"The Truth About Shepherds"

A Service for the North Unitarian Universalist Congregation

Dec. 23, 2001 Rev. Susan Ritchie

I've been thinking about the little irony that transpired during last week's worship. The choir had just finished singing a beautiful rendition of "Home for the Holidays," where Kurt's fabulous solo line spoke so wistfully of what it is like to meet many different sorts of people this time of year, each headed to very different places, but all home for the holidays. Then I had to make my announcement that the neighbors had called the cops, and the cars on the East side of Fourth Street were being threatened with a tow.

Actually, it is probably a good thing to have holiday nostalgia interrupted by the somewhat cruder and colder facts of everyday life. Nostalgia is a very dangerous thing-nostalgia, in presenting the past to us in some perfect form, it makes us long with the force of memory for something that actually never existed, at least not in the perfect state that we imagine. Of course a lot of holiday songs work this double edge; on the one hand, a vision is painted for us of the sort of perfect, glowing holiday home; on the other hand, there is the acknowledgment of the fiction: I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.

I remember feeling especially odd about the holiday nostalgia about home and the comforts of home one Christmas when I was a graduate student and I was having a hard time figuring out if I'd have a place to be for the holidays. I finally decided to spend Christmas Eve and Day with a relative who actually, I didn't know very well.

When I arrived at this man's home, we climbed together into his van, and set off driving through downtown. In retrospect I think he was probably taking me to look at the lights, although of course not much was said. He turned on the radio, and on came Garrison Keillor's Christmas special. How very strange it was to be in what was then to me a strange place, with a man I barely knew, listening to Garrison Keillor's rich baritone paint that picture of Lake Wobegon, where the holidays are spent in all of the warm, crowded traditional ways in the same place and with the same people that have lived in the same quaint small town for generations. But I don't mean to say that listening to Garrison Keillor felt wrong, or sad or anything like that. That wasn't it, for actually, I felt quite at home, comfortable and warm, enjoying the radio show, enjoying the lights, and truly grateful and embraced that I did have a place where I was welcome, even if it was a rickety van with a man who didn't talk much . It all just made me think about the difference between having and making a home.

I want to devote today's sermon to the somewhat contrarian idea that actually-the December holidays-Christmas, Solstice, Chanukah, Kwanza-are not in fact sentimental holidays about having a home, but rather that they are holidays that acknowledge the spiritual power and gifts of what is actually a kind of homelessness. It will be my argument that each of these holidays are, in fact, about what it is that we have to do to make a home for ourselves in this world.

For me, this sort of making oneself at home in homelessness is best summed up in the ancient image of the shepherd. As I explained to the children earlier, this image of the shepherd as the ultimate in divine kindness is found in religions across time and across the globe. The Egyptian God Ra was sometimes described as a shepherd. The Egyptian Pharoah-a God on Earth, was given a herdsman's crook on his coronation day. The divine monarch of ancient Babylonia was titled the "shepherd of men." It was in Judaism, though, that the shepherd theme really reached its full development, a theme that is then later echoed heavily in Christianity, which still refers to its clergy as pastors, and whose bishops are still recognized with a shepherd's crook.

The importance of the shepherd theme in Judaism is in the contrast it made with the religious models that came before it, especially the Greek. For the Greeks, as for many indigenous cultures, the gods' relationship to the people was through the specific land upon which the people lived. This is what called the "genus loci"-the spirit living in the land itself. Most Native American traditions work in this way, where it is the specific character and the spirit of the land on which the people lived that directs their values and their worship. It is for this reason that I like to be very careful about too-freely invoking traditions or rituals. The ritual designed by peoples living in South Dakota cannot be practiced in Central Ohio without seriously betraying its intentions.

But the shepherd-god of the ancient Israelites was different, and instead of being a god of place is a god who guides the people over many different sorts of geographies, maintaining the unity of the flock, and not the place, as the basic element of security and constancy. Ancient shepherds did not keep their animals confined to any particular pasture, but cared for their animals precisely by leading them from place to place. Without a permanent home, the needs of the flock were met by the kindness of the shepherd, who provided for them where ever they wandered. You all know the Pslam-"The Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not want...He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters......" And yet there is no fear, for however far the flock is led away from familiar territory, away from home, the shepherd still provides... "even when I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for you are with me, with rod and staff you comfort me..."

So how does the shepherd-god keep the flock together? The religious literature is very clear on this point. A flock is brought together only by acts of individualizing kindness. The rabbinical commentaries on the story of Moses tend to point out that what qualified Moses as the great leader who could free the Jews from slavery in Egypt was the fact that he was a good shepherd-whose kindness to his animals included recognizing that some individuals had different needs than others. Moses, you'll recall, received his call to go to Egypt when he was off chasing one individual sheep who had strayed from the flock. Rabbinical commentary suggests that God knew Moses would be a great leader precisely because he would chase after one single animal. Another rabbinical commentary suggests that Moses betrayed his great capacity as a leader when he sent his sheep to graze, for according to the tradition, he would first send the youngest sheep, so they might eat the tenderest grasses, and then the older sheep who were capable of chewing the rougher grasses. The shepherd's leadership comes precisely from realizing that different individuals have different needs and strengths.

In all of this talk of shepherds, then, I am myself very attracted to the notion that religious security lies not in having a home or a homeland, but in understanding the challenge of making a home of where ever we are, by assuming for ourselves the shepherd's responsibility, to make a flock of those who surround us, through the extension of a little kindness and individual attention.

