Sermons

“The Good Shepherd”

John 10:1-10; Psalm 23 (Classic) – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – May 7, 2017

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that our faith might be renewed and our hearts made thankful for your loving care. In the name of the Risen Christ we pray, Amen.

Every once in a while, it’s helpful to spend some time with those things that are so familiar we’ve almost stopped seeing them. The scriptures and prayers that we have memorized risk becoming incantations of superficial comfort, if we never pause to reflect on them intentionally. So today, I want to focus our attention on the 23^rd Psalm. It is the one piece of scripture that I read from the King James translation when I use it in a funeral, but today, in order to make it new for us, we’ve read it from the New Revised Standard Version as we do most of our scripture readings. So it’s already slightly different than what we’re used to, though I don’t think the overall meaning is changed.

We’re just going to begin at the beginning and work our way through line by line, so you might want to keep your Bible handy. First of all, there is a basic reality that is easily overlooked at the very beginning. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” it says. And we think of trust and providence, the main themes of the Psalm. But to say the Lord is my shepherd also implies the other side of that relationship: that I am a sheep. Not many of us are farmers or ranchers these days, but we know a little about what this means, if we stop to contemplate it. Sheep are not very smart. They are domesticated animals, incapable of taking care of themselves. So to begin this way is not just to ground ourselves in trust, but to confess a deep humility. To be in need of a shepherd is to admit that we don’t know where we’re supposed to be going or how to get there. It means we’re acknowledging that we can’t truly take care of ourselves on our own. This is a big and important step for many of us.

Once we’ve identified and accepted that humility, we can go back to the trust. Once I’ve admitted I need a shepherd, I can rejoice because I know that the one I have will, in fact, take care of me. “I shall not want.” That is a powerful declaration, especially since wanting is something we do most of the time. But the psalmist goes on in greater detail, first with images that stay in keeping with our needs as sheep – food and water – “He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside the still waters.” These are our basic needs, and they are met in a beautiful, gracious fashion.

But lest we think this providence is a mere subsistence sort of salvation, there is one more thing added: “He restores my soul.” I don’t know about you, but that line speaks to me of a much deeper sort of providence than the images of pastures and streams. This is probably my favorite line in the whole psalm. To have your soul restored is to be healed in a deeper way than we generally even dare imagine. Perhaps you have had a moment like that. Perhaps you are longing for a moment like that. This Shepherd – that is what he wants to do for us. Because our needs are deeper than those of sheep. Safety, yes, and food and water, but more also, deep healing and redemption. We need to be put back together, made whole; our souls are in need of restoration.

The next line tells us that this restoration, this great gift, is not simply for our own sakes. “He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.” Our wholeness has a purpose broader than our own comfort. If we are God’s people, the sheep of his pasture, than what the world knows about our God is shaped by our lives. “For his name’s sake,” God calls us to righteousness. We are to be witnesses to the life-changing love of Christ, to the redeeming nature of God’s grace, to the unifying power of the Holy Spirit. We do what is right for the sake of God’s name, for we are representatives of Christ Jesus here in the world. God restores us, puts us back together, but not simply for our own benefit. We are blessed to be a blessing. The gospel is a gift for sharing. We follow the path of Christ for the same reason he walked it – for the sake of the world.

Then, of course, as we commit ourselves to the way of Christ, we become aware again of how risky it is. “The darkest valley” the NRSV calls it. We are more familiar with the wording “the valley of the shadow of death.” Whatever we call it, we know it is a scary and dangerous place. There are threats here, to our bodies and our souls. This whole section, from “He leads me in right paths” through “your rod and your staff—they comfort me” reminds me of the part of the Lord’s Prayer where we say “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

The truth is that we don’t really have any clue about how to deliver ourselves from evil. We’re sheep, remember? Truly clueless for the most part. We want to do what is right, especially in the face of temptation and evil and darkness, but we don’t usually know how. You would think that would be a calamity, and it would be, except for one thing. We are not there in that dark valley alone. “You are with me,” the psalm reminds us. “Your rod and your staff—they comfort me.” Even for those of us who resist being told what to do, the guiding tools of the shepherd are what keep us safe on the treacherous trails of those valleys of darkness. Those moments come when the paths we’re traveling are steep and rocky, and we can easily lose our footing, no matter how well grounded in God’s love we may be. And so we give thanks, in humility and trust again, that God acts as a shepherd, reaching out with the staff to keep us from falling over the edge of cliffs we may not even see clearly.

This reality that we don’t know how to deliver ourselves stays with us as we move into the next image. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” And again, it brings to mind the deepest lesson Jesus taught us: that victory comes not from violent dominance but from humble hospitality. What does it mean to say that God prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies? The most basic, superficial reading would say that God takes care of us when we’re under siege; that God is on our side. But I would argue that there is more to it than that. The cup is overflowing, and your head has been anointed with oil. An anointing like that is a call to a special, holy purpose. A table, set to overflowing, in the presence of enemies, suggests a different path to victory. It recalls a Savior who gathers everyone at the Table and pours himself out as the libation, offers his body as the bread of life. Our enemies are overcome not by forcible conversion, but through the transformative grace of hospitality offered to the stranger. It’s not that God is on our side, but that God is on the side of love and mercy and reconciliation. God invites us and our enemies to lay down our weapons and share in the feast. Again, we are led in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. We are shown how, if we can resist the temptations of violence, God can deliver us in a whole new way, one we wouldn’t have even considered, left to our own devices.

Finally, there is the closing verse. There is a substantial difference between the King James and the NRSV here, at the very end where the King James uses the word “forever” while the NRSV says “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.” The translation “forever” is probably a large part of how this psalm became so connected to funerals for us, but the NRSV’s “my whole life long” is truer to the meaning in the original Hebrew. For me, it makes the psalm more relevant to our lives. It’s not that we’re waiting for some pie-in-the-sky salvation. God’s goodness and mercy are here, now, with us today. The house of the Lord, the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus said, has come near; it is among us. Is this the conclusion the rest of the psalm was leading toward? If we can be humble and trusting, if we can accept God’s providence and follow God’s leading, if we can trust God enough to open ourselves even to joyful reconciliation with our enemies, is the promise then that this is how we enter into the everlasting presence of God? I believe it is. It is the Easter good news all over again.

As we hear from the Good Shepherd in the gospel of John, Jesus is the gate, the gatekeeper and the shepherd. He will lead us where we need to go, and he will be beside us every step of the way. This psalm that we are so familiar with can be a treasure if we examine it closely. For when we do, we find the whole gospel story laid out in poetry and imagery. The story of love is told here in another form. The Lord is our shepherd; we shall not want. Alleluia and Amen!