Jesus observes that Israel wanders like sheep without a shepherd, so He sends the Twelve to be shepherds to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In the next breath, He says that the Twelve go out as “sheep in the midst of wolves.”

So which are they? Sheep or shepherds?

The Twelve are both. They are not lost because Jesus is their Shepherd. He gives them power, so they can be shepherds with the Chief Shepherd. At the same time, they are to find a place among the sheep rather than the wolves. They are to stand with the oppressed rather than the oppressors.

Too often, the seductions of power have been too much for the church, and she has taken her stand with the wolves. Many in the hierarchy of Russian Orthodoxy lent their imprimatur to the Soviet regime, going along to get along, and many Protestants greeted Hitler like a second Messiah. Tyrant have altogether too easy a time finding pious idiots and power-mongering priests.

The church gives the most pious reasons. If we hang out with the thugs, perhaps we can moderate their thuggishness. Jesus will have none of this. The fact that liberation theologians say it doesn’t make it wrong: When the church enters a society polarized between the wolves and sheep, it is blindingly obvious where she belongs.

The church overcomes the wolves as Jesus did, by suffering alongside the sheep.