May 8, 2016The Lord is My Shepherd
Psalm 23
Preface to the Word
On this Mother’s Day and Festival of the Christian Home, I want to talk to you about one of the most beloved passages of the Bible. It’s a psalm right out of the ancient Hebrew songbook and like the hymn “Amazing Grace,” this treasure of our faith tradition is known and respected by those outside of the church, as well as by those of other religions.
And it has a profound, lasting power.
In fact, more than once in my 40-year ministry I’ve been by the bedside of an elderly, dying church member who couldn’t communicate or remember much. They seemed to be checked out of reality. But once I began reciting to them the 23rd Psalm, they would begin speaking the words with me or mouthing them with their lips. It was as if somewhere deep in their core, underneath all that was transitory or forgotten, there were these words…this song… this prayer…this enduring trust in and commitment to their life’s shepherd, who especially nowwas walking with them through this intensely personal valley of the shadow of death.
It’s powerful stuff, indeed!
And it’s good stuff to place before us today on this Mother’s Day, when in the United Methodist Church we celebrate the Festival of the Christian Home. For what more is the home and what greater role is there for the family than to form the worldview and ultimate loyalties and perspectives of the children who grow under our guardianship and follow our shepherding?
The world they are being prepared for is a confusing world and ours is a schizophrenic culture. I use that word carefully. One of the symptoms of schizophrenia – a devastating form of mental illness that breaks and confuses the human spirit – is hearing voices; loud, demanding, seductive voices that pull apart the sanity of a centered soul. By claiming that we journey through a schizophrenic culture, I’m suggesting that weare bombarded with voices today – arduous, analyzing, projecting, pleading, persuading, enticing voices, seeking to control hearts and minds and spirits. We are a noisy, verbose culture, cluttering the airwaves,and internet, and printed page with a cacophony of images, and promises, and attractions.
The question I want to raise today on this Festival of the Christian Home, is this…
Among all of the voices out there trying to get our attention, which oneand where is the voice of God?
With all the noise coming at us, how do we recognize the tone and timbre of the Good Shepherd, calling us to spiritual wholeness and wellbeing? And how do we guide those in our care and under our mentoring to sift through the voices speaking to their hearts and their heads, so that they can hear the Voice that matters, so they can center on wholeness, so they can resist being splintered by cultural and personal demons?
We are going to hear the 23rd Psalm read to us. Many of you can probably recite it right along with the reader, even in spite of the slight differences of the translations out there. I’m hoping we can look at this ancient song with fresh eyes and hear it with attentive ears. I appreciate what Don Bailey has/will share with us about modern sheep tending. It should give us some firsthand impressions of what in the world the writer of the 23 psalm was actually talking about. But still, it won’t be easy for us, because most of us don’t know a thing about shepherding sheep, especially in the way that the ancients did. In our twenty-first century world of agribusiness, with electronic fences and computerized tracking devices and modern machinery, this scriptural image of the Shepherd is a dusty antique of the past. And besides all that, unlike the lush valley terrain that surrounds us, the countryside around Jerusalem where the post-exilic writer would have sung this psalm was dry, dangerous and dreary. The rocky soil was a haven for hungry wolves and a trap for unsteady sheep, and there were steep cliffs dropping precipitously to valley floors far below. Good shepherds, with their staffs of comfort and rods of rescue, had to be vigilant, courageous, tender and tough.
Of greatest importance, in all the danger and harshness of the rough terrain, shepherds had to intentionally work at knowing their sheep and making sure their sheep knew them. It was the voice that built their relationship; it was their voice that nurtured, led and protected their flock. It was their voice that drew the lost, the scared, and the wounded sheep back to the fold.
How can we possibly hear that Voice today?
As the psalm is read, pay attention to the verbs in the song – the action words. They’ll give us some clues of how God works and what God says in our lives.
Scripture Reading: Psalm 23
Sermon:I.
- The shepherd does what, according to the psalm? …makes us rest, leads, comforts, restores, anoints, and prepares. Take note here. These are all images of nurturing, soothing,strengthening, with encouragement to grow and stretch and move toward wholeness. The shepherd does not drag or drive the sheep. The shepherd doesn’t threaten or beat or frightenthe sheep to get his way or to force them in the direction he wants them to go. Rather, the shepherd’s voice invites, and leads, and protects.
- Drawing from the imagery of this beautiful psalm, I can see three places where we can hear the shepherd’s voice most clearly, where it is the strongest…
Beside the Still Waters
- The very first place we hear the voice is beside the still waters – where the sheep are made to lie down in green pastures. We can hear the shepherd’s voice here – by the still waters and in the green pastures. I don’t think it’s by accident that this is the first place the sheep are led by the shepherd and not the last. A centered and grounded life is elusive without these regular moments of rest and rumination, of escaping the chaos and creating the space where we can actually hear God’s voice speaking to us.
- The writer of the last book in the Bible, Revelation, recaptures this imagery in his symbolic language. In the vision recorded in chapter 7, an elder said: “These people have come out of hardship… They worship [the Lamb] day and night in his temple, and the one seated on the throne will shelter them… because the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them. He will lead them to the springs of life-giving water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
These still waters to which we are led are living waters, the place where God’s Spirit can fill us, form us, heal us, renew us and sustain us for the journey of life ahead.
But normally the shepherd’s voice isnot the voice we hear or respond to first. How typical it is for us to respond first to the pushing, demanding, driving, seductive, judging voices in our lives, failing to hear or listen for God’s voice in stillness, which invites us to rest and restoration, to solitude and centering. The voice of God is that voice beyond the hectic noise and it urges us, and leads us, and sometimes – in palpable ways –makes us lie down to rest in green pastures beside still waters.
