Warrior sheep

Not just furry followers

anthropomorphic warrior sheep

“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise and serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16)

Back when I was a school chaplain in the UK, trying to teach the faith to typical sceptical teenagers, one of their (many) complaints was that Jesus called His followers “sheep.” They didn’t want to be sheep! Fluffy and white, stupid and unquestioning, docile followers of the herd. They preferred the rugged individualism of the goats. Better to reign in hell…

So, is that what Our Lord wants us to be: passive victims and food for wolves? A look at the context of his remark will help us to see that the answer to that question is “no.”

English-speakers are so used to the idiom of sheep and wolves, wolves in sheep’s clothing and so on, that we might pass over Christ’s words without really noticing them, assuming that they are just a typical figure of speech. That would be a mistake. Nothing the Divine Word Incarnate says is accidental, but illumine and fulfil the Divine Word in Scripture. So we need to ask, where would we find references to sheep in the Scriptures Jesus and His followers knew?

The most obvious place is Ezekiel 34. Speaking to the Judeans during the Babylonian exile in the early 6th century, the prophet berates their leaders as bad shepherds, blaming them for the scattering of the sheep. Through him, God fires the shepherds, saying that He Himself will rescue His sheep from their clutches, by means of a new shepherd whom God identifies as David. This David will free the sheep and lead them to safety and plenty.

Admittedly, the sheep do still sound rather passive in Ezekiel. But that is not the whole story, because while Ezekiel speaks at length of the sheep, he does not specifically mention wolves among the beasts who oppress them. To find where they came from, we need to look elsewhere, namely, to 1 Enoch. You will search your bibles for this book in vain, unless you happen to have an Ethiopic bible to hand, because it did not make the final cut into the biblical canon in most of the Church. Nonetheless, it was sufficiently influential in the early Church to leave its mark in St Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount, the Epistles of Saints Peter and Jude and the Revelation of St John, and was cited as authoritative by the church fathers St Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Origen. Since books bound in covers had not yet been invented, their idea of a “canon” of scripture was rather more flexible than ours. At any rate, if it was good enough for Our Lord, His Apostles and their immediate successors to quote from, we might want to give it some thought.

1 Enoch is a patchwork of sundry writings from sundry times, but there is a part where wolves and sheep feature strongly: the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85ff). This is not, I hasten to add, a B-Movie, Beatrix Potter, or the History of the Bible in Cats. Rather, it is an extended metaphor for the whole sweep of biblical history, focussed on the sheep of Israel. The wolves in this account are the Egyptians, among whom the Lord sends the sheep to pasture – just as Jesus sends His disciples out. The wolves oppress the sheep, but here is where the sheep metaphor takes a turn: they do not take it. Rather, they begin to attack the wolves, and led by the “Lord of the Sheep,” whose face is “dazzling and glorious and terrible to behold,” they pass through a great divided sea, which then collapses in and drown the wolves who were chasing them. No prizes for guessing the reference there. But note that even Moses, although he is a leader and shepherd of the people, is still at the same time one of the sheep. When pastors forget this, trouble starts.

So, when Our Lord sends His disciples as sheep among the wolves - wolves who, like the Egyptians, will beat and oppress them, even hate them - he is not sending them as food, nor as docile and mindless ruminants. He is sending them to overthrow the wolves, even, to turn to a different animal metaphor, to “outfox” them as Moses tricked the Egyptians into chasing his people into the Red Sea. That is why we sheep must be as wise as serpents. Wise as the seraphim, the snake-like angels who surround the throne of the Most High, and certainly wiser than the fallen angel who tempted our first fathers. Yet also, we must be innocent as doves, blameless at the coming of the Great Shepherd, and like the dove who brought the olive branch to Noah, bearers of the Good News of the Kingdom to all we meet, whatever the cost.

So, my old pupils’ fears were misplaced. Sheep we are, but of a strange kind. The Good Shepherd does not want us to be servile beasts of the field, but crafty and courageous heralds of the Kingdom, and He has sent us deep behind enemy lines to fight the wolves. He calls each of us not to keep silence, but to speak, even before kings and governors. He calls each of us to work for the growth of His flock, to bring more sheep into His fold.

Make no mistake, we and all that we believe are hated by much of the world. Our master has suffered, and we can expect no less. There will be times when we have to lie as low as snakes, infiltrating the wolves’ camp, and times to fly high as doves. We will sometimes fail to answer the call, mistaking cowardice for craftiness, or foolhardiness for courage. But we are assured that when the time comes, the Lord of the Sheep will guide and strengthen, giving us whatever grace of the Spirit we particularly need to carry out our task, for the Good Shepherd has not abandoned His flock, but loves us and knows us by name.