Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; I John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
Psalm 23 is one of the most well-known psalms in the Bible. It is often read at funerals though I heard it read at a wedding once—and thought it most appropriate. We often read it on this Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday, and we are want to conflate it with the Good Shepherd—a reminder of who we hope for in a Messiah, who we believe God to truly be. One of the beautiful things about this psalm is its universal appeal—the “I” could be anyone, because God is everyone’s shepherd.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
The psalm begins with probably the best known line in scripture. Even if you’ve never had to memorize a scripture verse in Sunday School—in part because you grew up Episcopalian and we don’t do that—you’ve most likely got this one in your back pocket if you ever have occasion or need in which to recite a scripture verse by heart.
These nine words have retained a popularity in part because of their hope and their promise. To understand God as shepherd invokes a protective and nurturing element that is expounded upon in the lines that follow. There is the immediate promise that we will no longer want, it is to attribute a trust in God that immediately connects us to the Good Shepherd of John 10—it connects us to Jesus. The psalm becomes immediately intimate and powerful. But the promise does not end there.
As our shepherd, God offers us rest: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
Refreshment: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
Restoration: He restoreth my soul;
Reconciliation: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his Name’s sake.
These are the things we know about God. The things we know God offers us: Rest, Refreshment, Restoration, Reconciliation. To this point the psalmist has been telling us about God and in a way that offers us comfort and hope. But now he makes a shift. He is longer be talking about God, but to God. Notice at what point this shift happens:
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;
The transitional moment for us in knowing about God and having a relationship with God is often a point in our life in which we experience suffering. When things are going well and we are easing through life, the promises of rest, refreshment, restoration, and reconciliation speak to what we believe religion ought to be—a place where we find affirmation and appreciation for our efforts at faith. But if we stop there, then we participate in a shallow faith and miss out on the true depths of the promises of God. These are the times when we need faith the most—in the midst of our sufferings, our valley of shadows where we need not fear evil because we know that God is with us.
I will fear no evil for thou art with me
The psalmist is no longer talking about God, but to God. It is a transition from a faith that tries to understand God with our heads to one that participates in God with our hearts and with our bodies. God no longer becomes an object of our attention; God has become relatable through a participatory knowledge that draws us into the depths of God’s beingness. God is with us—especially in our times of suffering and angst and doubt. We are comforted by his rod and staff—instruments of protection and defense and guidance that ward off the dangers in the wilderness or what we might think of as the unknown and assure our footing even over treacherous terrain.
Not only are we protected and defended, we are cared for in our relationship with God—we are anointed with oil, our cup is filled to overflowing, goodness and mercy chase after us. When we live in relationship with God—God as subject not an object that we simply deify and worship, but a God we participate in—when we live in that relationship, we live abundantly. We trust in the enough-ness of God.
That is what dwelling in the house of the Lord forever is about. We don’t simply understand God in terms of what he might offer us—rest, refreshment, restoration, reconciliation—but in relationship with him. God is not simply a shepherd who keeps us from want, but a good shepherd who cares for us, who knows us as we know him.
This image of Jesus as a good shepherd assumes then that we are sheep. Sheep are particularly vulnerable creatures. They have no defense against predators. They have big, fat bodies on four little stick legs. If they fall over, they cannot get back up without help. If their wool gets wet, they can easily drown. If they wander off and become lost, they are sitting ducks and chances of survival are slim. Sheep are vulnerable, most of us are not—unless we are. In our times of suffering, we know that vulnerability and we trust in God to see us through. But at other times, God is simply a matter of our convenience.
The Israelites of the psalmist era and the Jewish Christians of John’s community didn’t know vulnerability in times of inconvenience, they were vulnerable communities all the time. They were scattered and had fallen prey to those who would see them destroyed. The words of the psalmist and the words of Jesus are directed to those who live in fear. They are meant for the most vulnerable among us. That we can relate so intimately to God as shepherd is an invitation to trust in God’s compassion and provision such that we might offer that same compassion and provision to the most vulnerable amongst us. Maybe that is why goodness and mercy follow us, we are called to leave a trail of it behind us.
When we stop simply talking about God and start talking to God, we allow God to move from our head to our heart—a conversation begins to unfold, a relationship grows. Now instead of a promise of fulfillment—The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want—we discover we stop wanting. We stop wanting that next shiny new thing. We stop wanting what the other has. We stop wanting power or money or position. We stop wanting a different life and embrace the life God has gifted us. I shall not want doesn’t mean that God gives us something different or even that God gives us anything at all, it means that we realize joy in what we already have—we realize our joy in God.
When we stop objectifying God and focus on God as the subject of our lives, we discover that our relationship with God and one another deepens—not just with family and friends, but with stranger, with those who are the other, who understand the world in vastly different ways than we do. We stop seeing God as a good shepherd and start experiencing life in the flock in which our shepherd is willing to lay down his life for us.
We begin to know God, not with heady knowledge but with participatory knowledge in which we live and move and have our being in the one we would call our shepherd. That is what our psalmist does for us today—shift us from simply knowing about God to having a relationship with God.
(Psalm 23-read together)
To know God is not to place our expectations upon God—not our desires or our wants—but simply to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Amen