Shepherded

Sermon

Why do you suppose so many people find the twenty-third psalm so meaningful? You know it –

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.

Perhaps the reason this psalm provides such comfort to us is because it pictures God as caring for us beyond all measure. In a world where too many too often feel uncared for, this psalm is an antidote for the sea of apathy we often swim in.

The rub, of course, is that if God is the shepherd, that makes us sheep. And sheep may not be the brightest and best of the animal kingdom. According to the Historic Hudson Valley website, “Sheep are extremely intelligent animals. Their IQ level is similar to [that of] cattle, and they are almost as smart as pigs. They are capable of solving problems—they can remember how to find their way through a maze or how to find a treat in a puzzle.” (https://hudsonvalley.org/article/dont-get-fleeced-know-your-sheep-facts/) So: able to find treats, as smart as a cow but not as smart as a pig. Again, to say we are like sheep is not the greatest of compliments. But they are gregarious and like being in a group with others; we might say they are extroverts in the animal world.

Back in Jesus’ day, it wasn’t necessarily a compliment to be a shepherd, either. Shepherds, especially the hired hands who tended a flock but didn’t own it, were not held in high regard. They dealt with unclean things—blood, poop, and the occasional dead animal. If they tended their flock by night, that meant they weren’t at home to watch over their family, so they were unreliable. They grazed their sheep on other people’s land, so they were untrustworthy.

Yet throughout our scripture, God and then Jesus are compared to good shepherds. Often our metaphors take the high road, the ideal image, and so we accept our sheepish nature and rest in the care of our divine shepherd.

Because we all long for the care of our divine shepherd, don’t we? Someone to watch over us, protect us, nurture us. That’s part of the human condition, I suppose, not being able to fully care for ourselves without the help of another.

Part of a shepherd’s job is to protect the flock from predators—the wolf, mostly, in Jesus’ time. We face a different kind of wolf and life gets hard.

I know there are those among us who live with the reality of getting older. I’m not talking about my peers, discovering crazy new long and curly gray eyebrows and the occasional twinge of the knee. I’m talking about our saints in their 80s and 90s, whose bodies don’t work like they used to, who wake up in pain every day, who struggle to get a decent night’s sleep, who know their minds aren’t what they used to be. They know they have more years behind them than in front of them. Death is closer than it had been, and that may be terrifying.

I know there are those among us who are in that season of life when the care of others is ever-present. Sometimes it’s caring for an aging mother or father or aunt. Parents, especially those with young children, are exhausted, between the demands of their jobs and the demands of children and soccer games and permission slips and potty training and ABCs and report cards and driver’s ed and being not only physically available but emotionally available as well.

I know there are those among us who are lonely. Some live by themselves, and that can be one kind of loneliness. Some live with a spouse or a parent or a child, and that’s a different kind of loneliness. The quiet at the table might be overwhelming. The night spent in solitude feels endless and maybe even hopeless.

I know there are those among us who are grieving. We have lost so much in the last three years. During the height of the pandemic, I had three saints in our congregation call me because they were dying and wanted to say goodbye. That was excruciating. People we love have died. We lost community and wonder if we’ll get it back. We read the psalm that proclaims, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning,” and we wonder if the dawn will ever break.

I know there are those among us who are afraid. And we have much to fear. Climate change is real and God only knows what kind of life will face our descendants as the planet warms and storms become more violent and food and shelter become more scarce. Random shootings and targeted attacks which claim the lives of young and old have become such a part of American society that we barely register the latest event. Drug addiction seems to be winning, and we cannot get ahead.

For those who are aging, those who are exhausted, those who are lonely, those who are grieving, those who are afraid, I remind you of this: there is a divine shepherd who is watching over you, watching over you in your end of life, in your season of relentless care, in your loneliness, in your grief, in your fear.

But what does that mean? Is that a tangible thing, the care of the shepherd? What did Jesus mean when he said that he came so that we might have abundant life?

For the linear thinker, this text is frustrating. Jesus claims to be the gate for the sheep, the gatekeeper, and the shepherd, and elsewhere he is the lamb of God. Too many images that don’t cohere very well. But one commentator suggested that the way to understand all these images of Jesus is by his words in verse 10, when he says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

The shepherd’s care is toward the ultimate goal of our having fullness of life. Brené Brown might call it whole-hearted life, if you’re familiar with her idea. She writes, “Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.”

Now granted, sheep do not wake up in the morning and bleat about whether or not they are worthy. They are worthy, and worthy of their shepherds’ care. In fact, according to some of our favorite scholars, Drs. Malina and Rohrbaugh, even in the Arab world today, “sheep are classified in a bewildering set of categories… by gender, [fertility], age, time of birth, color” – which includes white sheep, black sheep, black sheep with white spots, blue/black-faced sheep, black-faced sheep, white sheep with black face and neck, black-spotted-face sheep… the list goes on. There is a different Arabic word for each of these categories. That says something about the shepherd’s notice and care for their flock. (Malina and Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John, p. 182)

Wholehearted living means having an abundant life. But what does that look like?  Well, it doesn’t look like an abundance of things. Our stuff is no barometer of our life. Neither is our ability—differently abled people can have just as much abundance in their lives as the next person. Abundant life isn’t conditioned on our age, status, gender, faithfulness, or any of that.

Abundant life means life that is full of God-stuff, you know – stuff like forgiveness, and peace, and friendship. Abundant life is life that happens in community, in a flock; community can be as small as two people, or as big as the world. Beware of something Gregg Neel likes to say: you know it’s true community when you can’t stand the person sitting next to you.

Maybe abundant life begins when we know that we are cared for by our divine shepherd, who calls us by name, who protects us from the dangers out there, who leads us to places where we can feed freely and rest safely. And we can live abundantly, with those things Brené Brown talked about—courage and vulnerability and imperfection—because we know we always have a shepherd, a home base, a grounding.

Perhaps this little story will help. I’ve been a part of the same clergy cohort for about twenty years. Members have come and gone, but there’s a solid group of people out there, serving churches and the denomination, and through the years we’ve had each others’ backs. We regularly ask each other to pray for us.

And we have a prayer team here, and now that I’m filling in for Laurie, I regularly get their emails about who is in need of prayer.

In my experience as a human being, there is something extraordinarily powerful about someone telling me that they are praying for me. In times when I’ve been in distress or terrified or whatever, and when I’ve asked people to pray for me, when I encounter whatever is causing my distress or fear, I’m in two places at once—a place of true difficulty and a place of peace that passes understanding.

I am able to live abundantly because people pray for me. I am able to live abundantly because they are praying to my God, the Good Shepherd, who will go with me even to the valley of the shadow of death. My cup runneth over.

May you have abundant life too.