I am the Good Shepherd...
...so says Jesus in John 10. Today was the "Good Shepherd Day" in much of the church. It's a day to remember the great image of the shepherd that Jesus gave us to describe his relationship with us.

Over the years, I've tossed this image around and have learned different nuances that are available within it. This morning, as I heard the passage read within the church, my mind discovered one more that I'd like to share to you.

In the movie, "Waking Ned Devine," you learn a little about what it means to work with animals. A central character in the movie is a pig farmer deeply in love with a woman adverse to his profession. She often comments that he smells way too much like the animals for whom he cares. To win her over, he uses "fruity soaps". It's a great movie about more than a love story, and I recommend it to all.

The pig farmer takes on the smell of the pigs. I've heard the same said about shepherds--they take on the smell of the sheep. Shepherds, in a more pre-modern world, stayed with their sheep constantly. They were always found in the midst of the sheep. They provided for them, encouraged them to follow and move along to different pastures, and protected them. They'd often corral them into some cleft where they could keep them all in one place over night, and place themselves in any natural exit point to prevent the sheep from escaping and from wolves and thieves from snatching one of them.

All of this is a dirty job. Shepherds were covered in earth and all the smells and fluids that come from sheep. They showed ultimate devotion to their job, and they had to for success as a shepherd. Sheep are good for slaughter and their coats. If you don't have any sheep leftover, you wouldn't have much of an income.

But there's something to this taking on of the smells and character of the sheep that lends richness to Jesus' metaphor of his relationship to us. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the one covered in the stink of the sheep. We are the sheep who lend him that stink.

This taking on the stink works in two ways: 1) it highlights how Jesus takes on human nature. He's not some divine agent in a human shell. He is human, and his commitment to being human is stinky. 2) He takes on the stink of sin that we as sheep give to him. The Good Shepherd is not the remote person who shepherds from afar for fear of getting dirty. Jesus is down in the midst of his sheep, stepping in their crap, lifting them from danger, leading them to green pastures and water, and protecting them from outside danger. He is committed fully to his role as the Shepherd who takes on the stink of the sheep.

On the cross, we proclaim that Jesus takes on the sin of the cosmos and puts it to death in his own death. On this Good Shepherd Sunday, we see that he was stinky with the smells of his sheep on that cross.

Who's taking on your stink these days? Jesus is the Good Shepherd.