By Bill Moseley
Note: The following reflection was delivered before the start of mass at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church on Sunday, July 18, 2021.
My old shepherd friend Sadio relaxing at his home in 2014
First Reading – Jeremiah 23:1-6
Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 23
Second Reading – Ephesians 2:13-18
Gospel – Mark 6: 30-34
Good morning! My name is Bill Moseley
and it is my pleasure to reflect with you on today’s readings which are all
about shepherds and sheep. We learn about bad shepherds in the first reading,
good shepherds in the psalm and the 2nd reading, and an exhausted shepherd in
the gospel text. Shepherds and sheep are an oft used biblical metaphor
employed to describe the relationship between the people of God and their
religious leaders. This all seems pretty clear. But what if it is not? What if
we have fundamentally misunderstood the shepherding metaphor.
Stories and metaphors, as any good teacher knows, are what people and students
remember, so it makes sense that this is what was passed on through oral
tradition, and eventually written down, in our religious texts. Many biblical
metaphors are rooted in agricultural livelihoods, which is understandable as
most people were farmers, herders and fisherfolk at the time the bible was
composed. However, the challenge for contemporary people interpreting the
bible is that many of us are not agriculturalists. As such, we may
misunderstand the original intent of an agricultural metaphor, or be presented
with a misguided interpretation.
Herewith a quick example of such misdirection or misinterpretation from my
teaching There is a famous essay published in 1968 entitled “the Tragedy of
the Commons” by an economist named Garrett Harden. This essay may or may not
be familiar to you, but rest assured that anyone who works in the realm of
environmental management knows it it and, luckily for my purposes today, it
deals with sheep and pastures. Harden starts this essay with a parable of a
common pasture in a small rural community. Here individual community members
graze as many of their sheep as possible in order to maximize their own
personal gain. In the process, however, the pasture degrades, and everyone
losses as there is less and less pasture for the sheep. For Harden, the common
pasture is the problem. If we want to solve the degradation issue, then we
must subdivide and privatize different portions of the pasture. With your
privately held plot, according to Harden, you will carefully manage your
portion of the pasture, and only put on a few sheep so it does not degrade.
I find several aspects of this telling of the story problematic, but let me
note just two here. First, Harden fundamentally misunderstands the idea of a
commons, which have existed in rural communities all over the world for
millenia, be they pastures, forests or fisheries. These commonly held natural
resources are often tightly controlled and managed by a set of rules developed
by the community for the community. It is not a free-for-all as Harden
suggests, but carefully managed individual use so that everyone benefits.
Second, Harden’s title for this story, the “Tragedy of the Commons,” is
leading and frames the answer: the commons are the problem and therefore must
be privatized. What if he had entitled the essay “The Tragedy of the
Privately-Held Sheep?” This might lead us down an entirely different train of
thought.
Now let us return to shepherds and sheep. How were you taught to interpret
this metaphor? As a young person, I learned that the shepherd was to protect
guileless sheep from danger and that their power may be used wisely or
unwisely. In other words, the shepherd holds all of the ‘agency’ and the
sheep, in this instance, blindly follow the directions of the shepherd.
But what would real shepherds, people who actually herd livestock for a
living, think of the way we (a mostly urban people) interpret the good
shepherd metaphor? I am not a farmer and I did not grow up in a rural area.
What little understanding I have of shepherding comes from my time as a Peace
Corps volunteer in the West African country of Mali in the 1980s. As a Peace
Corps volunteer, I had a number of friends from the Fulani ethnic group, a
group of farmer-herders that are spread all across the drylands of West
Africa. I did go out shepherding cows with these friends on a number of
occasions and I can share at least three insights from those experiences.
First, shepherding was not a high status occupation, but rather an arduous,
often uncomfortable and low status job. Within Fulani families, it was not the
male head of household who typically herded the cattle, but younger men in the
family who would spend days in the bush with the cows, eating poor food and
being devoured by mosquitoes in the evening. I spent one night in the bush
with my male friends and their cattle, soaked by rain, strafed by insects, and
kept awake all night by boisterous cattle. I was ready to go home to my
village house the next day, which felt like the Ritz Carleton after my time at
the cattle post.
Second, livestock (cattle, sheep, goats) are a form of wealth in many areas of
the world and wealthy individuals have often hired herders to tend their
livestock. This proletarianization of the herding workforce means that the
status of this group is even more lowly. While this is not always the case,
many peasant farmers at least control their own land, their means of
production, whereas the majority of herders do not own the cattle they are
tending. Herders are put there to ensure the wellbeing of the herd, but it is
pretty clear that they do not own the herd.
