This familiar, two-thousand-year-old Good Shepherd gospel has a distinctively modern challenge. To catch its impact we have to move our minds back to the shepherding days and the shepherding ways of the Bible. Most people, of course, are familiar with the twenty-third psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He leads me in green pastures and even though I walk in the valley of death, I will not fear; the Lord is at my side.” Even city folk like ourselves can feel the comfort and power in that image.

Then Jesus speaks of himself also as the door to the sheepfold, and the power of that image strikes us when we recall that in Jesus’ day, the sheep were kept within a stone wall about as high as your pew, but there was an opening for them to go in and out. So there was no door. Instead, at night time, the shepherd himself would lie across the entrance and any marauding wolf would have to get by him. And so, literally he would lay down his life for his sheep. Think about that one: Jesus lying across our doorway!

But today’s gospel adds a further intimate touch. Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd. I know mine and mine know me.” He knows us, by name. There’s a relationship. And in our everincreasing electronic age, that’s so significant. We are such a numbered people: checkbook numbers, drivers license numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers. We’re coded and locked into so many unknown commercial and secret computers. We have been reduced to numbers and, in the worst extreme, people in concentration camps like Hitler’s had numbers tattooed on their arms. These prisoners were not human beings with names, but faceless, impersonal numbers. It makes it easier to hate and kill numbers or categories, like those Germans, those Jews, those Arabs, those Catholics, those Japs, those blacks, those Muslims. There are no personal names, only lumped-together categories with no personality, all abstractions, easy to dismiss, easy to hate, and easy to kill.

I loved when I was in Washington, Missouri I could walk down the street with Jonah and call everyone by name because I lived there so long. No one likes to be called, “Hey, “You!” Look how awful it is when you go up to someone and you can’t remember their name. I don’t like it when someone comes up to me and says, “I bet you can’t remember my name!”

Remember when you were a child, you would never dare to call an adult by their first name. It was always, “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. McCormick.” I can remember developing a friendship with my Church History professor at Kenrick, Father Bill Hartenbach. After ordination he told me that I could call him, “Bill.” But for months, I struggled to call him, “Bill.” I would say, “BBB… Father!” I was so used to calling him “Father.” In the Jewish tradition when you called a person by their name it meant that you had a relationship with them. You could get into their mind and their heart. You really knew them. That is why the Orthodox Jew could never call God by name. They just couldn’t say “Yahweh.” They called God, Adonai.

The worst thing you can do to a person is ruin their good name, to destroy their name. In the seminary we had a professor of Latin and Greek who had us look up our names and what they meant. How did you even get your name? For whom are you named?

There’s an old Talmudic riddle that asks, “Why did the Tower of Babel crumble?” The answer is because the leaders of the project were more interested in the work than they were in the workers. When a brick would fall to the earth and break, the owners would be upset and bewail the loss of a brick. But when a worker fell to the earth out of exhaustion, they just ignored him and pressed someone else to the task. So God destroyed the tower not because they were trying to reach heaven, but because they were more interested in the bricks than the bricklayers. This is a good story for corporations that look only to the “bottom line” and dismiss or fire or move people around as useful or useless pawns in the pursuit of profit.

But it’s a good story too because it underscores the basis of prejudice or racism, rejection, and persecution. And the basis is this: reducing people to categories, making them abstractions, not knowing their names, not calling them by name - this depersonalizes them. But the Jesus of today’s gospel will have none of that. He knows his sheep and calls them by name. No abstractions to him personally. To overcome prejudice, therefore, is to learn to see as Jesus sees, to know as he knows, to call as he calls, to forgive as he forgives. To overcome prejudice is to see people as individuals with a name and a history, to be more interested in the bricklayers than in the bricks.

Joseph Abdiah was the founder of the Haifa Symphony Orchestra in Israel. Some years ago when he was in an Arab village talking with some of the people, other villagers approached, crowded around him and shouted, “We are going to kill you.” And he asked them, “Why are you going to kill me?” They responded, “We have orders to do so. You are a Jew and we are Arabs, and our leaders have told us to kill any Jew we see.” Abdiah realized that it would be foolish and unavailing to protest or try to escape so he said, “Well, how are you going to kill me?” They answered, “We’re going to take you over to that well there and throw you down it.” So with great dignity Abdiah walked slowly over to the well, but by the time they reached the well it was obvious that the mood of the people was changing. The began to see him, not as a categorized Jew, but as a real human being who was not hostile to them and who stood before them courageously awaiting death. So they hesitated throwing him down the well to die, but on the other hand, they had to ask themselves how they could get around his murder which they were obliged to carry out. They finally came up with a solution. They decided to change his category. They decided to make him a Muslim! And so on the spot they said, “We hereby declare you a Muslim!” And they gave him a new name and continued their conversation. Now it was a question not of category, but of “I know mine and mine know me.” They moved him from a category with a label to a person with a name.

The Good Shepherd who calls us by name is a good figure to rally around as we teach our children to avoid prejudice and racism and bias of any kind. The Good Shepherd is a good revelation of the God who lets it rain on the just and unjust and sends sunshine on the good and the evil. The Good Shepherd is the God of Jews and Samaritans, and Gentiles, the God of rejects, lepers, and thieves, the God of you, me, and them, the God who knows all of us by name. Because of this God, we belong and would never remain nameless again.

This week's bulletin is attached below. Hard copies of this weekend’s bulletin are available on the shelf in the vestibule of the rectory office.