This week on Things Unseen, we're talking about the church.

And yesterday I mentioned the composer Muzarski's composition, pictures at an exhibition, and suggested

that this may be a good metaphor for reading the New Testament and looking

one by one at some of the pictures it gives us of the church, to help us understand what

it means to belong to a specifically Christian community.

And we saw yesterday that the church is the body of Christ.

The New Testament also tells us that the church is the body of Christ. The New Testament also tells us that the church is the flock of God.

And that's a very much loved picture, isn't it?

And I suspect it has a stronger emotional pull on us than body.

Perhaps that's more true of people who live in rural areas, like much of my home country of Scotland,

whereas you drive through the fields you see filled with sheep.

And it's amazing to me to see how much time they spend eating.

That's a very interesting thing when we think about the metaphor of a flock for the church.

Or maybe we love the picture of the church as a flock because we're familiar with some

of the great passages in the scriptures.

We perhaps love to sing the hundredth Sam, all people that on earth do dwell, sing to the

Lord with cheerful voice.

We are his flock, he doth us feed, and for his sheep

he doth us take. Or perhaps most of all the Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want. Or maybe the

77th Psalm, written by the melancholic Asaph, who strengthens his soul in God with the

wonderful words that reassure him that the God of Israel's past will be the God of Israel's

present and the God of His present. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

...