Consider the Christmas story, which is of course, a story about homelessness and wandering. Joseph in all of those nativity plays (that so bored children that candy canes had to be invented) is of course usually depicted with a shepherd's staff, and the most touching images of the Christmas story all feature Mary and Joseph wandering, looking for a place to rest. From what we know of the historical Jesus, it is certain that Joseph was not a shepherd, and it is highly unlikely that Mary and Joseph ever ventured out of their native Gaililee during her pregnancy. Oh, but the spiritual and symbolic truths there! Wandering, they stopped in some humble place, a humble place that was not home but made home by the love incarnated in the birth of a child, and kindness incarnated in the strangers who stopped to witness and participate in the love they shared.

Chanukah too. You know the story of Chanukah-a group of Jews, called Maccabees, lead by Judah, tired of the assimilation to Greek culture that was going on all around them even in the Jewish holy land, recaptured the temple in a military victory and rededicated that temple as both the symbol and the expression of an uncorrupted Jewish identity. But there are some factors that make the story, left only there, troubling. For one we know that the victory of the Macabbees was temporary-The temple is destroyed forever shortly after the victory of the Maccabees, and with that destruction Jews were deprived forever the ability to identify themselves by public worship in the temple, forced to flea into the four corners of the world. Zionists have always used the story of the Macabees to argue for the importance of restoring the Jewish homeland, and establishing once again a place as the center and guarantor of Jewish identity.

But the Rabbis, the Rabbis come to a very different conclusion about Chanukah than the Zionists. The Rabbis, the teachers of Judaism, were for centuries those who worked hard to adopt Judaism to its new circumstances, and to teach a version of Judaism that could be praticed anywhere, even in the most hostile of environments. They concluded that the only temple that needs to be rededicated-the only temple that can guarantee the preservation of Judaism, is the temple within the heart. In the image offered by one Rabbi, Judiasm would fail if it sought a hard strength like a rock, but would succeed if it could become powerful, but quiet, like a river. As so the home of Judaism for the Rabbis was not a land or a temple or a place at all. Channukah then finally becomes a story about making a preserving within one's own heart and faith a religious home no matter how homeless one is in material fact.

Kwanza too, is the religious tradition of a people without a home. Kwanza is the African -American holiday conceived of and developed by Maulana Karenga, an African Studies scholar. Kwanzaa is traditionally celebrated from December 26 through January 1, with each day devoted to one of the seven principles by which the African and African American peoples have sustained themselves. Parts of the holiday are derived from a blending of different traditional African harvest celebrations, and the name Kwanzaa itself comes from the Swahili for "first fruits." The seven principles honored are Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity and Faith.

I have to admit I've sometimes wondered if Kwanzaa really works as a holiday, it having been so very deliberately and artificially invented. But of course Kwanza had to be invented. When the African slaves were brought here, they separated from their elders and the holy people who might have taught them their own traditions, and they were thrown together with people of many parts of Africa, and so more often than not, they could not even able to speak the same language. The traditions of such a people would of course be lost, and need to be replaced by a synthesis of the beliefs that gave them strength and hope. Kwanzaa, in much the same way as Chanukah, also asks the question: uprooted from history and lands of origin, how can people celebrate the values that sustained them even as they are cut off from that history and homeland forever? The Kwanza answer is clear: by inventing what ever traditions necessary so that people might come together in sympathy and common purpose.

To make a home in a homeless world. I even think also about the ancient pagan practices of solstice. We don't know much about those prehistoric times, but we do believe that people probably did gather together on the frozen hillsides on the longest night of the year, waiting to see the first rays of dawn that would indicate that the process of growing darkness had reversed itself into one of growing light. It is popular to say that those people felt and anticipated that they would witness on that night either the end of the world, or its redemption. I don't think we can ever know with how much uncertainty they felt sitting on those hills waiting for dawn. But it is profound to think that if it was potential disaster they expected, it would be disaster that they would decided to experience together, as a collective, as human beings who might just as well rise in the next morning's light and choose all over again to make a home of this earth no matter how uncertain and fragile the stuff of our lives be. A feeling that after September 11, is a lot closer to us that those ancient days on the hillsides.

One last word on shepherds, and homes, and homelessness.

The hymn I'd like us to share in shortly is the one called "There's a Star in the East." I'm sure you have heard it-it is an African American spiritual, and it is on a literal level, it is about the Christmas story. There's a Star in the East, so rise up shepherd and follow. Leave your sheep and leave your rams, rise up shepherd and follow. In fact, though this song was one of the many seemingly religious songs that was in fact a coded message used by African American slaves to indicate the direction that slaves might go if they wished assistance in running towards freedom. The Star in the East? That's actually the North Star, and if the runaway slave would follow its direction, help towards freedom would be waiting.

In this season, then, let us not concern ourselves with whether or not we have a home for the holidays that would work as a Bing Crosby special. Let us instead realize the lesson that religions the world around teach us over and over again: anywhere we choose to extend the small kindness of shared experience to another human being, we make of that place, wherever it may be, a home. Such is the truth known to the shepherd.

NOTE: Some of the ancient images of the shepherd as well as the notion of the importance of individualization to pastoral function come from Michel Foucautls's profound essay, "Pastoral Power and Political Reason," collected in Religion and Culture: Michel Foucault, Jeremy Carrette, editor.