SHEPHERD BOOK - A MISSIONAL CHARACTER?

As part of my thinking about the character of Shepherd Book, I've been exploring the image of the 'shepherd' within the Bible. Key passages include, Psalm 23, Ezekiel 34, Luke 15, John 10 & John 21. The shepherd's responsibilities involve guiding, protecting, providing for and gathering the sheep.

Stanley Skreslet's book, Picturing Christian Witness, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2006) devotes a chapter to this subject and questions the ways in which the role of the shepherd is, or isn't, missional.

At the end of the chapter there is a copy of Fan Pu's papercut 'The Lost Sheep' Skreslet observes:

'In the shepherd's outstretched arm, one can perceive a determination to extend the reach of Christian pastoral compassion ... The sheep is lost, without sufficient resources of its own to cope in an unforgiving environment, where brambles threaten to ensnare and immobilize disoriented wayfarers. The searcher beckons, but the picture leaves room for the sheep to react to the shepherd's gesture in the symbolic gap that separates the two figures. A positive response from the sheep depends in part on whether or not Jesus' voices has been heard in the human shepherd's call' (pp189-190).

Is Shepherd Book that sort of shepherd? Does he have a mission? Is he looking for the lost - or is he the one who is lost? Will the voice of Jesus be heard through his voice?

When asked by Kaylee in episode 1 if he is a missionary he replies:

'I guess ... I'm a Shepherd, from the Southdown Abbey ... Been out of the world for a spell. Like to walk it a while, maybe bring the word to them as needs it told.'

KAYLEE - 'THE HEART OF THE SHOW'

Kaylee (the mechanic on Serenity) also features in the notes on the Bible Study on http://blog.digitalorthodoxy.com/?p=661

' Kaylee seems to peer into Inara’s world and romanticises it, thinking that she gets some rich clients who give her things and make her feel pretty, the rest of the world seems to think this is the case too as her profession has a high status in the planets. Looking in from outside Kaylee wishes that she could have pretty things, be a normal" girl, wear pretty dresses, dance with men to nice music. Kaylee wants to live in the world beyond her own fence, the grass is always greener over there. ... And when she’s faced with the reality she meets people that want to keep her on the other side of the fence, people who look pretty on the outside but are not too pretty on the inside. These people make her feel unwelcome, unpretty. While she also meets others who seem to find her enchanting for who she really is at the same party.'

Similar comments, about the ordinariness of Kaylee's character and the way in which it is seen in the people we come into contact with every day, are made in Burns, M, ‘Mars needs Women’ in Espenson, J (ed), Serenity Found: More Unauthorized essays on Joss Whedon's Firefly Universe, (Dallas, TX: Benbella Books, 2007) pp18-19:

' they had Kaylee's heart, that fragile fear that people were looking down on them, that they weren't good enough or smart enough. ... Kaylee can fix nearly everything, sees the good in everyone, can't handle a gun. ... Kaylee was the beating heart of the show as she tended the beating heart of Serenity. Where have you ever seen anyone like her on a spaceship before?'