’s a different world.