Today’s readings begin on a harsh note: God’s stinging condemnation of “shepherds who destroy and scatter, who have failed to care for God’s flock.” This is a hard message to hear – especially for those among us, clergy and lay leaders alike, who bear responsibility for shepherding.  When we hear this, it is easy for us to think of the various abuses of authority that have surfaced in our Church over the past few years, especially the clergy sexual abuse scandals and episcopal cover-up that rocked the Church in many nations. 

Events such as these have led to a real crisis of authority and faith for many Catholics, and to a real scrutiny of the methods and motives of those who claim leadership roles in the Church.  Power can be abused in ways both obvious and subtle, both by clerics with “real” power and by others who use positions of influence and leadership to push through their own agendas and concerns.  Of course, the crisis of authority affects not only the Church, but indeed all forms of leadership: economic, civic, and political.

Indeed, where have all the shepherds gone?  Where are the leaders who can inspire us, who can truly “deal wisely, execute justice and righteousness” – in the world, and the Church as well?  Well, your guess is as good as mine.  But I do believe that they exist.  God has called and will continue to call forth men and women who will serve as “shepherds after his own heart,” who will step forward to share in the task of leading and guiding God’s people. 

Some – such as priests and deacons, women and men religious, lay pastoral workers – do this in an explicitly religious or spiritual context.   Others do so in public life, in the realm of law and politics; yet others in their professional life, or through generous commitment to volunteer service.  Then there are parents and grandparents and teachers and caregivers, those who daily embrace that most precious and essential task of shepherding the next generation.  

We can only be good and effective shepherds, caring for that portion of the flock entrusted to our authority, to the extent that we are willing to let God shepherd us.  This was impressed on me in a particularly strong way during my 40-day Ignatian retreat in 2003.  I had been praying with the Gospel of the Good Shepherd, and – putting myself into the shepherd role, asked for the grace: “Lord, make me a shepherd after your own heart.”  Sounds like a good prayer, doesn’t it?  What became clear, though, was that God had something else in mind for me at that moment.  It was comforting and humbling all at the same time:

“Yes, Raymond, I want to do precisely that.  But first, you have to learn how to be a sheep, how to belong to my flock. Let me be the Shepherd for now.  Learn to trust.  Learn to follow.  Listen to the sound of my voice, and follow my lead.  Only then can I show you how you are to share in my ministry of shepherding.”   

This is the experience of the apostles in today’s Gospel.  They have returned from their first big mission, bursting with stories to share.  As we heard last Sunday, they were sent out two by two: to preach, to teach, to heal, to cast out demons.  They had experienced welcome and rejection, success and failure; they came back with happy stories, sad stories, exciting stories, funny stories even.  They came into direct contact with suffering, and evil, and ignorance – but also with simple goodness, and joy, and hospitality.  They were, if you will, flexing their muscles as shepherds.  And they were excited about this.

But they were also tired.  And with our busy lives, I think most of us can relate to that.  Jesus has great compassion on those with whom he shares his ministry of shepherding.  He sees that they need a break – some quiet time to pray, to rest, to share, to recreate, to be re-created.  A time to come away from the buzz of activity – people coming and going, no time even to eat – and to spend time with Jesus and each other, to be cared for by him and to care for one another.   In other words, a time to reconnect with Jesus the Ultimate Good Shepherd.   Unfortunately, by the time they get to the “quiet place”, it isn’t so quiet anymore.  The demands of the ministry had followed them even there. 

We can easily imagine the apostles’ collective groan.     But as soon as Jesus sees the crowd, “like sheep without a shepherd,” his heart goes out to them immediately.  For them to have walked all the way around the lake the disciples had just crossed by boat – and get their first – their need must have been great indeed.  Note that Jesus does not send the crowds away, or press his worn-out disciples back into service.  Jesus chooses, out of compassion and love, to respond directly to their need himself.  He does not cling to his own authority, or his own need for rest.  He fulfills God’s promise: “I myself will gather my flock, and care for them.”   Pay attention to how Jesus never treats any form of ministry or service as beneath him, not worthy of his attention, to be delegated to subordinates because he has more important things to do.  Jesus leads by example, accepts to suffer the same inconveniences, and labors, and dangers as his followers do – and indeed, even more.  Jesus invites all of us – whatever our way of life, whatever our mission – to place ourselves under his standard, to follow his lead as we learn to exercise leadership.

How does Jesus do this?  With deep compassion, and with a commitment to peace.  In today’s second reading, Paul speaks of Jesus as “our peace” and of Jesus’ ministry as that of “breaking down the dividing wall of hostility” that separates humanity.  Paul sees this primarily in terms of the division between Jew and Gentile, but we could replace that twofold division with any of the polarities that still divide our Church and our world.  And they are many.

As Good Shepherd, Jesus refuses the tactic of “divide and conquer.”  He comes to establishes a peace built on the foundation of compassionate, self-sacrificing love, wide enough to englobe and reconcile the polarities that threaten the fundamental unity of the human race.   In Jesus’ method of leadership, there are no victims offered up on the altar of “the system”, no civilians whose death is treated as “collateral damage” and therefore acceptable, no children whose plight is denied in a misplaced concern to “prevent scandal” or protect the reputation of shepherds who have abused their authority.   

Jesus calls each of us – whatever our role in society, whatever our status in the Church – to integrity and wholeness.   Just as he formed his disciples before sending them out on mission – and then used those experiences to teach them further – he calls us to embrace responsibility for our mission wholeheartedly, but also to remember that we never have it all together, that we are continually being formed by his example and leadership.  Jesus reminds us that we can only lead to the extent that we are willing to be led by Him. 

Most importantly, Jesus is the Shepherd willing to leave the 99 well-organized sheep and go after the wayward or scatterbrained one who has wandered off the path.  He does so not to shame it or throttle it, but to protect it from danger, to remind it that it is just as important and precious in God’s sight as the 99 others.   Whenever we distance ourselves from that experience of being that lost and forlorn sheep, whenever we see ourselves solely as the strong and the sleek, the ones in control, when we look down on others with pride and superiority, we distance ourselves from the heart of compassion that marks the true Good Shepherd.

As we enter into the heart of the summer, may we respond positively to Jesus, who calls us away to a quiet place, beside still waters, to rest a while in him.  May we find those quiet moments to pray, to be still, to focus on what is truly important, to attune our ears to his voice.  And may we emerge from this experience strengthened in our own call, our own vocation to share what we have received generously with others.  Then we can be he builders of the peace that Christ came to proclaim, breaking down the walls of hostility in Iraq and Syria, in Israel and Palestine, in Kahnewake and Kansatake, and right here in Montreal, in NDG, at St. Monica’s.  Then we will truly live as the trusting lamb following the voice of the Good Shepherd, and also as the “shepherd after God’s own heart” we are called to be. 

“Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life.”  Amen.