Rev. Craig Hunter

So here's my question for you this morning: When is the last time you met a shepherd? Even just asking the question, I must admit that it is hard for me not to laugh or at least smile. Not that there is anything wrong with being a shepherd, it's just, you know -- well, it seems a bit anachronistic. Can you imagine meeting someone at a dinner party or a church potluck where a man introduces himself by saying, "Hi, my name is Michael, and I'm a shepherd." The thought just cracks me up. I'm sure that would make for a memorable conversation, don't you think?

Or can you imagine if one of your children said, "Mom, I want to be a shepherd when I grow up." What would you say to that?

Of course, etymologically, the roots of the word "pastor" are related to pasture and sheep and thus to shepherd. So when I introduce myself and say, "Hi, my name is Craig, and I am a pastor," I am basically saying that I am a shepherd. This is a bit clearer in languages such as Spanish. In Spanish, the first verse of our lectionary text this morning from the 23rd psalm is "El Senor es mi pastor." The word "pastor" in Spanish thus preserves its connotations with sheep. But in English, we are so accustomed to the word "pastor" that we forget the connotations of sheep and shepherd that go with it. This was made startlingly clear to me when I was in Japan. I quickly learned that the term for my vocation in Japanese is bokushi. Even in Japanese, the associations with sheep and shepherd are there. To write the word bokushi in Japanese kanji is to see those associations clearly. Somehow seeing and learning this new word in a foreign language made those associations with shepherd and sheep fresh for me, as the English word "pastor" had not done before.

My point is that language of sheep and shepherds is not really language that we are familiar with. Even for Spanish speakers and others among us who might be marginally more familiar with the language, they aren't much more familiar with the reality of what it is to be a shepherd of literal sheep. There are still shepherds in the world, I've even met some in my travels in the Middle East, but we don't normally think about sheep or shepherds, let alone see any. I think our lack of contact with and experience of sheep and shepherds somewhat restricts our ability to understand and relate to psalms such as the famous 23rd Psalm that we just heard this morning. I wonder what it would be like to hear that psalm as a shepherd, or even as someone in a rural society that still has shepherds.

Thinking about that psalm, and given our modern, industrialized society, a modern day parallel that came to my mind was to think about the Lord as a chauffeur. The Lord is my chauffeur. I've got everything I need. She takes me where I need to go, she keeps the car well-stocked with refreshing foods and drinks. She leads me down the right roads. Yea, though it is a dark and rainy night, I am not afraid because I know that she is in control. She guides me through the worst of Dallas rush hour traffic. Surely the roads before us will be smooth and clear-sailing, for as long as I shall live.

As interesting and amusing as my rendition may be, or may not be, it doesn't quite do it, does it? It really doesn't even come close to surpassing the power and tenderness of the imagery of the psalm. It is probably the most well-known chapter in the entire Bible. I suppose that makes preaching on it, and hearing it afresh, all the more difficult. But it is a testimony to the psalm's power that we can still identify with it long after our societies have lost their shepherds, and we have lost touch with our sheep.

Turning now to the passage itself, the psalm begins with a powerful metaphor that simultaneously establishes who we are, and who God is. When the psalm begins by saying "The Lord is my shepherd," it is also implicitly saying, "I am his sheep." We are his sheep. That is a statement about our identity. To imply that we are sheep is to say that we are vulnerable. We face external dangers from outside forces that seek to devour us. Although we may have been born clean and white, our coats get dirty during the course of our lives. Comparing us to sheep also suggests that we live in community, but that sometimes we wander off. Sometimes we get lost. Sometimes we cannot find our way back.

Of course, the good news of the statement, "The Lord is my shepherd," is that it doesn't just suggest who we are, it also suggests who God is. God is our shepherd, God is the one who takes care of us. God keeps us safe, sustains us with love and care, calls to us when we wander off, and tracks us down when we are lost. The relationship between the Lord and the sheep is close and personal. This is expressed in the Hebrew word for Lord used here. The word is not the Hebrew term "Elohim" which would emphasize more the power of God, but rather Yahweh, God's personal name, thus emphasizing the deep connection between the shepherd and sheep -- they know each other by name.

Notice how the shepherd is always the subject of the action in this psalm. We the sheep are passive -- it is God that makes, that leads, that restores, that prepares and anoints. God is the source of peace and abundance. That is really one of the hardest things for us to digest in a society that teaches us to be self-centered, a society that tells us that we have no one to rely on but ourselves for our happiness and security. Sometimes people want a sermon that will tell them what to do, as if in doing it they could somehow work out their own salvation. But as this passage suggests, what is really more important is to recognize and celebrate what God is doing, who God is.

The psalm continues, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." I shall not want. In French the translation is "je ne manque de rien." That is basically the same as the translation of the Catholic church's Jerusalem Bible: "I lack nothing." I lack nothing. Can you imagine a company building an advertising campaign on that principle? I don't think this means that the psalmist doesn't have needs or desires. Rather, for the psalmist to suggest that he lacks nothing, indicates to me a very close and intimate relationship with the Lord. When you know that kind of intimacy, you feel full, complete. If you have ever had an experience of grace, then you know what it is to choke on it, it is almost too much, too good, too full, too abundant.

The sense of intimacy suggested here deepens as the psalm continues. Indeed, I think one of the sources of this psalm's ability to touch us still is the way that grace seems to be conveyed though so many different aspects of this one metaphor of shepherd and sheep.

The psalm continues, "He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul." It is the shepherd, God, that restores our souls. That is good news for those among us, and all of us at times, who feel burned out, in need of rest. It is interesting to note that in English, it says "he makes me lie down," almost as if there is something in us that resists, as if we are so addicted to our busy-ness that we have a hard time lying down and being still ourselves. It requires the care of someone who loves us to makes us stop or slow down. Haven't you ever had that happen, where a loved one says, "Craig, it's okay, slow down. Have mercy on yourself." And in those few words, your soul is restored.

