Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
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Sermon by Steve Smith Order of Service
The Shepherd’s Keep
January 27, 2008 Psalm 23
When I came up through the ranks of Sunday School in my childhood, the goal of our learning process was to complete the Confirmation Class and be received into church membership. I suspect that many of you had a similar experience. In my youthful desire to begin defining my own life, I had an ulterior motive for completing the Confirmation Class. In our family, once I joined the ranks of the faithful, I was free to decide for myself whether I wanted to attend church on Sunday mornings. Since I had found the entire Sunday School enterprise to be mind-numbingly boring, I couldn’t wait to be free of its clutches in my new and improved self-definition.
More than that, I knew for that entire year what my choice was going to be on the vast majority of my Sunday mornings. Unfortunately, being compelled to attend Sunday School, Confirmation Class AND a worship service every week for that entire year had done little to inspire my faith or my desire to continue attending on a regular basis. As the dreary weeks unfolded into months, my impatience with the weekly assignments slowly took on a life of its own. I can still remember reaching the pinnacle of my disdain the week we were told to memorize the words to an ancient and dusty hymn.
It’s been more than a few decades since then, so I don’t remember if I rolled my eyes in disgust upon hearing the assignment, but it certainly unleashed a flood of negativity in me. I was good at memorizing, so that really wasn’t the point. The point was that I found this exercise to be totally useless. Here were these words that meant nothing at all to me, and they were written in Old English or something that sounded completely foreign to me. “What is the point to all of this?” was my constant inner refrain. I was a pretty compliant kid, so I don’t think I actually said it out loud, but I sure thought about it a lot.
Because I was so frustrated and angry with the exercise, it took me longer than usual to commit it to memory, but I passed the quiz and went on to complete the Confirmation Class and find its promised liberation from Sunday morning drudgery. For several years, the ancient hymn was completely gone from my mind. After my spiritual awakening, though, I had a sudden interest in exploring the words of wisdom and inspiration to be found in the Bible. Lo and behold, I came across the words to that ancient, dusty hymn buried in a hymnal that has been tucked into the pages of our Bible. They were written by a famous King from Old Testament days, and we recited them this morning.
King David has been traditionally identified as the author of this hymn, and if we position it against the backdrop of his wild and woolly experiences, it comes alive in a different way from the rote memorization that might have lodged it in our psyches from an early age. The Lord is my shepherd, he begins. The concept of the leader of a nation being referred to as a “shepherd” of the people is one that pre-dates David and puts it into the realm of pre-history. Shepherding was an ancient practice that goes back to the domestication and husbandry of flocks of animals. Once you’ve domesticated the creatures, someone has to be in charge of watching over them, making sure they get food and water, and protecting them from predators and thieves.
The analogy to the protective, nurturing leader was an easy leap. But this leap toward the definition of God as the Great Shepherd of the flock was a bigger step. Where other religions of the time period approached God as an angry, capricious deity who constantly had to be mollified and appeased, here was an image of God presented in a positive light, a God who was genuinely and perpetually interested in the welfare of the people under God’s loving guidance. So when we get caught up in a flood of negativity and lapse into a more primitive attitude toward a God who lives to thwart our plans or make us miserable, we find at the very beginning an important corrective to our corrupt theology. Our God is a nurturing shepherd who is genuinely and perpetually interested in our welfare.
Then we get an interesting twist of a phrase that has been lodged in our brains for so long that we can lose its impact from sheer familiarity: I shall not want. Have you ever asked yourself why this is stated negatively? For such a positive work, why would the author choose to make this point by stating it in the negative? This is where King David’s biography comes in handy. If you read through the history to be found in Chronicles and Kings, you will discover that David did not have an easy time of things. After he killed the giant Goliath, he was destined for leadership, but the problem was that the fledgling nation of Israel already had a king.
And like most kings, King Saul was the jealous sort, and rather paranoid about any would-be competitors to the throne. Like many political leaders, King Saul also had some rather serious mental health issues that he coped with by using some rather primitive methods. For instance, he would fly off into a murderous rage without a moment’s notice, and he tried on any number of occasions to cope with his internal strife by running a spear through the up and coming David. When Saul would resort to that peculiar means of coping with the stress in his life, David would have to go into hiding. Because he never had any warning about these episodes, he would end up literally running for his life with no supplies on hand.
While on the lam from a murderous king, David had spent a good many days and weeks surviving from day to day and meal to meal. Even after he was king, his own sons became competitors to the throne, and the mighty King David was forced to flee from his comfortable palace and take up residence in the woods or in a dank cave. So in those moments when most of us would panic amidst the fear that we might not make it through these dangerous episodes, I believe that David had learned to tame his fear by reminding himself that he had a Shepherding God who would keep him alive. He had learned to answer his anxiety over deprivation, hunger, and thirst by telling himself that God was not going to starve him from this world. In those dark moments of living on the edge of extinction, David would tell himself, Because God is my shepherd, I will not go hungry or thirsty. I shall not want for what I need in order to survive.
