Sermon 4/17/16
Psalm 23
Finding Easter: Shepherd and Sheep
Last week, we heard Jesus tell Peter the task he had set
for him: Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. Today, we’re taking a
deeper look at this biblical imagery of shepherds and sheep as we look at a
most beloved passage of scripture. We’re not very good at memorizing scripture
anymore. Not us at Apple Valley in particular, but rather in the larger church. Most mainline Protestant
churches don’t emphasize memorizing scripture the way that we might have
experienced even a few decades ago. When I was a child, we’d get a nickel in my
Sunday School class for every verse we could memorize, and that was pretty much
enough motivation for me!
Do you know any verse of the Bible by heart? If you do,
among them, one that many people still know by heart, and many people know at
least in part, even if they can’t remember where it is from or why they know it, is the 23rd
Psalm. Most people know it, in fact, in the Kings James Version, even if they
have rarely used the King James translation for anything else. Let’s share it
together in the King James Version:
The Lord is
my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth
me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth
me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
for thou
art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou
preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou
anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will
dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Of all the parts of scripture, there are not many
passages that have been set to music as frequently, or used in movies and TV
shows as frequently, or adapted and paraphrased as frequently as this 23rd
Psalm. And of course, most funerals that I’ve presided over in my years of
ministry – the vast majority have included the 23rd Psalm. For some
reason, in the face of death, these words are so very comforting to us. What
exactly makes them so comforting? Well, I suppose that is up to each person’s
interpretation, but I’m guessing first of all that the psalm paints a peaceful,
beautiful image for us. Green pastures and still waters – this sounds like an
Eden, a paradise to relax in. Plus, there is the constant presence of God, the
shepherd in the psalm. Wherever we go, even through the valley of the shadow of
death, the shepherd is there, not only with
us, but leading us and guiding us. We all know that we must walk in that
dark valley – but we don’t do it alone, the psalm tells us. And of course, the
ending: “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” I think we picture
ourselves eternally home with God, in God’s heart. Again, both when we think
about our own death, and when we think about the death of a loved one, these
images are comforting.
Still, I wonder about a couple of things. First, I worry
anytime we so closely associate a certain text with a certain ritual that we’re
losing out on the powerful meaning of the passage. 1 Corinthians 13 is a great
example. It is chosen for many weddings, which isn’t surprising, with its focus
on love. But the apostle Paul was writing to a community, a new church, telling
them how to treat each other. He didn’t have married couples in mind at all.
And while it certainly works well for couples about to commit their lives in
marriage, I wonder if we remember what else
it means when we tie it so closely to weddings. I wonder this about the 23rd
Psalm too. How often do we study these words outside of a funeral? How often do
we examine them in the same way we study other passages, and pull them apart to
seek their meaning? That’s what I want us to do today, so that we can truly
know more fully the words that we know by rote already.
The other thing I wonder about is: why is it that we find
this pastoral image of a shepherd guiding us so compelling? If God is our
shepherd in this text, then that makes us the sheep. Why is that such a
powerful image for us? Undoubtedly, the scriptures are full of imagery of
shepherds and sheep, and Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd in some
of the most beloved passage of the gospels. He teaches a parable about a
shepherd seeking out the one sheep, separated from the other ninety-nine, the
one who is lost. He talks about how we know his voice like the sheep know the
voice of their shepherd. We call Jesus himself the Lamb of God, connecting
Jesus’ offering of his life with the animals once sacrificed as offerings to
God. We think of the shepherds that play such a significant role in Luke’s
account of Jesus’ birth – they’re visited by heavenly host, and they’re the
first visitors to the Christ child.
And yet, for all their presence in the scriptures, how
much experience do you have with real-life sheep or a real shepherd? I’ve seen
some sheep at a petting zoo. But I have never met a person whose life’s work
was as a shepherd. From a quick search online I learned that a shepherd might
carry two weapons for protection against predators and enemies - a sling shot,
like David used against Goliath, (David, who started out as a shepherd), and
the crook, like you would envision, as described by the synonyms rod and staff
in the Psalm. One end would have the big hook for sheep that were wandering
away, the other would have a hard round knob, to be used like a club against
attacking animals. The shepherd would lead them to a place good to eat, with
water to drink, sometimes going in front, sometime prodding and guiding from
behind. At the end of the day, the shepherd would lead them back to a safe
place. It was not a glamorous life - shepherds were definitely in the lower
class. But still, many of the figures in our formational stories, from Abraham
to Isaac to Jacob and his sons – they all made their living at least in part as
shepherds.
