Pliable Chickens

Michael W. Arnold — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 11:19:54 -0500

I’ve spent the last week reflecting on Jesus cooking for and feeding the disciples. While we often don’t think about it, cooking is deeply personal and domestic. As Fr. Dan explained to us last week, there is much love and care in cooking and feeding. Especially when we’re talking about family and friends. In cooking, we sacrifice our time and enjoyment so that we can focus on the nourishment, pleasure, and happiness of others. Cooking isn’t glamorous. It’s often hot, smelly, and leaves one covered in grease, flour, and sticky.

Warriors and kings have great hospitality in the ancient world, but they don’t cook; they feast. The great men welcome their guest but then call the servants to prepare the meal. Deep under the dining hall, the smells & heat are kept out of sight. If shortcuts are taken in cooking, no one will know. Servants bring up food from the hidden kitchen. Kings and warriors focus on entertainment and conversation.

Shepherding, like cooking, is very personal and not especially glamorous. David stands out as Israel’s king and great warrior precisely because he’s a shepherd. David’s background is meant to be shocking. A great king is not someone anyone would commonly associate with a lowly shepherd.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is once again in a fairly domestic situation. He’s strolling along the wrap around porch of the temple on a cool December day. Jesus is literally at his father’s house for Christmas break. Despite all that is going on around him, there can be no doubt that Jesus is at home and comfortable where he’s at.

Jesus’ winter stroll is interrupted by the usual suspects. They just have to know if he’s the Messiah. “How long will you keep us in suspense?” they ask. Jesus answers their question, by taking about sheep and shepherds.

Now, I don’t know much about sheep. But, I do know a little something about chickens. About a year ago, we got three hens from a farm in Alabama. And, right now, I’ve got four chicks under a warming lamp in my laundry room. In my year with chickens, I can tell you that they are not very smart. They get in all sorts of trouble and tricky situations. Tending to them is not glamourous. They poop all over the place. They are stinky. They rut and dig everywhere. They frighten easily.

To get the chickens to do anything requires skill, calmness, and a specific knowledge of the flock. They need to be familiar with you and you need to be familiar with them. In dealing with the chickens, it’s clear that they wouldn’t last a week without us. They are totally dependent on us for their survival and thriving.

Across time and culture, Satan and his powers are always trying to confuse our spiritual life. Despite thousands of years of his revelation to the Jews, his sending of his people and his revelation of himself in scripture across the world, and the clear witness of his Church; global spirituality is no less chaotic and pagan as it was in ancient Greece or Rome.

Inner peace must be searched and found through secret knowledge. Salvation must be earned through doing good things and earning the gods’ respect and praise. The spiritual life is about the right guru, the right studies, the right ideas, and the right application of it all.

Search, study, and do. You’ll never know if you found the right answer or have done enough. On and on people go. Always looking for the next podcast, the next retreat, the next study, the next “spiritual” experience.

It is precisely for this reason that Jesus wants to talk about sheep. Just as no one expected to find Isreal’s great warrior king tending the sheep; no one is going to look for the deep secrets of life (or the promised Messiah) among stupid animals and uneducated, unskilled, smelly shepherds.

Today, I’d like to talk about two facets of the sheep world that I think would do us good to reflect on. First, how we are like sheep. And, second, how Jesus is our shepherd.

We are like sheep. And, honestly, things go awfully wrong when we stop acting like sheep. Sheep are passive. Sheep receive but never earn protection, food, and shelter. The sheep’s’ prized wool is not something they consciously do. When fed, safe, and alive the wool just happens. Sheep are passive makers of wool. There is nothing a sheep can will within itself to increase, decrease, change, or stop the production of wool.

Jesus is like the shepherd. Jesus is not far away in the manor house only occasionally checking in on his flocks. No, Jesus is with the sheep in the meadow. He sleeps among the flock to keep it safe through the night. He leads them to fresh grass and ensures they always have fresh water nearby. When a sheep gets stuck in a ditch or the mud, he’s there to pull it out. Daily, he removes briars and debris from the flock’s wool. The shepherd does all of this simply because they are his sheep. Individual sheep do nothing to earn this care. All the sheep around the shepherd are provided and cared for simply for being sheep in his proximity.

This my friends, being sheep in the flock of the Great Shepherd, is the Good News. With Jesus it’s not about how much you know or even how much you’ve done. It’s simply a matter of staying around him and receiving his care.

The salvation of baptism is given freely to all who come. King, shepherd, soldier, and maid; all approach the same font. All are washed in the same holy water. All receive the same adoption as a child of God. All are made regenerate and raised to the same new life in Christ.

The grace of this table is freely given to all the flock who come. The Christian who tithed and the one who didn’t. The Christian who volunteered and the one who stayed home. All who come to the Good Shepherd are fed simply because they are his sheep. No one has earned anything.

Grace, my friends, is not earned, but freely given to all who come.

Don’t get things twisted. There are, of course, consequences to wandering off from the flock. As I said earlier, when we forget we’re sheep things go bad. A sheep can have a good old time pretending to be a lion until it meets a wolf.

Knowing the voice of the shepherd and staying close by is the better life. Being a sheep and living fully into our “sheephood” is the way to peace and happiness.

But, even when we wander away and pretend to be lions; he’s always ready to find us and bring us back to the flock. We only need to call him and — and this is really important — submit to his will.

Back to chickens. As I said, our first chickens came from a farm in Alabama. We received them fully grown. They’d been part of a large flock and were not hand raised. They hadn’t had a lot of interactions with people, so they didn’t know their actual reliance on us.

They’re getting better, but when our chickens get out, they run all over the place. They absolutely don’t listen. You see, they don’t fully know they are chickens so they run from us and are a little afraid of the very ones trying to protect them. The other day they got out and one ended up getting all tangled in the bird netting around the garden. Had she stopped, listened, and submitted, we could have quickly picked her up and freed her from the situation. Instead, she panicked, flailed around, and led us on a wild chase. By the time we caught her, she was tired, afraid, and bleeding.

Hand-raised chickens, on the other hand, know they are chickens. They are more pliable. When you go over to a chicken who’s been raised in a flock overseen by people, they will instinctively collapse on the ground with the slightest pressure. They submit and all you have to do is pick them up. They don’t love it. They’d rather do their own thing. But, they submit. And, because of that, they don’t bleed, they see less scary stuff, and they get much more mill worm treats.

It is the same with us. We can run from Jesus, pretend to be something we’re not, and end up scared, bruised, and bleeding in some pretty tricky situations. Or, we can submit to Jesus. Receive his tender care and grace.

My hard-earned advice is to embrace you “sheephood”, be the pliable chicken, don’t resist God’s grace and instruction. Learn God’s voice through scripture and prayer. Listen and follow Jesus.

The other day, I was at a red light on Korean Vets. If you know the road, it’s three lanes wide. I was in the middle and had cars on both sides of me. I’ll admit, when the light turned red, I stopped, and pulled out my phone to search for a particular song. I’m not sure how long I’d been looking down, but when I looked up, the light was green. Neither car beside me had moved. They, too, were distracted. I immediately pulled forward and half a second later, they too moved. My moving snapped them out of what was distracting them and we moved together.

We are all part of the flock together. We are baptized into a body. None of us are expected to do this alone. Together we have many eyes and ears. Together we can help remind each other that we are sheep. Together we can listen for the shepherd. Together we can nudge our fellow sheep to follow us to the next pasture.

Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.”

Follow the Shepherd and receive his loving care. In his flock you will thrive. In his flock you will find peace, meaning, and happiness. There is no other way.

Chickens on Marmanold.com

Pliable Chickens