The Good Shepherd

John 10:11-18

Yonsei University Church

Pastor Hee-gyu Park

4/25/21

Jesus said in the Gospel of John, “I am a good shepherd. I know my sheep, and my sheep know me.” Today let me meditate on this word with you.

The fact that the Lord is a good shepherd is a word that feels like the air we breathe. In fact, if you look a little closer, even though it is a parable that we should feel very uncomfortable with, along with the parable of Psalm 23 that the Lord, the Good Shepherd, will guide me, it often comes as a comforting and empowering grace in the most difficult times. But this time, when I was asked to preach at Yonsei University Church and read this passage again, it felt like I read this passage for the first time again.

Oh, it looks like it was caused by our dog, Coco. Coco is now 5 years old Sichuan. She came to our house when she was 8 weeks old, and to Coco, who has lived her whole life with my family, I can say something similar to what the Lord says to us. "I know Coco, and Coco knows me."

At that time, my daughter, who was in fifth grade, thought that caring for a puppy by bringing an 8-week-old fist-sized puppy home, feeding, sleeping, cleaning, and peeing, was similar to caring for a true baby. As Coco grew, I thought educating a child and educating a puppy were very similar.

Now 5 years old, Coco thoroughly ranks and discriminates against our family. And she knows exactly what she can get if she goes to anyone and gets what she wants. For example. I'm not popular with Coco because I comb Coco's hair and give her a shower, that is, being the one who does what Coco hates most. On the other hand, Coco likes my husband the most because my husband breaks all the commandments of dog education and gives him snacks as he pleases, and even secretly gives his dog the food he is eating at the table. Sometimes I play with Coco and take care of her, but my daughter, a high school student, who has its own rules of giving snacks rather than her dad, is treated as halfway between me and my husband. So, from Coco's point of view, I'm a non-negligible Alpha, my daughter is Beta, then Coco is Gamma, and my husband, who does everything Coco wants to do, takes the place of Delta. From the perspective of Coco, who has the wolf's gene, our family has become a wolf pack with this hierarchical order.

We taught Coco some commands, and Coco understands them and follows them. He lives in America and learns these commands, so Coco understands English, he understands sit, jump, down, stay, leave it, etc. And in Korean, Coco understands questions like, “Would it be delicious? Would you like to go out?” etc. And with that level of language, she can roughly solve the problems of communication that you need to do while living with Coco. But what's even more surprising is her own language that Coco taught us. For example, Coco asks you to pay attention to her by looking at us and by sniffing and shaking her head. When she raises her forefoot, Coco is urging you to play. She answers the questions “Would you like something delicious?” or “Would you like to go out?” with her whole body, depending on her needs. When Coco wants to enter a room, she expresses the visit by scratching it twice with her forefoot. Suddenly, my family understands what Coco is saying and communicates with Coco. This kind of communication feels like a mother's instinct to communicate that my child's instincts were able to distinguish my child's cries even in the midst of the crying of several babies, and my breasts are frowned when only hearing the crying of a baby when my child was a baby. At one point, looking into Coco's eyes, she felt that I understood this guy, that I knew this guy.

"I know her coco and coco knows me." I, a primate, and a mammal, a coco, belonging to the carnivorous order, know each other across species. The reason why the parable of the good shepherd felt new to me is that the Lord said that the mammal of the shepherd belonging to the primate order and the mammal of the sheep belonging to the case title know each other. It is knowing beyond the species. The Lord says that knowing is our relationship with the Lord.

I am a professor of pastoral counseling teaching pastoral care. Knowing the other person in pastoral care is the link between establishing relationships and connecting people to people. A renowned psychoanalyst named Heinz Kohut expressed the knowledge that he gained by reflecting on the inner side of himself and others in terms of empathy. Empathy is what makes us understand and connect with others. When empathy is formed, we affirm our own weakness in the other's weakness and connect with that weakness. The confession of faith that I have as a pastoral counselor is a testimony to the presence of God that we encounter in this weakness and the vitality that arises from the weaknesses caused by that presence. I worship right where I meet God's presence. And I wonder if that worship differentiates the counseling I provide from general counseling. However, behind empathy, there is also the power to trample on and destroy that weakness. Because  knowing someone, understanding someone deeply, empathizing deeply with someone, also means knowing his weakness and being able to use that weakness. With that knowledge, you can dominate your opponents. It is said that when Napoleon invaded Egypt from 1798 to 1801 as part of the French Revolutionary War, he took 160 scholars with him. The knowledge they saw and learned in Egypt, that is, the knowledge they gathered as they sympathized with the Egyptians and learned from them, was compiled from 1809 to 1826 as the 37th Encyclopedia of Egypt called Description de l'Égypte. It digs into weakness and becomes an imperial project used to rule Egypt. I am always cautious about teaching empathy because knowledge can be used for destruction. Because the people I teach become experts with both the skills to be warm humans and the skills to trample others. A good shepherd who knows the sheep and knows them must be a good shepherd who uses both sides of empathy.

Consider one more story of knowing that transcends animal species. It's a story that can be closer to our lives in the COVID-19 Era, so I'll tell you a story that happened in Germany in the 11th century. On June 26, 1284, 130 children disappear from the village of Hamelin. Here's the case for this: There were rats in this small German town called Hamelin. No matter how many rats there were, they killed dogs and cats, mounted food makers' ladles, and nested in high-quality hats for going to church. Rats were scattered about food, clothes, sleeping places, and everywhere, so councilors had to come together in the village to come up with a trick. Then, a piped man dressed in strange clothes appears and asks for money because he will get rid of the rat. The man plays the flute in the village after hearing the city councilors say that they can give you five thousand guilders instead of guilders. Hearing the sound, the rats in every corner of the village came out and followed the man, and the flute drowned the rodents in the river and drowned them. The man who has achieved communication with rodents that no one else can do destroys them all with this outstanding empathy. This knowledge frees a town that has been afflicted by rat problems. The outbreak of rats is probably a story of an epidemic circulating in this village, but he uses empathy to annihilate a herd of rats to end the epidemic.

