Last week the Church commemorated the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. Christ promised the Holy Spirit would guide the Holy Apostles into all the truth. Christ appointed the Apostles to shepherd the Church to heaven. The Apostles ordained Bishops and throughout history, the Bishops of the Church have served as shepherd leading us to heaven. The only thing that gets in the way is that we need to follow. Only goats do whatever the want. Sheep follow the shepherd.
Today, my brothers and sisters, the church commemorates the 12 holy apostles, brings them together to remind us that God never leaves us alone. In the gospel it talks about how Christ looked at the crowd, it says in the gospel, he said he was moved with compassion for them because they were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd. And then he gathered his apostles and he said, “Look, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.”
And he goes on to give the apostles a particular authority, the authority over the unclean spirits, the demons, and the authority to heal sickness. And he goes on to talk about the different kinds of illnesses. We won’t get into the specifics today, only to remind us, my brothers and sisters, that we are asked by God to follow the shepherd. Our shepherd, Metropolitan Alexios of Atlanta, has been given the same authority as the 12 apostles. He has been given the authority over the demons.
He has been given the authority over sickness, and he has been called to lead us. He is our shepherd. But in order for him to lead us, we have to follow. As I wrote on the bulletin, I discovered this living in South Carolina, there’s a big difference between sheep and goats. By the way, sheep taste better, but that’s a different story. You see, sheep will follow the shepherd. Goats go wherever they want to go. You cannot lead a goat anywhere it does not want to go.
So you cannot keep sheep and goats in the same pen. You have chaos. There’s another thing I learned about sheep and goats. Sheep when they eat the grass eat only just a little bit of the grass and then they move on. And the grass grows back and the grass is constantly growing and the sheep are constantly eating. But the goats, they’re a little bit more stubborn than the sheep. The goats will eat the grass and the roots and everything there and kill the grass. They’re killing their own food source.
I learned that living in South Carolina. I’d never owned any goats. I bring this to our attention, my brothers and sisters, because the gospel calls us sheep. The gospel refers to the apostles as shepherds, and we are called to follow them with faith in Christ. You see, my brothers and sisters, our bishops of today, despite their human failings, have only one goal to lead us to heaven and communion with Jesus Christ.
If we refuse to follow them, then we are goats doing our own thing, going where we want to go, when we want to go, doing what we want to do. Sound familiar? That’s the human condition, which is why Jesus Christ when he says in the Gospel of Mark, “Whoever wants to come after me, let him deny himself.” You see, we have to stop being goats and start being sheep. That’s difficult in America because our American mentality is about individualism. Be who you want to be. Instead, our mantra should be be who God wants us to be.
We should teach our children be who God wants you to be. Don’t worry about being whatever you want to be, because sometimes we don’t know what is best for ourselves. I was reading about how sheep are so trusting they will even walk over a cliff following other sheep. I’m not asking you to go over a cliff, but I’m asking you to trust the church, because the church has been guided by the Holy Spirit, which we celebrated last week at Pentecost, for more than 2,000 years. And the church has not led us off the cliff yet.
What makes us think the church is going to go astray today? We have to have faith in the Holy Spirit and in the bishops of our church. This is what we’re celebrating today. So I encourage all of us fight the tendencies in our hearts to always do whatever we want, to stop being the goats and to start following Christ and our shepherd as good, faithful sheep of the Lord. And then, my brothers and sisters, he will escort us into the kingdom of heaven to praise God, to love God, and to be comforted by him, but only if we follow. Glory to God for all things.
