Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Sheep get a bad rap. They’re smelly. They’re stupid. They’re herd animals who blindly 
follow the shepherd or leader anywhere, even if it’s into a hole or into traffic on a country road.
In short, sheep are annoying.
So are Christians. Annoying, that is.
In today’s Gospel reading from John 10, Jesus almost boasts about His power over His true followers:
“My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. … No one can take them out of my hand.”
And sometimes, that voice takes us to surprising, uncomfortable places. Early Church leaders saw their ministry as preaching to the Jews. But a funny thing happened. At Antioch, Gentiles began believing as well. It seemed odd to some, odd and inappropriate and outside the core ministry. How annoying.
And yet, it was where Christ’s voice was leading. And so, like sheep, they followed… as we are called to do today, outside our prayer group, outside our family, outside our neighborhood, outside our parish, outside our comfort zone. We follow because we are His sheep. We celebrate being annoying.
