We were making a film, and we needed to show a sheep being sheared in the way it would have been done in the time of the Bible. The best place for that was a Bedouin encampment, and the right time of year was the month of May.
I made contact with the elder of a tribe near Jerusalem, and we fixed the date for the filming. When that day came, the skies were dark, and there was a highly unexpected hard rain in the morning. We had to postpone the filming for a week: you can't shear wet wool.
A week later we had normal, hot May weather. Our sheep waited patiently while her owner and the cameraman prepared themselves. The yard in front of the tent was full of goats and the other sheep, which had all been sheared a couple of weeks before. It was hardly a quiet scene. The lambs that had been born that spring bleated for their mothers, and the mothers bleated in return.
In fact, as the Bedouin took his hand shears and began to snip the wool, the only quiet animal in the yard was the one he was shearing. I watched her closely, expecting her to react to having her feet tied and being thrown on her side on the ground, to having this large pair of scissors cutting away at her wool.
But she remained completely quiet for the twenty minutes it took to cut away all her wool. It was as if she knew that this was a good thing that was happening to her.
I remembered the words of Isaiah, who describes a lamb in two different situations: before the slaughter, and before her shearers. Could it be, I wondered, that Jesus' silence was like the silence of the sheep being sheared, that he knew what was happening was for the very best? He had already presented his Father with the request that it might pass from him, but once it became clear that this was the way he would go, he did not open his mouth. He accepted it in silence, with the knowledge that his obedience would achieve the highest possible good: your salvation and mine. Thank God that he went obediently.