John 14:1-10
Fourth Sunday of Easter: May 15, 2011
When most of us hear “shepherd,” the image that first pops into our head is that of a sweet 6 or 7 year old dressed up as a shepherd for the Christmas pageant. They are well-scrubbed and adorable figures with dish towels on their heads and clad in striped bathrobes and they often need a fair amount of shepherding themselves to get on and off stage at the right points. In other words, the picture that generally comes to mind doesn't have a whole lot to do with what Jesus is talking about here.
Shepherds had a hard life, since they faced all of the hardships of the hostile landscape through which they herded their sheep. Being with the flock, they faced all of the dangers and difficulties that the flock faced, and they were just as vulnerable -- to heat in the day, to cold at night, and to human and animal predators at all times.
Jesus as shepherd is a common, widely-used image in the Christian faith. But if our picture of a shepherd is sweet kids dressed up at Christmas time, we completely miss the point of the metaphor. Completely. Essential to the metaphor is that it’s not sweet. A shepherd lives outside of normal society, a nomadic life, divorced from traditional notions of wealth – yet possessing the skills to survive in a harsh world. The one who we are to follow, the shepherd, is not sweet and pastoral. This one leads us through the wild world, keeping us safe, yes, but taking us places we wouldn’t be able to go on our own, and that are often far more scary than picturesque.
The image of shepherd is not lost on this week’s Easter Person: Jim Corbett. Corbett is what he calls a “goatwalker.” He herds goats, and that forms the basis of his spiritual, religious, political, and social life. He was born in Casper, Wyoming, and spent much of his life as a rancher in Wyoming and Arizona. He also had a master in Philosophy from Harvard and taught college classes. This unique dual profession gave him both insight born of experience and the ability to powerfully articulate what he learned from tending goats until the day he died.
Goatwalking, according to Corbett, is an antidote to a life of listening to, and following, voices other than that of the Good Shepherd. Most of us, he claims, live trapped in a culture based on using and abusing our creation in order to “survive” – and for us, surviving means the progressive taming of wilderness and increased control over our destiny. Surviving is living in denial of our vulnerability by trying to control everything we think threatens us. And so to survive in this way, we have a need to remake and consume the world…to conquer it. We have become addicted, according to Corbett; addicted to control, denial, greed and consumption. We will use and abuse whatever we can in order to maintain what we have.
Wealth, we believe, in the talisman to all things evil. And so for us, thieves and bandits are those that would steal our wealth. But the thieves and bandits of which Jesus spoke are the ones who vie not for our wealth, but for our souls. When we give ourselves over to their leadership, when we believe what they say and follow what they do, they steal our very life, spiritually speaking, and keep us from the abundant life Jesus promises if we follow him.
One of the things I like about Corbett is that he helps us get beyond understanding that this abundant life Jesus talks about is merely life after death – life in heaven. He reminds us that the abundant life promised is found not after we die physically, but rather after we die to certain ways of living now. Jesus as shepherd isn’t leading us out of this world into the next; Jesus is leading us out of a certain way of living into a new kind of life in the here and now. And the route is as important as the destination. The route is through the wilderness…through the wild. We have to live unprotected by our creature comforts, and we have to let go of the illusion that we can control creation and use it to our own ends in order to see how creature comforts and the illusion of control are not keeping us alive, they are slowly sucking the true life right out of us.
Corbett believes goatwalking is a model for detachment from the addictions to greed and comfort and consumerism. Like shepherding, goatwalking is also not an easy life. You are out in the elements, leading a herd of animals who can survive in some of the harshest conditions. Corbett too needs to survive. But for him, survival is about meeting basic needs in the present. It’s not about maintaining a hold on things that don’t ultimately exist – security and wealth. Surviving is meeting each moment with only God’s gifts as resources.
“The life of goatwalking,” he writes, “concentrates on the present. Commercial economies on the other hand place their emphasis on the work needed to transform and develop raw materials into wealth [to secure an imagined future]. For the [goatwalker], wealth is created by sun, rain, and soil.” Because of this, Corbett is able to see the created world with complete gratitude for what it provides, which is – he has found – plenty in order to tend to our needs.
Corbett claims that most of us labor for future fulfillment in an “ever-dying present”. Life is supported only by work, investment, the accumulation of wealth – above all. “We labor in an empty present that is death;” he writes. “we grasp for a future that must die when we touch it.” Goatwalking provides the economic foundation for a practice that would otherwise be virtually impossible for members of industrial civilization: withdraw from society in order to cultivate detachment or selflessness.”
Short of becoming goatwalkers ourselves, he would claim that we need times when we quit grabbing at the world, time to rest, and to rejoice in the Creation’s goodness. He calls this, cleverly enough, Sabbath . But remember that this Sabbath is a wilderness experience. It is letting go of things that we have come to rely on for comfort in order to spend time in unfamiliar territory. When we leave life as we know it; it can feel like a harsh wilderness. But we learn that we are able to live without those things we think are so fundamental to our survival – to our way of life.
Corbett suggests we seek seclusion outside society, because a person addicted to social busyness cannot become adequately detached, and the most direct way to break the addiction is to withdraw from society. Having arrived at some measure of detachment, a person might return to society without suffering a relapse, but the person who has never experienced solitude can’t even understand their addiction or the nature of detachment.” This withdraw from society – this Sabbath – doesn’t have to be geographical. It means stopping, ceasing activities like buying, using, seeking wealth, running on the treadmill of life.
