All Creatures of our God and King

That’s the kind of sheep I am, the lame-but-living ewe lamb that Our Father is too foolish to put down. I’m also a black sheep and a scapegoat, best gotten rid of, but the Shepherd doesn’t know an economic drag when he sees one, and He cares for me.

That’s what we all are. That’s the human race. We’re all creatures of our God and King, unprofitable lame beasts on a funny farm. Some of us are dogs. Some of us are egg-bound hens and some of us are one-eyed roosters. Some of us are lame sheep and some are cows. Some are squealing runt piglets that never amount to much. Some of us are barn cats with torn-up ears. The Good Shepherd gathers us in, from all those who don’t see our value, and He pays a ridiculously high price every time. He is terrible with money, our Shepherd.

And I know of a deeper mystery, the deepest Mystery of all.

The Shepherd became a sheep.

The Good Shepherd became the unblemished Lamb.  The Good Shepherd was sold for a pittance, thirty pieces of silver, a week’s wage or so. The Unblemished Lamb allowed Himself to be scourged until there was nothing left visible but a blemish where there had once been a lamb. The Good Shepherd was butchered and torn apart, not fit even to be eaten, but He gave Himself to be eaten anyway. And then the Good Shepherd returned triumphant, and He lives on. He is living now.

Why did the Good Shepherd become an animal like us?

So that the animals might become human. You and I are being made human. Not in some agonizing, vivisectionist Island-of-Doctor-Moreau nightmare, but in the manner of grace. We are being made human by the love that makes slaves into sons and brings children for Abraham out of the stones. In one sense, we were born human. In another, we became human at our baptism, and in another we are being made human gradually now. It’s a messy, ugly process, being made human. It means you’re not very profitable as a barnyard animal. People will hurt you and sell you and try to get rid of you. Even the other animals will despise you, because we all look a little different from one another, and our animal nature would lead us to think that was a bad thing.

And why is the Good Shepherd spoiling His farm, making all the animals human?

Because He wants to marry us.

To be eternal is to give 100% of yourself to everything at all times. He loves you, individually, with all of His love, and the same to me, and the same to my friend the rare copper cow and the farmer who couldn’t bear to kill her sheep. He wants to wed your soul.

Someday, if you let Him, you will become fully human. Whatever you were before will be put to death and rise human– not losing anything that was beautiful in yourself, but also human as you never were before. And then the Lord will come to you, not as shepherd or farmer but as a prince. And the Prince will ask for your hand in marriage, and you will go away with Him into the house, where there is beauty and pleasure untold. The Good Shepherd is terrible with money; He only knows how to buy gifts to make you happy. Fortunately, His riches are infinite.

Better to be a dairy cow or a lame black sheep on that plantation, than to be anything anywhere else.

It’s the only way to become a human being.