When the piped piper asks for a promised price for this, the villagers do not approve of his tremendous communication skills and do not pay for it. Then the man goes out to the town street and plays the flute again. This time, all the children in the village follow the man, bewitched by the sound of flutes. And they suddenly disappear around the crucifix that was erected at the mouth of the village. On June 26, 1284, the text of the city of Hamelin records that it took place on the holy day of the apostle John. This is a story that tells how terrifying the violence and destruction that a person with these abilities can do when they ignore the ability to communicate and empathize across the species.

For me, who must live with empathy, the warning of this piped piper's story has depth to fear. His appearance somewhat resembles a good shepherd. The shepherd in Psalm 23 brings himself and other species of animals to the shore. He provides rest. Would the flute sound of a piped man fill the void in their minds and provide them with satisfaction and rest? This resemblance is thrilling to me, a professor of pastoral counseling who teaches the charm and kindness of a perpetrator before the onset of violence, whether it's domestic violence, dating violence, or spiritual abuse, compared to violence. When you heard the story of the Piper Man as a fairy tale, what did you think was the lesson of this story? If you don't pay well for your labor, will you get sick? However, the traces of this incident inscribed in the neighborhood of Hamelin eloquently argue that the story is an attempt to explain a historical event that actually took place. It is a story created by the trauma of local mothers and fathers who must understand and explain an incident where 130 children suddenly disappeared one day in 1284. One record by Hamelin City Hall, written in 1384, laments that "100 years have passed since our children disappeared." Someone's outstanding empathy records the annihilation of a generation.

I come back to the words of the Lord. “I am a good shepherd. I know my sheep, and my sheep know me.” Considering the heart of the Lord 2000 years ago, who explained our relationship with us through a story of inter-species communication, we think about where the knowledge the Lord speaks should go. Let's consider our reality of living amid the challenges of COVID-19. Where should interspecies communication and understanding go?

When a creature called the virus called COVID-19 traveled around the world, what we had to use was, in fact, knowing that comes from empathy beyond species. The work of thorough understanding of how the virus works and how it survives and breaking the life cycle of the virus is the way to save us, so we are socially distancing and practicing various living rules to prepare for coronavirus. Whether or not to practice the knowledge accumulated from the sympathy for a living organism called a virus determines whether a mammal called a human "dies or lives", we have been following the guidance of COVID-19 confirmed and deceased around the world for over a year.

Knowing how this virus got into our lives reveals another dimension of our interspecies communication. Many biologists, including Professor Jae-Chun Choi, who teaches zoology at Ewha Womans University, explain that the Covid-19 virus may have been transferred from a wild mammal belonging to the Vinci Order of the Pangolin. If the animals in the wild were not touched, the virus circulating among them would not have come to humans. People constantly destroy and develop the habitats they live in, so there is no distance from them. Viruses that lived within mammals are highly likely to be transmitted to other mammals, so pandemics such as the corona situation will continue to occur without humans as long as humans stop developing them. The knowledge that sympathizes with the dynamics that occur among other mammals fleeing from the destructive touch of one type of mammal and the lives of viruses that are seeking their way among them I wonder if we should become the knowledge of the good shepherd who can save our ecosystem that has been destroyed. Knowing how this virus got into our lives reveals another dimension of our interspecies communication. Many biologists, including Professor Jae-Chun Choi, who teaches zoology at Ewha Womans University, explain that the COVID-19 virus may have been transferred from a wild mammal belonging to the Vinci Order of the Pangolin. If the animals in the wild were not touched, the virus circulating among them would not have come to humans. People constantly destroy and develop the habitats they live in, so there is no distance from them. Viruses that lived within mammals are highly likely to be transmitted to other mammals, so pandemics such as coronavirus will continue to occur, unless humanity stops developing them. The knowledge that sympathizes with the dynamics that occur among other mammals fleeing from the destructive touch of one type of mammal and the life of a virus that finds its way among them is the destruction of humanity and humanity. I wonder if it should be that of a good shepherd that can save the entire ecosystem.

The image of the good shepherd is the ideal and burden of pastoral care. The Lord, who says that I know the sheep and the sheep know me, says, “It is as if the Father knows me and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep.” It is a groundbreaking idea. It would be strange, like I would give up my life for Coco, Napoleon would give up my life for Egypt, the piped man would give his life for the children, and we would give up his life for the pangolins. It's an outrageous idea. Nevertheless, today I hear from the Lord to broaden our perspective in it. Just as I know you, you too are told to know the living systems and ecosystems around you. And with that knowledge, we see the Lord who tells them to become a good shepherd who leads them to the shores where they can rest, rather than dragging them into the river and killing them. In the name of the Lord, I pray that you will know the heart of the Lord who wants us to become good shepherds and take care of the Earth ecosystem, which has become a valley of death.

Let us pray;

Lord, the good shepherd, lift your eyes and look at the world you created.

To see other creatures that you created to live together in this world,

To contemplate life, not destruction,

Help us to understand the will of life of living things with deep sympathy.

Good Shepherd Lord, who said that you know us and that we are precious to change us for your life,

May we also value the lives around us.

Help us to participate in the ministry of caring for the good shepherd.

I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.