So, what does this
psalm say to us? Can we read beyond our visions of puffy white sheep and pretty
green fields? After all, the very first line packs a bit of a punch. “The Lord
is my shepherd; I shall not want.” I
shall not want. I love the hymn we sang just before the sermon, and I love
how it phrases this line. “Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants.” A shepherd
provides everything that a sheep needs, not by feeding them, but by guiding
them to places of abundance where they can get everything they require. And the
sheep depend on this. Do we let God
lead us beyond our wants? More than saying “God is my shepherd, I shouldn’t want anything,” I see the
psalmist saying that when God is truly the one leading us, we won’t want. Not when we have put our
lives entirely in the hands of the shepherd. Try to make note this week of
every time you think, “I really want ______,” while you’re in the store, or
watching commercials, or noticing ads everywhere you look online. How much does
wanting consume your life? I like to
consider myself pretty non-materialistic. But a couple of times, as a spiritual
practice, I’ve limited my spending entirely to gas and groceries (and paying
bills, of course.) And I was shocked to find how many times I day I was
thinking about buying something. And that’s just thinking about the material
stuff we want. Can we let God lead us beyond
our wants? Calling God our shepherd is actually an act of deep trust and faith.
Certainly, God is up to it. Are we?
The psalmist also talks about what kind of journey we
take when God is the shepherd. We read that God “leads [us] in the paths of
righteousness” and that “surely goodness and mercy will follow [us] all the
days of [our] life.” When we see that word “paths,” what it actually means is
something like “deep ruts.” They’re like the grooves that a wagon would make as
it traveled the same path in mud over and over. This is a path that is
well-worn from frequent use. And righteousness – that’s a synonym for justice,
for God’s vision of our right relationships with God and others. The psalm
tells us the when God is our shepherd, justice is such a way of life for us,
right relationships, seeking wholeness in the world – that’s such a way of life
that our path is well-used and making deep tracks in the ground. And when we
read of goodness and mercy following us, a more literal translation is “only goodness and mercy shall pursue us” our whole life long. If God
is our shepherd, and our wants are already cared for, then the focus of our
life is seeking God’s path of justice, and goodness and mercy pursue us, follow
behind us. Are goodness and mercy pursuing us? Can we see the marks of
goodness, the impact of mercy behind us, each place we’ve been?
The psalmist describes a life of seeking justice,
following God the shepherd, even knowing that sometimes we’ll be led into the
very darkest valleys. The dark valley of this psalm isn’t death, or at least,
not only death. Our darkest valleys are part of life, aren’t they? The
challenges, the struggles, the pains we experience physically, emotionally,
spiritually? The shepherd leads the sheep into the darkest valleys. But the
shepherd stays with them, and the sheep, trusting the shepherd, ever in the
company of the shepherd – they are not afraid. If God is leading us, we will
sometimes head straight for the darkest places – in the world, in our lives.
But as we grow as disciples – as we grow into our sheep-hood – we follow with
such trust in God that there is no room for fear. Imagine what we might do that
we hold back from because we let fear be our shepherd instead of God?
Finally, the psalm ends: “I will dwell in the house of
the Lord forever.” We can read this as: I will return to the house of the Lord
all the days of my life. In other words, we keep coming back to God. We keep
grounding ourselves in God’s ways. Again and again, we choose God and God’s
path.
This is a
powerful psalm, if we let it be more than pretty words. Shepherd me, O God,
beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life. Lead me in the
well-trod path of justice. Even though you lead me into the darkest places, you
never leave my side, God. Instead, you guide me on, with me always. My cup is
overflowing with the abundant life you have given me. My prayer is that I can
leave goodness and mercy wherever I’ve been, so that justice is before me and
goodness and mercy are coming up behind me. And God, I’ll keep returning to
you, returning to you, returning to you, every day in this life, and in the
life to come. Amen.
* Translation comments from Chris Haslam, http://montreal.anglican.org/comments,
and Joel LeMon, Working Preacher,
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