The Rev. Keri T. Aubert Acts 4:5-12

All Saints Episcopal Church, South Burlington, Vermont  Psalm 23

May 3, 2009      1 John 3:16-24

Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B, RCL       John 10:11-18

In 1838 Vermont was home to 1.6 million sheep; this was over five times its 290,000 people.[i] Reflecting the huge sheep population, land throughout the state was 80% pasture and 20% wooded.[ii] There were 80 mills around the state for processing the wool from all those sheep.[iii] A few years earlier what was then known as the Burlington Mill Company had built the first of its two mills in Winooski, which was then described as a manufacturing village in the town of Colchester.[iv] Employing some 100 people,[v] the woolen mill manufactured fine cloth for a variety of uses such as police uniforms and billiard tables.[vi]

Today Vermont is very different. Sheep and wool are no longer an important part of the state’s economy. Vermont’s 620,000 people[vii] outnumber its 20,000 sheep[viii] by something like 30-to-one. The land is 20% pasture and 80% wooded.[ix] The millwork done in Winooski long ago moved overseas; one of the mills in Winooski is now an apartment building, and the other is a shopping mall.

Vermont has changed, and the world has changed. Everything has gone global, and the recent global news has been bad. First came global climate change. Then the global economic crisis. And now a global outbreak of swine flu. I am reminded of the butterfly effect: the idea that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world can set off a tornado on the other side of the world. This came into the popular lexicon from an obscure field of mathematics known as chaos theory. Things do feel a bit chaotic right now. The interconnectedness of the world economy and the ease of world travel allow crises to spread quickly, and the pace of climate change seems to have picked up. It’s hard not to be anxious.

Two weeks ago, my family had visitors from out of town, a couple with an 18-month-old toddler. Attempting to accommodate both the toddler and his parents’ interest in community-based agriculture, I checked the schedule of events at Shelburne Farms. That Saturday happened to be children’s “sheep day” at the Farm Barn, and so off we went. The high point of the day for the toddler was his up-close encounter with a chicken just about his size. The high point of the day for me was the sheep-shearing demonstration.

After a PowerPoint presentation about the history of sheep in Vermont, a ewe was brought in for shearing. That particular ewe was only a year old, and so it was her first shearing. That did not seem to make much difference, as she behaved pretty much like . . . a sheep. The shearing took perhaps 30 minutes, though only because the shearer kept stopping to explain what she was doing. The sheep accepted her fate with little argument and emitted only occasional pathetic bleats. It was not a particularly dignified event—for either the sheep or the shearer. At the beginning and for much of the time, the sheep sits upright on its lower back with its middle and upper back leaning back against the shearer’s legs but held between the shearer’s knees. The sheep’s four legs stick straight out, and its head flops over to one side. In that position the sheep is essentially unable to move.

I’ve not had much interaction with sheep in my life, and I’d never seen a sheep being shorn. What struck and surprised me about the shearing process was the physical intimacy of shearer and sheep. The bodies of the shearer and of the ewe were in constant contact. The shearer got dirty from the lanolin and dirt carried in the wool. The shearer used her whole body to maneuver the ewe into various positions and to hold it in place. The shearer also manipulated the ewe’s legs and head to avoid cuts. The ewe was especially vulnerable as the shearer moved the shears over its belly and neck.

The weekend before I was there, Shelburne Farms hosted a sheep shearing school. There’s an entertaining online news story about this event, and on it you too can see some highlights of sheep shearing. Most of the shearers learned or are learning to shear in order to take care of their own sheep. The shearers, then, are also shepherds, shepherds who seem to really like sheep. They admit that shearing is stressful for the sheep, but insist that afterwards they are happy to be rid of their hot winter coats.[x]

At Shelburne Farms, sheep have a pretty good life. They have abundant food and water year-round along with the extra bonus of good summer pasture. They are physically safe from predators. They are treated with kindness and even affection. And even though it’s not the most fun thing for sheep or shearer, they also get a good shearing once a year. You could say that the sheep at Shelburne Farms have a good shepherd.

If Jesus is our good shepherd, then we are his lucky sheep. If we are his lucky sheep, then perhaps we too can expect the essentials of food, safety, kindness, and the occasional shearing of whatever might be weighing us down. Unfortunately, that shearing might not be very fun. I suspect that our entire nation is in the midst of a great, big shearing right now.

As Jesus put it, there is only one flock. We belong to a worldwide community made up of individuals who share the same basic needs. The negative effects of globalization have brought this reality home to us like never before. This is a very anxious time for our nation. Maybe it would ease our anxiety to view this period as just a good shearing. Maybe it would ease our anxiety to remember that a good shepherd knows each member of his flock, intimately and individually. In the shearing going on right now, the good shepherd can glide the shears cleanly over our most vulnerable parts.

In all that is happening around us, it can sometimes feel as if all we can do is pathetically bleat. But this is where we have it much better than sheep do. We have the mental acuity to learn from the events surrounding us and even to participate in the renewal that comes from them. If the news is any indication, we have already developed a heightened awareness that we live in an infinite web of community—and that our actions affect everyone else, and everyone else’s actions affect us. We are learning to be better environmental stewards. We are reconsidering our patterns of consumption. We are more generous in helping those who lack basic needs. I would add that we are noticing how our bad habits in all these areas have left us disconnected from God and from one another, and we are rebuilding those connections. Without so much wool weighing us down, we might be able kick up our heels. Without so much wool weighing us down, we might emerge clean, renewed, naked as a freshly shorn sheep on a warm spring day.

The world is changing. But then again, it always is. No matter what, our good shepherd will provide us with all we need, and then some. For each of us sheep, Jesus both laid down his life and picked it up again. I suspect that he picks it up again and again and again. He will not run away.