"He leads me in right paths for his name's sake." Which is to say that it is God who leads us, not necessarily where we want to go, but where we need to go. Where is it that we need to go? What are those right paths? I like the connotations of the Spanish translation of this line: "Me guia por sendas de justicia." Sendas de justicia. Paths of justice. It doesn't say that the shepherd leads us on easy paths, or the path of least resistance. Rather, God leads the psalmist on the right path, the path of justice, so that on heaven and on earth, as we pray in the Lord's prayer, the name of God would be hallowed. God still leads us as individuals and as a congregation on those same paths of justice today.

"Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me -- your rod and your staff, they comfort me." I think all of us have been in that valley one time or another. It is a scary place to be. Perhaps some of us are there now. To be in that valley is NOT to know that God is with you. That is precisely what makes the valley so dark, the inability to see the shepherd. To be in that valley is to have no evidence that God is there at all.

But the voice of the psalmist is the voice of experience. It is the voice of one who has been through the valley before, I would wager more than once. In reflecting on his past, the psalmist knows that in those dark valleys in which he could not see the shepherd, the shepherd was nonetheless there. Our verse in English reads, "for you are with me", but in German it is "Du, Herr, bist ja bei mir" and in Spanish, "porque tu estas a mi lado," which is to say that the shepherd isn't just with the sheep in some general sense, rather, as these other translations make clear, God is right there, right at the very side of the sheep, when the darkness is the deepest, that's when God is the closest. It is the knowledge of God's presence with him in the past that gives the psalmist the courage to trust God in the darkness of the present.

I've been in that valley, the valley of darkness and death. Enough not to wish it upon anyone else. But just as a valley is a passage from one place to another, so is the valley of darkness and death a passage to transformation. You can't get to where the valley leads without going through the valley. So while part of me would not wish that valley upon anyone, another part of me wishes it upon everyone, not for its own sake, but for the sake of where it leads.

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies." This is for me the most striking verse of the entire passage. There is probably another sermon here, just in this verse, but that sermon is not for today. For the purposes of this sermon, this verse conveys the power of God to protect. The shepherd is so powerful in his ability to shield from harm that even in the midst of the enemy, "Vor den Augen meiner Feinde" in German, before the eyes of my enemies, even in the presence of imminent threat, the shepherd is able to serve and to feed.

"You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long." These words here are a vision of what lies on the other side of the valley, they are what makes the passage through the valley worth it. "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." In German it says, Deine Guete und Liebe umgeben mich an jedem neuen Tag -- your goodness and love surround me on each new day. I like especially the words, umgeben mich, to surround me -- I think they capture part of the essence of this entire psalm. For if you pay close attention to the position of the shepherd in regard to the sheep in this psalm, you see that the shepherd is on every side. The shepherd is in front of us, leading us. The shepherd is "a mi lado", at our side, comforting and protecting us. And the goodness and love of the shepherd is behind us, following us, in French "me poursuivent", pursuing us. On all sides, in every direction, we are surrounded by the goodness and love of God.

To know that, as this psalmist does, is already to live in the house of the Lord. The sense of intimacy that began earlier in this psalm is now complete. "I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long." The psalmist knows where he belongs, and more importantly, to whom he belongs. I am reminded of the famous quote of Augustine, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you, O Lord."

In Hebrew, the house of the Lord, Beit Yahweh, is also a reference to the Temple, and thus to worship. I don't know where you are in your life this week. I don't know if you are weary and in need of still waters and restoration. Or if you need guidance and leadership to do the right thing. Or if you are in the valley and need assurance of God's comforting presence. But wherever you are, God surrounds you, God surrounds us, and like the psalmist at the end of this psalm, we gather in the house of the Lord to worship and to delight in God's presence. As the psalmist knows, the natural response to who God is and to what God has done, is doing, and will do, is to praise and worship God for as long as we shall live.

I am going to do something new this week and next week that I have never done before. You see, the sermon I just preached is not really I intended to write this week. Rather, in thinking about and praying about our lectionary texts for today, there was something that touched me, something that I cannot escape from. There is something about these texts that haunts me. I don't know if I will be able to articulate it. They have affected me more than most. Before I began to write this week, I envisioned a sermon that would flow through the things I have said this morning on down deeper into these other images and thoughts that haunt me. But as I got into the sermon, I realized that to do so would make this the longest sermon I have ever preached. So instead what I have decided to do, what I have never done before, is to split this sermon into two parts. While today's sermon may stand on its own, I see it as more of a prologue to what I will say next week. That isn't a guarantee that next week's sermon will somehow be more powerful -- I certainly haven't written it yet. But it is to say that on a personal note, what moves me most about these texts is primarily what I will attempt to say next week.

In today's sermon, it is as though I have zoomed in on the text, looking at it closely, going verse by verse. Next week, however, I will zoom out. I will look at almost the entire scope of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, through the lens of this metaphor of shepherd and sheep.

For next week, therefore, I am going to give you some homework. Your homework is this: read the lectionary texts from today at least once during the week. Read the lectionary texts from today, the 23rd Psalm and the passage from the 7th chapter of Revelation, at least once during the week, preferably sometime in the middle of the week. It would be even better if you read them every day of the week. Read them next to each other. Compare them. Think about them. Pray about them. Then return next Sunday to hear part two of this sermon.

And until then, in the week to come, may the Lord lead you beside still waters and restore your soul. May the Lord lead you on paths of justice. May God be with you in the dark valleys of life. And in all that you say and do, may you worship and witness to God's great mercy.