Easter 4A John 10:1-10, Good Shepherd Wendell Berry
St. Mark’s 5 o’clock
Good Shepherd from “The Desirable Woman” by Wendell Berry
Laura Milby is a minister’s wife in Wendell Berry’s short story, “ A Desirable Woman.” She is loved from afar by a young man, Tom Coulter, who is in her husband’s congregation called The Little Flock. Tom works on the farm of Naomi and Ernest Russet, also members of The Little Flock Church. Laura and her husband’s favorite place to dine on Sundays after church is at the Russet’s farm. You see, in Port William, Kentucky, the congregation members rotate feeding their minister and his wife every Sunday in their homes. Berry describes these Sunday dinners as “food heaped on the table as they/ (the minister and his wife) were urged to eat/ as if they were being fattened for slaughter/ or as if it were the known practice of ministers and their wives/ to eat only on Sundays.”1
Laura’s practice is to follow these dinners with a walk alone over the land owned by her hosts. This Sunday at the Russets, she happens onto two pastures and a row of pens in the lambing barn. In one pasture are the new lambs safely born and strong,/ and in another pasture are the ewes waiting to give birth to their lambs. She walks into the barn and sees Tom Coulter, who has just midwifed the birth of twin lambs. One baby lamb is lying in the straw, perfectly formed but dead, and the other is bonded and feeding on its mother, who is nuzzling and muttering to her live lamb.
Tom is the “hired hand,” but not the thief or the bandit, but a good shepherd who deeply cares for his sheep. As Laura sees Tom’s tenderness with the dead and live lamb, she suddenly is filled with love for the eternal “unthanked care of the good shepherd.2 The sheep merely suffer, live, die, and are oblivious to the care given them by the shepherd. They do not seem to appreciate the care they receive from the good shepherd, but still the shepherd passionately gives the care. Laura responds to this by saying to Tom, “You’re in love, aren’t you?”
Tom gives a boyish grin and says, “I thought you knew it, (but) I didn’t look for you to say so.”
Laura’s response is, “I would like to thank you.”
They say no more, and Tom goes off to war to “lay down his life” and never returns, unlike the Good Shepherd.
Wendell Berry gives us an abiding image of the Good Shepherd, who deeply loves and cares for us. We, in turn, don’t ask for the care but receive it/ and, most often, are unaware of the care from this Shepherd who passionately and desperately loves us.
The Good Shepherd tells us, “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”
All the Shepherd hopes for is that we, like Laura, acknowledge the Shepherd’s loves, saying to him, “You’re in love,/ aren’t you.”
But even then, the Shepherd sheepishly grins, responding, “I thought you knew it/, but I didn’t look for you to say so.”///
Laura’s response to the Good Shepherd should continually be ours, “I would like to thank you.” Gratitude. That is why we are here today, giving gratitude for how the Good Shepherd cares for us. That is at the heart of our service today. A life of gratitude can make all the difference in our relationship with the Good Shepherd, ourselves, and those around us. May these words daily be on our lips,
“I would like to thank you.”
1Wendell Berry, “A Desirable Woman,” A Place in Time, Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership, p. 57.
2Ibid, p. 67-68.