Dog Whisperer

I’ve noticed that pet people fall into two types. There are dog-lovers and there are cat-lovers. Of course, there are also people who like all animals and those who like none, but by and large, pet owners fall into one of those two groups. I’ve also noticed that dog and cat owners don’t think much of one another’s pets.

Cat owners like the independence of cats and their ability to take care of themselves. They can’t empty their litter boxes, but just the fact that they use them means that cat owners can be gone all day or even a few days without having to worry. Cats are curious and playful but only with the right sort of people. If they don’t like you, they vanish.

Dogs, on the other hand, are clearly pack animals. They like company. Dogs are very attuned to their owners, recognizing not only their voice, but the sound of their car, and any sound that has anything to do with food. Once when our dog Maggie was still around, R asked me for a plastic sandwich bag. As soon as she said, “I need a Baggie!” the dog came running to see what was in it for her.

The pack mentality of dogs and their devotion to their owner is the closest modern example I can think of to the biblical use of sheep and shepherd. It’s not perfect, of course. Unlike sheep, most dogs won’t run away from a stranger; they’ll bark at them. And somehow to imagine Jesus saying “I am the good dog whisperer” just doesn’t work as well as “I am the good shepherd.” Yet any worthwhile dog owner would do anything to protect their pet, including putting oneself in danger if the dog were threatened. So perhaps we can get some idea of what Jesus means.

At the center of Jesus’ discourse on the good shepherd is a remarkable statement: “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” There’s more here than a pet simply knowing the master’s voice. As Christians we believe that Jesus was more than a great spiritual leader, someone unusually attuned to God. We believe that Jesus is God, God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity, born in human flesh. So when Jesus says that he knows the Father and the Father knows him, it is a very intimate knowing, a union of wills and desires. What is astounding is that Jesus equates that kind of knowing with what occurs between him and his own – between Jesus and believers, between Jesus and us.

That does not sound like our lived experience. If it were, we would not yearn to know Jesus better, to be more connected with God. When loss or disaster strikes, we may even feel the absence of God, not God’s presence. We know how far we miss the mark of who God calls us to be. Yet Jesus says that we know him as well he and God know one another. How can that be?

The Apostle Paul provided a clue to this paradox in his wonderful hymn on love in the first letter to the Corinthians. “Now I know only in part,” Paul wrote, “then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Paul realized that we are already fully known by Christ. When we are sealed as Christ’s own at baptism, the Holy Spirit enters into us with the perfect knowledge of God, hidden in our hearts. Because it is there, we yearn to see it more fully. Yet in this life it is as though we are looking through a dirty window. We know that there is a beautiful view out there, but the dusty willfulness of sin keeps us from seeing clearly. Still, our hearts remain a witness to that beauty, to that presence of God within. As John wrote in his letter, “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action....And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.”

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether we call Jesus the good shepherd or the good dog whisperer. Besides, we don’t really want to think of ourselves as either sheep or dogs, do we? What is important is that we listen for that voice. We hear it in silence; we see it speaking through others. It is the voice of Jesus that abides in us, calling to us in our hearts. We hear and know it. Let us ever run toward it, so that we may bear its fruit in truth and action.

[4 Easter: Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18.]

Listen to this blog as preached on the Fourth Sunday of Easter.