Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 13, 2008
Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10
Well, I imagine by now you can guess what Sunday this is. Having heard our scriptures and sung our hymns for today, you undoubtedly picked up the theme which always emerges on this fourth Sunday of Easter. Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. This is one of my favorite Sundays of the liturgical year. But there is no reason why biblical metaphors of sheep and shepherd should define my life and my relationship to God. Those of you who don’t know me might be surprised to learn that I am a city kid. I grew up in Jersey City, N.J. I was nearly thirty years old before I encountered sheep on a farm I visited in Northeast Pennsylvania. And even though I lived in rural areas of Pennsylvania for many years of my young adult life, I continue to be a living example of that well-known saying, “You can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl.
So now all of you must be wondering why Good Shepherd Sunday is one of my favorite Sundays of the church year. It might be because the first time I went to church as a young child an image of the Good Shepherd featured on a stained glass window absolutely captured my interest and imagination. Only a year later, at my grandmother’s funeral, I was given a memorial card with the same image on the front and the 23rd Psalm printed on the back of it. That card became a great comfort to me. I read the Psalm so often, I committed it to memory. Good shepherd themes and images were taking an important place in my life and I really began paying close attention to scripture and hymns and sermons with good shepherd themes.
Over the years I came to realize why these images were so powerful, even for city folk who have little knowledge or experience of them. Because sheep and shepherd metaphors show us so much about who we are, and who God is, and the life-giving relationship we can have with our Shepherd when we recognize ourselves as his sheep. Unfortunately, as the world becomes more removed from rural life, rural metaphors require more explanation. But to me, this metaphor is well-worth thoughtful and heart-felt examination. Today’s scriptures suggest many ways one might preach these texts. I have primarily emphasized John’s gospel text in other years, but today I would like to focus on the 23rd Psalm.
I especially want to highlight the importance of the beginning of this psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd…” My shepherd. And yours. This psalm tells us that our relationship to God as our Shepherd is, indeed, individual and personal. So much of scripture and liturgy emphasizes our life with God in community, and rightly so. But there are times when we need to look at our own life and our life with God in mutual relationship. The 23rd Psalm provides us with this opportunity.
The psalmist begins with a statement about who God is for him. He tells us that the Lord is his Shepherd. And immediately we are meant to have a rich and full understanding of God by his likeness to a shepherd. What we know about a shepherd is that he is a caretaker; he keeps careful watch over his sheep. He cares deeply for each of them, because they are his most valuable possession. A shepherd forms a close relationship with his sheep. He gives each of them a name. He calls them by their name, and they respond to him. The shepherd’s job is to see that his sheep grow into the creatures God made them to be. And here is the important part: sheep can only grow by the painstaking care a shepherd takes in providing for them; and sheep can only prosper by the guidance and direction of the shepherd’s rod which keeps them safe from harm, and the crook of a shepherd’s staff which rescues them from danger and puts them back on their feet when they fall. Sounds a lot like our relationship with God, doesn’t it. The God who loves us so deeply and cares for us so completely in the same ways so that each one of us might become the person God created us to be. But here is the hard part for God’s human creatures; people like us. We resist being compared to sheep and there’s a good reason for that.
Sheep are thought to be innocent, even dumb creatures who can be led astray quite easily, even under the watchful care of a good shepherd. Human creatures do not like to think of ourselves as dumb or even innocent folk who need someone to watch over us. But we are so like sheep. We are inclined to run with the herd of the moment in our life, until we see grass which looks greener in other pastures. Then, much like sheep, our curiosity, or desire, our will, or even our stupidity will often take us into places which are bring us harm or put us in danger. We listen to the many other voices which call our name and we often answer to the wrong ones. We fall easily into the traps set for us in our world, and when we fall into them, we are not very able to get out of them by ourselves. It is only then that we realize how much we need a shepherd, a shepherd who will find us in our need; a shepherd who will rescue us and restore us to well-being and bring us back into life-giving community with other sheep of his fold.
