Shepherd Sunday and the Contextualization of the Faith

I saw someone write the other day that they appreciated that a speaker did not use the pastoral, rural imagery of a shepherd when he described meaningful ministry. Instead, he described something more modern and urban. Most of us don't live in rural places where we take care of animals anymore he said, and so we needed to update our language when we speak about God and the Bible.

I did not like this perspective very much. First of all, it left me wondering if people like this pastor back east thought of everything between the Eastern Time Zone and the West Coast as a desolate part of the world that you flew over but never engaged with. It also left me disappointed because the writer and the speaker that he wrote about lost the opportunity to understand a metaphor in light of the bible world, and its missional focus.

You see, much of the world of the Bible prior to the death of Jesus took place in more rural environment. There were exceptions of course. Egypt seems rather populous. As does Babylon. These places where the Israelites were broken down and beat up don't bring back the best memories however. Then there is Jerusalem. The city on a hill! But often, even those that make it to Jerusalem do so after starting out mucking stalls and chasing around sheep.

The language of shepherd was a powerful image in the Hebrew mind because it mixed rural sensibilities of pastoral life with the blue-collar training it took to be a good leader. Moses was a shepherd. David was a shepherd. Abraham was a shepherd. Shepherding was at once a plain job that rural folks often engaged in, and an imagery of care and protection that people projected upon their leaders, and upon God himself.

God guided in wilderness. God led us through difficult terrain. God provided. God protected. We can move on to similar extra-biblical metaphors. Maybe that helps, But, perhaps, maybe we miss something when we run away from the ancient rural sensitvities of Scripture into modern concrete terrain with invisible waves carrying messages through the air.

Furthermore, if you want to see someone contextualize the gospel from a pastoral setting to a more urban one, all you need to do is look at the Apostle Paul. He, like Jesus and the biblical writers of old, communicated the gospel into his context. He did a mashup of Greek philosophy and Christian theology in Athens. He spoke to principalities and powers in Ephesus.

Other new testament writers do this as well. Perhaps most clearly, the book of Revelation contextualizes the language of heaven for urban folks. Although there is much discussion of the Lamb at the beginning of the book, by the end of the Apocolypse we see a new city, a new Jerusalem as an image of heaven. This is quite different from the language of Isaiah who talked about all sorts of created animals and people lying down together in a relatively unpopulated pastoral landscape.

Maybe I overreacted. Maybe I did not. Either way, before we run to contextualize the language of Scripture, let us examine the truth and beauty the original image conveys.