Sheep to produce in God’s
flock on God’s country
Boyd Wilson
From a sermon on Good Shepherd Sunday
The pictured champion ewe and lamb were the
progeny of generations bred in stud flocks on
lush, flat paddocks. She was judged by a
studbreeder farming similar land.
But the sheep then carrying much of the nation’s
hope on their backs were mostly out on rugged
country. That was where the potential was.
After years of buying rams bred to meet show
judging fashions, commercial farmers out there
in the real world began to ask questions.
Why were so many sheep falling over bluffs?
Might it have to do with the wool over their
eyes? Why the fashion for bodies like square
boxes on stubby legs? Might this explain why so
many two-tooths needed help when lambing,
why flocks were slow-moving when mustered,
why the natural hollows of lambs’ bodies were
filled with fat? Why did lambs not thrive better
after weaning? Might it have to do with the
ewes’ meagre milk production under
commercial conditions?
Well, the offending studbreeders, tweedily
secure, offered another whisky and said, “It has
nothing to do with our breeding. The problem’s
all with your management.” And many of their
clients, feeling guilty and inadequate, left it at
that.
But a few kept asking questions: “If, as is
claimed, the genetic quality of the studs is
superior and getting better, why, after buying
their rams generation after generation, are our
lambing percentages and fleece weights and so
on failing to improve even a little? Why do
these sheep need so much molly-coddling?
“And we notice that our ewes which seem to
rear the biggest twins without help and to clip
decent fleeces even in a drought year don’t look
at all like the sheep the studbreeders award
show ribbons to one another for. They’re longer
in the leg, higher at the withers, more sloping in
the rump, clearer in the face.
“We don’t breed sheep for show ribbons. We
keep them to turn grass into dollars for meat and
wool out here in the real world of Godzone.
Science shows that commercial traits like
fertility, easy care, fleece weight and mothering
ability are more or less heritable, depending on
how much selection pressure you can apply. The
science of population genetics also shows that
nearly all stud flocks are too small in number,
too closed and too lightly culled to be improving
much even where selection is for the traits that
matter.
“So what have we to lose by, say, whacking a
numbered eartag on each ewe that rears good
twins as a two-tooth and again as a four-tooth
while doing everything else right, then
identifying her ram lambs and breeding from
those that grow and clip well?”
From the late 1960s, many farmers did just that,
sometimes individually but more often in group
schemes where the combined flocks gave scope
for really deep selection based entirely on
commercial performance under environmental
challenge.
Guess what? Those flocks began to convert the
same pastures into greater meat and wool
cheques with less labour! And the sheep which
did the best job out in the real world of
commercial farming looked, as the generations
rolled over, less and less like the pictured
prizewinner.
+++++
Jesus, our Head Shepherd, is guiding the rest of
us in the sheepfarm community toward the stock
from which future generations will inherit more
and more good news in God’s world. Where are
we to look? For what? For titivated beauties
never challenged by life’s harsh realities, or for
sheep already out there, surviving, prospering,
creatively in the hills? The future shepherdssheep community (the distinction will be
increasingly blurred) must have what it takes to
perform in a world where the going is often
steep, droughts are common and the flock needs
leaders who can forage far and freely.
Could it be that the structured life of the Church
has, in the last couple of generations, tended to
be to the whole cultural environment of Central
Otago what fashionable studbreeding was to the
commercial sheep industry in 1961?
Could it be that the reason Jesus is inviting us to
go out with him on a straggler muster is not
because he wants more sheep to get tamed and
fat and irrelevant to the world on the lush stud
paddocks of religion?
Could it be that Jesus wants us to help him to
recognise, affirm, free, equip and channel into
his responsive service people who are not now
active in our life as church – not because that
will make life easier and nicer for us and them,
but because he really needs them for his work in
the world? Not because he spurns our gifts but
because there are people out there with gifts
lacking in a church that has slothed too long in
the comfort of the stud paddocks?
mission in the world with our self-justifying
wish to get more bottoms onto our
traditional pews.
We will celebrate increasing diversity
among God’s sheep. We will know the truth
that different sheep perform best in different
environments – so we will not try to insist
that tussock country types should perform
happily on home paddocks. We will know
that variation is the stuff of inherited
progress through the generations of any
flock. We will know that there is no need
for culling on the Good Shepherd’s farm.
We will know that every one is loved and
valued infinitely as a potential partner in the
development plan of creation-redemption.
Some of the lost sheep Jesus seeks to muster
might seem a bit more weather-beaten than has
been usual on our church. But these are sheep
especially needed by the Good Shepherd in his
work of encouraging the spread of more love
from the paddocks of religion. Some are
unimpressed by the answers offered by
entrenched religion because they are struggling
with different, valid questions. All are sheep
already loved by God’s Good Shepherd as
much as he loves each one of us already in
touch with him. They need and deserve to
know that.
Jesus doesn’t corner them, catch them, tie
their legs and throw them into the back of
his ute in order to incorporate them in his
ministering flock.. He just wanders out
among them, invites them to follow, and
leaves the gate open as he moves on.
Those of us who understand ourselves to be
already in the Jesus-flock have no cause to
sleep smugly under trees. We are called and
equipped to be out and about, inviting,
reflecting the divine love for every person
and the divine value placed on every
person’s special gifts, introducing each to
the Good Shepherd. We will not confuse his
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