Sheep among.... tigers?

Be sheep among wolves. Our priest reminded some of us of Christ's command before our last vestry meeting. I have always assumed the command meant to be meek or perhaps quiet and careful. To stick together as a flock and of course to trust our Shepard. After all, sheep are quiet animals, and not terribly bright. They rely on numbers and the protection of their human caretaker to keep them safe from predators.

We here in 21st century America have very little experience with sheep or wolves, and if we did it wouldn't be very helpful. American wolves are shy and vanishing. There has never been a recorded fatal wolf attack in the US, not in its entire history. But the wolves of Europe and the Middle East were something else entirely. They were large and aggressive, living close to man and hunting him as casually as they hunted his livestock. They and man were it could be said, at war. Man won in the end but there were casualties and the fear of wolves that war instilled is still part of our consciousness, stamped into even the brains of those who have no cause to fear.

It is these aggressive, dangerous wolves the gospel writers would have been familiar with. Wolves who lurked quietly in the dark and pulled down cattle, and sheep, and children. Wolves with blood on their teeth and murder in their eyes. And yet, amid the danger and destruction the Christ enjoins his followers to not be like the hunters who used club and bow and sword but like the helpless sheep.

Why? It doesn't make much sense. Why send those you love into the maw of something that will consume them?

Today I came across something that at first seemed utterly unrelated. An amazing story and video of a tiger attack. I watched the furious attack, the raw power. Here was death incarnate, not evil, but so incredibly powerful and dangerous that even a man sitting on the neck of a full grown elephant was not safe. But it was the story of the moments after this video was taken that are important. Those next moments meant life or death for two men knocked from the relative safety of their mount. Injured and vulnerable they would have made easy prey for a tiger. But for the elephant who went as a lamb among wolves.

The elephant, Joymala, held down the tiger with one enormous foot. She could have crushed it, elephants stomp attackers into the ground. Their great feet are deadly weapons. Instead she held the infuriated animal to the ground, restraining it with her trunk. It must have roared with fury, it must have lashed out with teeth and claws. But she did not kill it and at last it escaped and fled.

I will perhaps tell people in the future to be as an elephant among tigers. For we are certainly powerful, we can hurt one another or destroy one another as easily as that elephant could have destroyed the tiger. We posses destructive weapons: anger, indignation, pride, vicious words, scheming plots, lies, and sharp intellect. We can crush the life and joy from another soul with frightening ease. We can sap the energy our of those around us. We can bring down a career or a life as easily as the angry tiger leaped through empty air to her victim.

We can snap the neck of a sheep with our teeth, growling from the darkness, hunting from the shadows. We can create fear.

But that is not what we are called to. We are not to meet anger and violence with blind passivity. We are not to keep our mouths shut and allow anger and evil and love of power to corrupt and harm. Neither are we to fight fire with fire. Neither are we to attempt to destroy evil with evil. We are called not to use our power for destruction. Not to hurt or destroy. Instead let us use our strength with all of the restraint of an elephant, and the faith of a lamb.