Third, it is problematic to think that herders tell or direct their livestock
what to do. The herd has a mind of its own and will often do what it wants. If
there is good pasture, or water ahead, the herd will surge in that direction.
Sometimes this is of no consequence, but sometimes the water might be
contaminated or the tantalizing pasture ahead might actually be the field of a
neighboring farmer, creating the possibility for conflict. It takes all the
skills of a good herder to steer the herd clear of such hazards, something
which is rarely recognized when done well and decried mightily when done
poorly (as we hear in the first reading when God declares “Woe to the
shepherds who let the flock of my pasture stray and scatter”). The herder is
there to facilitate and keep the herd moving in the right direction. While it
may not be cognizant of this, the herd, in this instance, really has more
power than the herder.
I want to argue that these three observations shed a different light on, and
give new meaning to, the shepherding metaphor. What might this say for those
leaders seeking to derive meaning from this passage for today? While exhorting
someone to govern wisely is always good advice, what is more clear here is
that leadership informed by the good shepherd model means understanding at
least three points.
First, leadership cum shepherding is hard, tiring work (the gospel reading was
clear on this) and you take it on as a form of service to society, not for
status. Second, people are the wealth of any society and our collective
well-being may be facilitated by the work of good shepherds. Such shepherds
understand that they do not own such wealth, but are there as stewards,
stewards who may be removed if they are not performing their duties. And
third, good shepherds facilitate, they do not dictate, They understand that
the job is about encouraging the community to move in a smart direction but
that, ultimately, this is a collective decision. Of course, the shepherd may
also encourage the herd to move in the wrong direction or not stand in the way
of a bad decision. This may be expedient in the short term, but ultimately it
will create much bigger problems down the road, both for the errant shepherd
and the herd.
So how do we apply this more grounded, good shepherd model to leadership
today?
The scriptural authors recognized that herds can make bad decisions. Put
yourself in a room with people voicing the same perspective and there is a
tendency among many to want to go along. Sometimes that may be a wise
decision, but sometimes that could be a poor decision. As such, in order to
insure the common good, and longevity of society, we need two things to
happen. First, we need thoughtful citizens who will raise different points of
view. Second, we need leaders, cum good shepherds, who will facilitate a
collective decision making process wherein all voices are heard so that the
best decisions are made. The leader who feels self-important, entitled to the
wealth of a society, and/or inclined to suppress critical thinking and dictate
decisions, will fail in the long run.
Given the above, I suggest that we need an educated herd with critical
thinking skills. We must have robust investments in public education for the
good of society. We also need more shepherd-like leaders, real shepherds who
are down-to-earth facilitators. The crozier, or the pastoral staff, symbolizes
the role of a catholic bishop as a Good Shepherd. But many other trappings of
a bishop’s garb, such as his ring, miter and fine robes suggest wealth and
power. If we look at church history, the reality is that the lowly shepherd
cum facilitator, along with the communal living preached by Jesus, was largely
gobbled up by the Roman Empire whose norms live on in the Roman Catholic
Church. It’s time we jettisoned the hierarchical and patriarchal model of
leadership that Jesus found to be so problematic and returned to the idea of
shepherds and shepherdesses toiling amidst the holy flock. Pope Francis has
made encouraging nods in this direction by, for example, washing the feet of
Muslim migrants or declining to be driven in chauffeured limousines. In
contrast, recent pronouncements by the US Council of Catholic Bishops on
President Biden and communion strike me as haughty, misguided and
uncharitable. We need more of the former and less of the latter. Amen.
Acknowledgements: My thanks to the Word Team and my spouse for their
thoughtful feedback on earlier iterations of this reflection. I may be
contacted at moseley@macalester.edu.
From day one, The Progressive Catholic Voice had Francis of Assisi as its patron saint. In his time, our brother Francis heard and responded to God’s call to “repair my Church.” It’s a call that resounds today in a Catholic Church which, at its worst, is corroded and weakened by clericalism, hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty, a profound lack of imagination, and a monarchical mind set and structure totally contrary to Jesus’ egalitarian model of community. Yet as distressing as this is, there are many Catholics who are unwavering in their commitment to embody a healthy, life-giving, intellectually-honest, and authentically Gospel-based model of church – especially in terms of organizational structure, decision-making, and Vatican II’s call for “full, conscious, and active participation by all the baptized.”
