We are somewhere near the middle of our glorious celebration of the Great Fifty Days of Easter. We clergy go on and on at Christmas time with the reminder that Christmas is not a just a day; it is a season. The message should be even stronger this time of year. The Sunday of the Resurrection, Easter Day, is just the beginning of our celebration of Easter season. Some of you will know that in the Bible the number 40 is often used to mean "a long time." Easter season lasts 50 days. We are given an abundance of Easter. The Great Fifty Days of Easter. Another subtle point to note in the church calendar: These Sunday throughout Easter season aren’t described as Sundays in Easter, or Sundays after Easter. They are Sundays of Easter. It is still Easter.

Having said all that, this Fourth Sunday of Easter is not exactly my favorite point in Easter-time. This Sunday is informally known as "Good Shepherd Sunday." Remember the collect for the day? It begins, "O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people…" And we had the 23^rd Psalm, of course, and then the gospel from John in which Jesus actually says, "I am the good shepherd."

Have I ever told you that my uncle used to call sheep wooly pigs? It may be comforting to think of Jesus as the good shepherd, but I really don’t want to think of myself as a sheep. And Good Shepherd Sunday inevitably casts all of us as sheep—wooly pigs. I really don’t have many positive feelings about sheep. I certainly don’t want to think of myself as the cuddly, placid sort of stuffed animal sheep that we give to children. Cute, maybe, but very bland and boring. Nor do I want to think of myself like sheep really are—dirty, dumb and destructive. I have been around sheep. I do not want to be a sheep. Nor do I want to be the saccharine, sentimentalized, smiling and submissive version of sheep we put into children’s Bible stories.

But it did occur to me this week that I do have one positive image of a sheep. There is one sort of sheep I would like to be. A black sheep. That’s worth considering.

My dictionary has two definitions for "black sheep." The first one is, yes, "a sheep with black fleece." And, at least by the time of medieval England, shepherds disliked black sheep because they were literally less valuable than sheep with white fleece. Which leads to the second definition of a black sheep. It is a person who causes shame or embarrassment to a family or other group by not conforming to the group’s norms or expectations. A black sheep is someone who does not follow someone else’s norms or expectations.

Let me tell you about a few of my favorite black sheep. I think first of two brothers. They came from a family of fishermen. For generations the men of their family had taken boats out on the Sea of Galilee and brought back bountiful catches of fish. James and John were strong young men and able fishermen. Their father, their mother, their wives, their younger brothers and sisters all expected them to live into and live up to the family tradition. But the sons of Zebedee were black sheep; they did not conform to the family expectation. When Jesus said, "follow me," they left behind their boats and their nets and followed Jesus.

Then there’s Barnabas who appears in this morning’s reading from Acts. This is the first we hear of Barnabas, so we know little of his family or background. As a Levite from Cyprus, he would have been a Greek speaking Jew. So he had left his homeland of Cyprus and come to Jerusalem; he had left the faith heritage of his ancestors to become a Christian. And then he sold land that belonged to him and laid the money at the feet of the apostles. I can just imagine what his family thought of him.. A black sheep.

There are many black sheep among the saints of the church. Francis, of course. We perhaps think of him as a friend to sheep, but there is no doubt that his father thought of him as a black sheep. Not for his early years of revelry and military recklessness. That was expected behavior for the son of a rich merchant in Assisi. Francis’ great act of nonconformity came when he renounced all material desires and devoted himself entirely to the service of the poor. His father was ashamed and furious. That action cast him certainly as a black sheep in his family.

It occurs to me that perhaps it is harder for a woman to be a black sheep, at least the sort of black sheep I’m considering. After all, lives of piety, spiritual devotion and self-dedication were less unexpected of women. Throughout the bulk of history, women had little material possession or ambition or professional expectation to renounce. The non-conformists would have been those who sought out commerce, not the cloister. Nevertheless, although their stories may be scarcer, there are some marvelous black ewes in church history. Do you know the story of Catherine of Siena? She was the youngest of 25 children of a wealthy dyer in 14^th century Siena. As a girl of six she had a remarkable vision of the Lord seated in glory with St. Peter, St. Paul and St. John. She reported that the Savior smiled upon her. Lesser Feasts and Fasts recounts that, from then on, "Catherine spent most of her time in prayer and meditation, despite her mother’s attempts to force her to be like other girls. To settle matters, Catherine cut off her hair, her chief beauty. The family harassed her continually; but in the end, convinced that she was deaf to all opposition, her father let her do as she would." Ultimately she became a Dominican nun and, among other things nursed patients with leprosy and cancer whom other nurses disliked to treat. A notable black sheep, indeed.

In more recent history, women have had more opportunities to be black sheep. On July 20 the Episcopal calendar celebrate the lives of a wonderful group of black ewes. It is the combined feast day for Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Ross Tubman. Consider just Sojourner Truth, for example. Consider what the social and cultural expectations were in the mid to late 1800’s for an illiterate, black, slave woman. If a black sheep is someone who chooses not to conform to others’ expectations, then Sojourner Truth certainly qualifies. She fled slavery, worked to help the poor and homeless, and became a well-known preacher to both white and black gatherings. Her imposing physical stature, her wit, wisdom and charismatic presence evidently made her an irresistible evangelist for the Gospel.

The name she was given at birth was Isabella. Slaves did not have last names, of course, but were given the last name of whoever their master happened to be. Later in life when she was traveling, she stopped at a Quaker farm for a drink of water and she was asked her name. "My name is Sojourner," she replied. "What is your last name?" She thought of all the master’s names she had carried in her life and then the thought came: "The only master I have now is God, and his name is truth." Sojourner Truth, black sheep extraordinaire.

The church is full of black sheep, people whose only master is God. They are admirable, exciting, dedicated, spirited people who have chosen not to be conformed by others’ expectations or norms. They may be black sheep in the eyes of their families or society, scorned and devalued, but they know themselves to be sheep in the flock of the Good Shepherd… The Good Shepherd who knows each of them, each of us, by name and loves and values us enough to lay down his life for us. Among those who follow the Good shepherd there are no black sheep or white sheep; there is just one flock and one shepherd. "O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people; Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever."

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