- For those of you who use the Upper Room booklet as a daily devotional, you may recall the meditation shared last Monday. It was written byØystein Brinch of Oslo, Norway as a reflection on Matthew 6:25-33. Here is what he wrote:
Early one September, I was spending a couple of days in my cabin in the forest. The cranberries were ripe, and I had planned to pick some to make jam. As I went along the path leading away from my cabin, I had to look very carefully to see the red berries. They seemed to appear suddenly, and I picked as many as I could find. But later, when I returned to the cabin along the same path, I discovered many berries left for me still to pick — berries I hadn’t seen the first time.
Life can seem like my journey along that forest path. As we hurry along the roads of life, we occasionally stop to enjoy the blessings that God bestows on us before we hurry on again. But when we stop hurrying and make an effort to search for God’s blessings, God can open our eyes to see even more blessings and love.
The busyness of life sometimes distracts us from seeing the love of God clearly. But when we stop to spend time in prayer and meditation, God reveals far beyond what we may see at first glance.
- A rather simple observation, but one laden with significance. The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. (Some translations say: “I lack nothing,” or “I have everything I need.” He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.
Leads in Right Paths
- You may have noticed that the psalmdoesn’t end here. We see that under the shepherd’s guidance, the sheep don’t stay there forever, just resting beside those still waters getting restored! In that part of the world back then, with all the rocks, and ravines, and caves, and wolves luring about, scattering the frightened sheep in dangerous directions, it is only the familiar voice of the Shepherd that can redirect them (or should I say “us”), not merely toward physical safety, but also toward the moral integrity, ethical action and spiritual wholeness that comes along with being one of God’s sheep.
- The Shepherd’svoice leads us in“right” paths, or paths of righteousness.
- I recently read an article by Rev. Tim Keller on the meaning of justice in the Bible. Keller wrote:
When I was professor at a theological seminary in the mid-eighties, one of my students was a young man named Mark Gornik. One day we were standing at the copier and he told me that he was about to move into Sandtown, one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in Baltimore. I remember being quite surprised. When I asked him why, he said simply, “To do justice.”
It had been decades since any white people had moved into Sandtown. For the first couple of years there, it was touch and go. Mark told a reporter, “The police thought I was a drug dealer, and the drug dealers thought I was a police officer. So, for a while there, I didn’t know who was going to shoot me first.” Yet over the years Mark, along with leaders in the community, established a church and a comprehensive set of ministries that have slowly transformed the neighborhood.
Although Mark was living a comfortable, safe life, he became concerned about the most vulnerable, poor and marginalized members of our society, and made long-term personal sacrifices in order to serve their interests, needs and cause.
That is, according to the Bible, what it means to “do justice.”
Young Mark was being led by the Shepherd down paths of righteousness. Keller continues...
The Hebrew word for “justice,” mishpat, occurs in its various forms more than 200 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. Its most basic meaning is to treat people equitably. It means acquitting or punishing every person on the merits of the case, regardless of race or social status. Anyone who does the same wrong should be given the same penalty.
But mishpat means more than just the punishment of wrongdoing. It also means giving people their rights... This is why, if you look at every place the word is used in the Old Testament, several classes of persons continually come up. Over and over again, mishpat describes taking up the care and cause of widows, orphans, immigrants and the poor—those who have been called “the quartet of the vulnerable.”
In premodern, agrarian societies, these four groups had no social power. They lived at subsistence level and were only days from starvation if there was any famine, invasion or even minor social unrest. Today, this quartet would be expanded to include the refugee, the migrant worker, the homeless and many single parents and elderly people.
The mishpat, or justness, of a society, according to the Bible, is evaluated by how it treats these groups. Any neglect shown to the needs of the members of this quartet is not called merely a lack of mercy or charity but a violation of justice, of mishpat. God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we. That is what it means to “do justice.”
We must have a strong concern for the poor, but there is more to the biblical idea of justice than that. [There is] a second Hebrew word that can be translated as “being just,” though it usually translated as “being righteous.” The word is tzadeqah, and it refers to a life of right relationships.
When most modern people see the word “righteousness” in the Bible, they tend to think of it in terms of private morality, such as sexual chastity or diligence in prayer and Bible study. But in the Bible,tzadeqah refers to day-to-day living in which a person conducts all relationships in family and society with fairness, generosity and equity. It is not surprising, then, to discover that tzadeqah and mishpat are brought together scores of times in the Bible.
The Shepherd leads us in right paths for his name’s sake. (Let those who have ears, hear!)
The Darkest Valleys
- But the song continues. There is one more place where the sheep hear the Shepherd’s voice and it’s the place we most needthe voice to speak to us. It’s when we find ourselves in the darkest valleys – the valleys of the shadow of death, the valleys of evil, the valleys where hurt and despair and loss threaten to overcome us.
- I think those who find the greatest peace in this psalmare theones most sure that God is with them as they walk through this ominous valley, that the voice will always be able to comfortthem or rescue them or heal them or guide them. Why? Because their faith is leaning fully into the God who has been there! The One we Christians lift up as the “Good Shepherd” was also knownas “the Lamb” –accused, maimed and slain by the violent and unpredictable forces of darkness at work in the world. Having been the Lamb, this Shepherd knows, this Shepherd understands, this Shepherd has experienced the terror of the valley.
God does not leave us there, lost and alone. God is right there with us in the shadowed valley, calling us and finding us and carrying us home. We fear no evil…
- So on this day, in which we focus on homes and families and guardianship and our role in inculcating a living faith in the center of our young lamb’s lives, we step back for a moment and consider that amidst all the voices calling out to us, there is the Good Shepherd’s voice, making us lie down by still waters, leading us with down paths of righteousness and justice, walking with us in the darkest valleys of our lives.
But we have to listen,and we must be taught to listen. And when we hear, we must learn to follow his lead. For that is our calling and our hope.