In this first and all important line of the 23rd
Psalm the psalmist calls the Lord his Shepherd and by doing so he acknowledges himself to be a sheep of his pasture. By the end of the Psalm, the psalmist declares he will listen to his shepherd’s voice above all others and follow him all the days of his life because the psalmist knows that his real needs can only be provided for by a shepherd who cares about his well-being and watches out for his own good. This, too, is problematic for us human sheep. It is not enough that a shepherd provides us only with what we need, and we regard it an insult that anyone else can know what is good for us. This is because you and I live in a world where we believe we know what is good for us, and only meeting our needs is never enough. We are always wanting so much more than what we need. So much more we feel we deserve to have and so much more we feel deprived of when we don’t get it or can’t have it. But, in fact, there is little a human creature really needs to live in this world.
Our psalmist wants us to know that when our basic needs are met, we are already living a life of abundance, a life of health and well-being which brings us a sure sense of satisfaction and deep peace. But that never happens for people who always want more than what they need. Eventually our wants become our needs and we can never be satisfied or made content by the sure provisions of our God. We begin to hear voices other than our Shepherd’s voice, voices which promise to satisfy our wants as if they are needs, voices which lure us into pastures which always look greener and waters which seem more satisfying. This is when sheep like us get into trouble.
American essayist Henry David Thoreau had much to say about our growing tendency in 19th century America to accumulate money and material things. Thoreau felt that new technologies and more goods and services only brought more problems to our life. He believed the more money we had and the more things we owned, and the more we though we needed them, the more we became a slave to them. And how right he was. Think of all the time and money we spend taking care of the things we own, not to mention the worry and anxiety we have in guarding and protecting them. I am one of many homeowners who have said, “I don’t own my home; my home owns me.” For Thoreau a life of abundance and enjoyment and deep peace could only be achieved by living simply. He believed that simplifying our life would free us from the manic desire to keep accumulating more money and more possessions than we need. Simplifying our life would free us to appreciate and enjoy the simple things which are necessary to our life. Simplifying our life would bring us the peace and contentment we yearn for. But only a shepherd can help us simplify our life. Left to our own devices we will find ways to complicate our life by our perpetual wants and unfulfilled dissatisfaction.
For the Psalmist, listening to God’s voice and following him into green pastures with still waters does more than provide for his basic needs and fill his cup to overflowing; it restores his soul. And restoring one’s soul is so necessary for keeping ourselves centered in God and open to voices which call us to health and well-being. It used to be that going to church each Sunday was a means for restoring our soul. But so many people no longer hear God’s voice calling them to worship; they will not be led into this pasture of St. George’s Church. Vacations used to be another way of restoring our soul. Time away from work and the worries and stresses of our life was necessary to restoring us to health and well-being, but in our modern world we often come home from a vacation needing a vacation. It doesn’t help, I think, that we can no longer go on vacation without our cell phones, our laptops and our ipods. Once again, modern conveniences and enjoyments have found yet another way to enslave us. But only if we let them. The voice of our Shepherd continues to remind us of our need to restore our soul. We need to listen to his voice.
Our Shepherd wants more than anything to restore our soul. But there are so many voices calling to us from so many places, it makes it easy not to hear his voice. In fact we are not likely to hear our Shepherd’s voice until we find ourselves in trouble or danger or deep despair; not until we find we have strayed so far we run off a cliff, or fall flat on our face, or become completely lost in the bad choices we make for our life. Choices which promised us life abundant, but did not deliver. Not like our Shepherd who delivers on his promises. Our shepherd who not only restores our soul, but who he leads us into a life of righteousness. And our psalmist tells us the good which comes to us from that.
When we are able to live by God’s purpose for our life, when we are truly living the life God has given us to live, we need no longer fear those things which can threaten us or harm us. He anoints us with healing oil, and like the shepherd who lies in front of the gate after he brings his sheep into the sheep pen, we are able to live in the protection of our Shepherd Thieves or bandits who threaten to lure us away from our shepherd and enemies who seek to do us harm will only be able to get into that pen over his dead body. (And now you know where that saying has its origins.) By our Shepherd’s willingness to literally lay down his life for us, we no longer need to live in the anxiety of the moment or the lasting depression which can come from it. We no longer need to answer to voices which deceive us. We can walk through the valleys of our life, even under the shadows of death and fear no-thing.
There is nothing in the world that can offer us that kind of security. There is nobody who can give us that kind of assurance. Our psalmist ends his psalm with such assurance. “Surely,” he says. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.” And the one thing the psalmist knows is that forever begins right now, in this time, in this place and in this world for the sheep who knows his Shepherd’s voice and follows him.