good works

OK, Sheeple! (Fourth Sunday of Easter: 11th May 2025)

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Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and Christ Church, Bulkington

Readings – Acts 9. 36-43; John 10. 22-30

“My sheep hear my voice.”

“OK, sheeple!” I don’t know how many of you have heard of the term “sheeple”. If you spend too much time on the internet, you might have! It is used in conspiracy theory circles – the sort of people who think the moon landings were faked and that Covid was invented so Bill Gates could implant us all with microchips under the cover of vaccines. In the conspiracy theorist part of society, the rest of the population is ridiculed as “sheeple” whose acceptance of received wisdom about the world is read as a sign of conformity and lack of independent thinking.

A painting depicts a flock of sheep and lambs grazing on a grassy hill near a stormy coastline. The sky is cloudy, and waves crash against the shore. In the background, a shepherd in a blue cloak stands near a cliff, with distant hills visible. The scene is lush with green grass and scattered bushes.
Coastal Flock by August Friedrich Schenk (1865)

While we shouldn’t lose too much sleep about what conspiracy theorists call us, calling someone a sheep isn’t normally meant a compliment. A sheep blindly follows their leader, is afraid to take a stand, lacks critical thinking, and probably isn’t the sharpest tool in the box.

Everything in our culture encourages to think of ourselves as being the opposite of sheep. We’re encouraged to think of ourselves as independent minded free spirits, who become the people we dream ourselves to be through the power of self-will. We don’t want to be sheep, and we don’t even particularly want to be shepherds. We romanticise the Lone Ranger sort of figure, the iconoclastic anti-hero who loves to do it all “my way” and refuses to let convention prevent them doing good or having a good time. The strange thing is that most people who think of themselves as self-willed free thinkers are desperately conformist, but that’s another story for another time.

In that view of the world, of course, there’s nothing positive to be said about being one of the sheep. But let’s be fair to our fluffy friends, they have their positive side, and not just as a delicious Sunday lunch. Sheep are part of a community, and while our individualism has brought us many blessings, its dark side has been that the bonds of our communities have become much weaker. Staying part of a coherent community doesn’t require dull conformism, but does need sensitivity to the needs of others, adaptability, and mutual trust.

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The Limits of Good Works: Sermon Preached on 11th August 2024 (Eleventh Sunday After Trinity)

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A view across the Sea of Galilee from Magdala/Migdal towards the Golan Heights in afternoon sun.

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and Christ Church, Bulkington

Ephesians 4. 25-5.2; John 6. 35, 41-51

“Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Do you find some of the teachings of Christianity a little hard to swallow? That eternal life is a reality? That Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead? That Christ is actually present today whenever Christians break bread and share wine in His name? All this stuff is quite challenging to the common viewpoint of our times that only material things that really matter and that the main goal of the Church is to change the world.

He’s got the whole world in His hand… and about a septillion other worlds too!

These days, we tend to put the difficulties that many people have with these mystical beliefs – difficulties, indeed, that some of us here probably have with these beliefs – down to living in an era of science and reason. When people find the more mysterious teachings of the Faith hard to accept, it is tempting to reduce Christianity to the Cult of Militant Niceness, where the Church is all about its good works, and we don’t talk too loudly about the weirder stuff Jesus Christ taught.

But none of this is new. The section of John’s Gospel from which this morning’s reading comes from is all about that. People got into little boats and sailed across the Sea of Galilee to keep up with Jesus, because they wanted to see Him feed them and heal them—but instead He gave them a cryptic message that the He was bread come down from heaven, that whoever ate this bread would live forever, and that the bread He would give for the life of the world was His flesh. No wonder they started muttering. Soon after today’s Gospel reading, the complaints got so bad that even some of Jesus’ closest followers abandoned Him. The things that Christ taught about His own nature, about death and eternal life, have always been hard for people to believe.

If we say the Church is all about its good works – which is what most people who aren’t particularly committed Christians want to hear – then we are making the same mistake as the crowds who muttered when Jesus didn’t give them the good works they wanted. Here’s one problem with a Gospel of good works—I hope none of us thinks that we are better people than others because we are Christians. That’s not what Christ taught at all. We all know atheists, and Jews, and Muslims whose basic goodness puts us to shame; we all know that being a Christian hardly makes us perfect.

That isn’t anything new either. Look at what St Paul had to write to the Christians in Ephesus – warning them against bitterness and anger and squabbling. Of course, they were called to live better lives than that, but they clearly often failed, otherwise he wouldn’t have had to write.

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