Corbett is careful to make an all important distinction between Sabbath as detachment and Sabbath as escapism. Escapism does not seek wilderness – it seeks tameness. In the wilderness we learn things about the world of which we are usually a part. We see things for what they are, and then – because in Sabbath we learn we can live in a completely different reality, we have the freedom to challenge and change those things on which we thought we depended. “To be detached,” Corbett writes, “does not mean the elimination of involvement. The people who detach seek total involvement, unlimited relationship, complete intimacy, inclusive empowerment. Detachment is freedom from the self-centering that destroys our ability to relate.”
When we detach for periods of time, we are more equipped to enter back into society with ears still tuned to the shepherd who leads us into and through the wilderness. In the wilderness, we are confronted with our denial, we find wealth impotent in the face of wilderness demands, and we begin to see what happens if we can’t break free from the death-dealing systems of the world. And that is the only way, Corbett would argue, that we can then challenge these systems and help bring life to others.
In 1981, while living in Arizona, Corbett became aware of refugees fleeing from civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. These people were crossing the border from Mexico into Arizona and seeking political asylum. At the time, very few of these refugees were receiving protection, as the U.S. government was funding the governments of the countries from which the refugees were fleeing, and immigration judges were instructed by the State Department to deny most asylum petitions.
Together with other human rights activists, Corbett started a small movement in Arizona to assist these people coming across the border, by providing assistance, transportation, and shelter. To justify their actions, these activists, under the auspices of churches and Quaker meetings, cited religious precedent of protecting people feeling persecution, as well as the Geneva conventions barring countries from deporting refugees back to countries in the middle of civil wars.
This movement, which became known as the Sanctuary movement, eventually involved over 500 congregations, and helped hundreds if not thousands of refugees find freedom in the U.S.
Corbett and ten others around Tucson, Arizona were arrested for their work, as it violated U.S. immigration laws, although he was eventually acquitted.
For Corbett, the work he did on providing Sanctuary to those fleeing persecution grew out of his spirituality that was formed by ranching. He is not a rule breaker by nature. In fact, he takes very seriously the laws which govern our common life together as a country. He knows he is protected by the state from intruders just because he lives here. To break laws is to violate the covenant we have together as a nation.
At the same time, he has spent enough time “off grid,” so to speak, that he sees the limits of governments. He sees how some government laws are also violations of the covenants we have with each other. When confronted with a human being fleeing persecution, the laws that Corbett follows are those that govern humane relationships. Even though that means, in very rare instances, violating the government’s laws, Corbett has the courage to do so because he is not as dependent on the false security the government claims to offer most of us day to day.
Corbett violated the government produced law. But he was obeying, in his way of thinking, the true law – the one accountable to something higher than the government. He calls it a community created law. These are the covenants we create over time by living in a community where we are neighbors and friends, even with our enemies.
Corbett writes, “Sometimes one must choose between obeying the law and obeying the government, as in the case of the human rights violations. Sometimes our neighbors count on us to obey the law rather than the government (saving Jews from Nazis). Often, though, disobeying the government is like failing to keep a promise. When I fail to keep a promise I owe an explanation. I am not to be the sole or final judge determining whether I am justified by the injury I think has been avoided.”
You have to step out, step away, to see this distinction. Jesus called people in a different direction. It’s hard to hear this Good Shepherd passage for those of us who abhor any notion that the Christian faith is about exclusion. Jesus says you have to follow him in order to be saved. But, instead of thinking about it in terms of who “gets in” to heaven and who doesn’t, let’s think about it in terms of what makes for true and abundant life and what doesn’t – and it seems to have to do with choosing a life in which you rhythmically detach – enter a kind of wilderness and learn a new way of living.
Jesus knows what he's saying when he calls people to leave their homes and villages, and even their families, since he had done the same himself. He knows what it's like to have people think that you're crazy or irresponsible because of what you leave behind and let go of, because people said the same things about him. And he knows something else, too: this crazy life he lived, and calls us to live, is abundant life. It's THE abundant life, to be precise. It may be costly to follow the shepherd. We might have to enter a wilderness we would rather avoid. We have to give up things we don’t want to. But ultimately, we are giving up death and gaining life.
There are a lot of other voices out there asking us to follow: bosses, politicians, parents; acquisitions, ambitions, causes; always just one more favor to do, one more promotion to get, one more enemy to defeat, before you can rest secure. As one theologian put it, “Those other would-be shepherds are bad news, keeping us penned with anxiety and work toward things which never turn out to be quite what was promised -- international, personal, or job "security" which really mean a lifetime of vigilance while trying to deny or hide vulnerabilities that are still very real.”
Jesus leads us to what we need: food, water, air; true security, deep rest, and real love. Trusting him frees us to enjoy all of those good gifts as fully as God gives them, and the richness of God's blessings are far beyond what I know how to describe. When he's our shepherd, we experience abundant life that no thief can take away. And when we know that abundant life – when we have stopped following other would-be shepherds, we have the wisdom and courage to stand in opposition to systems that destroy. We don’t need the security and wealth those systems offer, so we no longer have a vested interest in maintaining them.
Think about ways you might become a goatwalker metaphorically. How can you regularly step outside society to sense the wilderness. God is there, and when we reach the wilderness – that place free from the trappings of this world – we will survive…truly survive. Truly live. Amen.
