Recently, mankind passed a significant milestone on its long journey on Planet Earth. For the first time, more humans live in cities and towns than in the countryside. And because of the size of today’s cities – Mumbai or Bombay, Cairo and the like are forecast to top 20 million inhabitants soon – compared with, say, Jerusalem in the first century, the lives of today’s urban-dwellers are disconnected from the country-side. For most, it’s something through which to travel on the way to another city; for fewer, it’s a place of recreation, where sheep are simply part of the landscape rather than a source of livelihood for the shepherd and food for the supermarket shelf. For them, the country-side is a lost Elysium where the harshness of urban life can be submerged in an unrealistic vision of pastures where ‘sheep may safely graze’. This disconnect from the reality of nature, this cultural gap between town and country, is typically characterised by acrimony born of ignorance over issues like bovine tuberculosis, field sports and landscape management. For the majority of human-beings, not just in England, but world-wide, the imagery of Psalm 23 and of Jesus as ‘the good shepherd’ no longer resonates.

Jesus points out in this morning’s reading that the role of the good shepherd is to lay down his life for his sheep; as he would do a few weeks later. And, as we sing in the Jubilate, ‘we are his people and the sheep of his pasture’, the sheep whom Jesus promises to protect from the wolf. As Jesus taught in the Parable of the Lost Sheep [Lk 15:3-7], when he loses one sheep out of a hundred, he will leave the ninety-nine until he finds it; and when he does, ‘he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices’. Well, most of his sheep may have abandoned rural pastures for the illusory security of the big city, but they still get lost. Day after day, the dock in my court is occupied by young men and women who have gone out, had too much to drink, got involved in a fight and now face charges of wounding and assault. Sober, they regret what they did and contemplate prison and the loss of job, home and family; lost sheep of the city streets.

I wonder; is it a coincidence that religious belief and observance has declined and secularism grown with the march of mankind into the housing estates of Europe and the United States, the barrios of South America and the shanty towns of Africa and Asia? The rural dweller is in daily touch with God’s creation; sun-rises and sun-sets; the miracle of Spring; the night-sky; the music of the birds; the rhythm of the sea on the shore. For so many urban-dwellers, night is distinguished from day by street-lights; Summer is the season of smog; rain is but an inconvenience; and there’s neither a sheep nor a shepherd in view. 

Jesus pursued his ministry in a rural world using rural imagery, but his message is as relevant in today’s world, whether urban or rural, as it was then, as I know when I see the lost sheep in my court; and as we all know when we read the newspaper, watch television or listen to the radio; but much of the imagery Jesus employed – not all of it, but much of it – fails to strike a chord in today’s concrete jungles. We should not abandon Jesus’ imagery; but rather we must conjure up a parallel imagery consonant with mean streets; with teeming millions crowded together in tenements, terraces and shacks; so that we Christians can reach out in Jesus’ name to his urban sheep that still and will always need the good shepherd to guard and to guide them; and can seek out the lost ones so as to bring them home on our shoulders, rejoicing. And what might that parallel imagery be? I can sense you asking. As a country-dweller all my adult life, with no experience of urban living, I regret that I cannot say. It would be presumptuous of me to try. But the role of preacher and prophet is as much to diagnose as to cure. The Church, in which I include every major Christian denomination, wrestles with the problems of falling numbers of disciples, clerical and lay. It tried the Decade of Evangelism; it didn’t work. Now we’ve got Hope’08; and we all pray that it will do better. But the thought I share with you this morning is this. Christianity, like Judaism, originated in and is culturally identified with the natural world beyond the city wall; and Christianity has lost touch with most of its flock because the sheep within the city wall neither know a pasture nor recognise a shepherd. If that diagnosis is accurate, then collectively, we the Church, the Body of Christ, must acknowledge and address it, so that Christianity can resume its long march on the way to the Kingdom of God.