Listening to Scripture while Wolves are howling

I recently read some words which caused me to remember a story that haunted my childhood nightmares. The writing reminded me of a gathering of wolves.


One of my favorite stories is Willa Cather’s My Antonia. But within that story is another story that, as I have written, haunted my childhood nightmares. It is the story of Russian wolves and an unfaithful sleigh driver and groomsman. On his death bed Pavel tells the story of a wedding party that headed home on a winter night with all the party including the bride and groom in seven sleighs. Slightly tipsy and full of happiness they spot menacing wolves on a hill top.

Cather writes:

"The wolves were bad that winter, and everyone knew it, yet when they heard the first wolf-cry, the drivers were not much alarmed. They had too much good food and drink inside them. The first howls were taken up and echoed and with quickening repetitions. The wolves were coming together. There was no moon, but the starlight was clear on the snow. A black drove came up over the hill behind the wedding party. The wolves ran like streaks of shadow; they looked no bigger than dogs, but there were hundreds of them.” (42)

The story grows increasingly dark as sleigh after sleigh falls to the wolf packs. One hears the screams of both horses and people and feels the utter terror of those still fleeing. Finally only the bride’s sleigh is left with two groomsmen and the groom and bride. The person telling the story confesses as he dies that he knocked the groom from the sleigh and threw the bride overboard in order to lighten his load and stay alive.

It is a story within a story, full of darkness, terror, selfishness and unfaithfulness.

Often the Scripture uses such images. Jesus sends his disciples out into a world of wolves far more dangerous than those found on a nineteenth century Russian hilltop. “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matt 10:16)

And then Jesus goes on warn his disciples of coming suffering: “It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household! (25) He comforts with promises of his care, “But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.” (30-31)

Jesus encourages the disciple’s witness among the wolves so that the wolves might become sheep, “Therefore everyone who confesses me before men, I will also confess him before my Father in heaven.” (32) And he challenges them to courageous discipleship, “And he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for my sake will find it.” (38-39)

Paul was later to warn that wolves would enter the Church tearing and rending the sheep. They would draw them away into strange teaching, perhaps into antinomianism as a means of seducing them. “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.” (Acts 20:28-30)

We have no faithless sleigh driver, but instead the Lord who gave his life on the cross. This is his promise: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:27-28) So though you barely hear the first howl, or there be hundreds of savage wolves on dark hills, Christ is Lord of his Church and King of tomorrow.