As someone who can have fits of procrastination, I understand the impulse of wanting to wait to do something until we feel like doing that certain thing. Sometimes this feeling actually does come, but most times I end up having to plug my nose and go do whatever it is that I have been putting off. I bring this up to point out that there are really two ways in which we can perform an action. The first way to do it is, rather obviously, because we actually feel like doing it. The things that fall into this category are often the fun and enjoyable things in life. People rarely say that they don’t feel like having a cookie or getting a massage or taking a cruise in the Mediterranean. The other way of doing things is doing an action not out of any great desire or pleasure derived from those actions but is rather out of a sense of obligation. These are often things like scrubbing the toilet, picking up after the dog or unclogging a drain. We may not despise these actions, but we do them mainly because we know that they need to be done. In these actions we rely not on an internal feeling, but rather on something outside of ourselves, which convinces us of the necessity of a given action.
Now part of being a Christian is doing actions that may not be actions that we feel like doing. This does not mean these actions are wrong, quite the contrary, but rather that our feelings are often not good barometers to measure the things that we should do. For example God asks us to forgive one another just as he has forgiven us. He asks us to avoid gossip and slander. But things like gossip and slander may be things which might come quite naturally to us. But part of being a Christian and growing in Christ is changing our hearts so that the thing, which we do out of obligation eventually becomes something that we do out of desire. In other words the goal is that we do things like forgive others, not because God tells us to, but because we want to.
I was thinking about this distinction today when Jesus talks about himself as the Good Shepherd. He says, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.” Why does the hired hand run away? The simplest answer is that he feels like running away. The hired hand acts on the desire to not get embroiled with a wolf and the actions that will be required to defend the sheep against such an animal. Jesus on the other hand says that he is the one who of his own will and desire will sacrifice everything, including his life to keep the sheep safe. Or as he puts it, “I lay it down of my own accord.” And so here is the question for us, how do we move from having the mind of the hired hand to having the mind of Jesus. That is how do we move our desires from the selfish ones that are exemplified in the hired hand to the perfect and loving desires as displayed in Jesus?
The short answer is it will not happen overnight, it will take a lot of trying. And getting there will probably mean that we will live for a while in the in-between space. That is the area between being the hired hand and being the Good Shepherd. Now before I go on I want to say that I am slightly broadening this discussion. The way the text reads we see the Good Shepherd acting in one specific way and that way is in laying down his life for the sheep. This reading was most likely chosen for this season of Easter because of that fact – laying down his life is something of a foreshadowing of the crucifixion. But I don’t think we have to always see laying down one’s life as leading to physical death. I think it is enough to say that laying down one’s life can also be seen metaphorically and that it will encompass all of those times where we put the will of God above our own. Or in the words of Jesus laying down our life is when we say, “not my will but yours be done.” And so with that out of the way let’s get back to thinking about the idea of laying down our life. The two ideas that we saw in today’s reading where that of willingly laying down our life or willingly running away from that responsibility. In both cases the actions were done in accordance with what the person wanted to do. Jesus wanted to lay down his life, the hired hand wanted to run away. However as I said I think there is a place in between these two and we alluded to that in the opening discussion when we talked about scrubbing the toilet and picking up after the dog. This is when we do something that was not necessarily what we wanted to do, but realize the necessity of doing it. So in this case it is when we lay down our life, that is we submit our will to God’s will, but we really don’t feel like doing it. This may not be the most popular thing in a day and age where authenticity to self is highly prized, but I would contend that there will be times in our life where the right thing to do and our wills will be in conflict. And in such times we should say, “not my will but yours be done.”
The great thirteenth century theologian Thomas Aquinas talked about virtues as being habits. What he meant by that was virtues were good things and therefore we should do them, but because we might not always want to do them we should look at them like habits. To understand a little better let’s think of something sort of mundane like turning off a light when we leave a room. Most of us probably grew up with parents who told us to do this and if we are parents we have probably told our children to do this as well. Based on my experience of raising children it appears that turning off a light when you leave a room is not a natural thing. In other words children do not come pre-programmed with an overwhelming desire to turn off lights. Eventually, though, with enough reminding it becomes a habit. And it is a habit that helps save electricity. So similarly submitting our will to the will of God may also not be something which comes naturally, but if we do it enough times it becomes part of who we are and something that we do naturally.
And so now lets go back to our two examples of the Good Shepherd and the hired hand. Ultimately we should become like the Good Shepherd, but most likely none of us are there yet. Furthermore many of us are probably fighting against many of the characteristics that would make us like the Good Shepherd. As a result we need an in-between place which is the place where we may act like the Good Shepherd but do so only out of obedience, hoping that one day it will become part of us. A habit that we do naturally.
I want to conclude today with a brief discussion about hypocrisy. And I realize at first this might seem to come a little out of left field, but please bear with me. The chief secular sin in our day and age seems to be hypocrisy, that is believing one thing and doing another. We love to find the pro-family politician caught in an affair or the environmental activist who flies around on a private jet. But I don’t believe hypocrisy is inherently bad. After all I would prefer it if all people with a mental predisposition towards being serial killers were hypocrites. The thing is if we believe in higher ideals, the kinds that are exemplified in the Good Shepherd then we are most likely going to be hypocrites at some time in our lives. We will believe in doing the will of God but may end up acting in quite another way. Falling short of the Glory of God is not an invitation to give up and say that God’s calling on our lives is of no importance. Rather it is a call for repentance and a call to continue to strive to do the will of God. We will not always succeed. We will all be hypocrites at certain points in time, but the hope is that success will lead to more success and we will grow daily in our love and desire for God so that we may be his both now and forevermore.