When life takes us to the edge, when we wonder how long we can hold up to the stress and strain of life’s challenges, we can tame our fears by reminding ourselves that we have a Shepherding God who would keep us alive. We can answer our anxiety over deprivation, disease, or overwhelming demand by telling ourselves the same thing: Because God is my shepherd, I shall not want for what I need in order to survive this current crisis or ordeal.
The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. The Middle East has an arid climate, which means that things are dry and dusty. While modern Israel has engineered incredible irrigation systems to support a population base, the natural lack of rain means that the prevailing color in those areas is brown and sandy. While the presence of any other color would stand out against that landscape, it would be the color green that a good shepherd would be looking for. Green meant moisture, the presence of water, a critical ingredient for the growth of vegetation.
As a boy, David had been a shepherd, and had learned to look for the green spots on the horizon, so that he could steer the sheep in that direction when they had eaten their way through the last pasture. Going toward the green meant that the sheep would get enough to eat for another day. Sheep are odd creatures that way: if they don’t get enough to eat, they get restless, and can’t lay down. More than that, they’re very sensitive to their environment. If they sense that anything is amiss, they’re going to keep each other awake with their fidgety edginess. So it’s the shepherd’s job to lead them to green pasture and make sure the sheep feel secure. Once they are, they can settle down for some rest.
Likewise, a good leader needs to ensure that the people have enough to eat. Hungry constituents tend to get cranky and restless. I can certainly relate to that cranky restlessness, as Betty can attest. It gets pretty ugly if my meals aren’t on the table in a timely fashion. We too can be sensitive to the environment around us. If we sense that things are amiss, if we’re living with too many uncertainties, if there is tension anywhere in our circles, some of us are quite adept at picking it up and carrying it around with us. Some of us have a way of keeping ourselves awake at night with our fidgety, edgy thoughts. King David had more than his share of things being amiss, with rivals for his power, a murderous king who wanted to relieve his own stress by killing David, a group of independently minded tribes to forge into a unified nation, and all the warring factions that served as unfriendly neighbors who wanted nothing more than to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
So David had to go for the green in his mind’s eye; he had to steer the people in new directions, all the while having to reassure them that things were going to turn out alright, if only they gave God a chance to work things out. All the while, he had to reassure himself that God wanted to work things out, that God wanted to create a safe place where nurturing love could flourish among this dissimilar group of people. Isn’t that an apt analogy for the church, too? Sometimes that feels like my job description: to steer this flock toward greener pastures, even if it means that it’s going to be a direction that we have never taken before, all the while trying to reassure you that things will turn out alright, if only we give God a chance to work things out. All the while, I reassure myself that God wants to work things out, and that God wants to create a safe place in our midst where nurturing love can flourish among this dissimilar group of people.
He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. In addition to safe grazing, the sheep needed a ready source of clean water. But sheep are somewhat finicky in that regard. If there’s any kind of current or undercurrent in the water, the sheep won’t get near it. In a sense, they’re hardwired to avoid a situation where the water might soak their wool, weigh them down, and pull them under to drown. So it’s a self-defense mechanism, but it can be a problem when they perceive a threat from an ankle-deep trickling stream, and it’s the only water supply for miles around.
The good shepherd allows for this phobia, and will find a place where that stream widens out and quiets down, so the sheep won’t be afraid to pause to quench their thirst. We’re like the sheep in the sense that we’re hardwired to avoid dangerous situations, too. Like the sheep, we sometimes lose our perspective on just how dangerous the situation really is. We might only be wading through an ankle-deep crisis, for instance, but everything inside of us is screaming, “We’re gonna die! We’re gonna die!” If there’s any kind of current of strange change, or an undercurrent of tension and stress, we can easily become unnerved and refuse to take another step in the right direction. We become preoccupied with the thought that this situation is going to weigh us down to the point of being overwhelmed, where we will surely drown from the sheer stress of it all.
When David felt like he was getting in over his head, he went looking for the Shepherd of his life, searching for the guidance that his God was surely giving him to find the next watering hole. So we, like David, go looking for our Shepherd when we lose our perspective on life and its constant challenges. Like David, we remind ourselves that our Shepherd did not lead us out here for the slaughter, but rather brought us here to find the next watering hole.
Order of Service back to sermon
"NC" refers to The New Century Hymnal, The Pilgrim Press (1995)
January 27, 2008
Welcome, Announcements & Prayer Requests
A Candle for Peace Family #682, verse 1
Call to Worship
Leader: We come to worship this morning, seeking the One who shines light into our darkness.
People: We come to worship this morning, trusting the One who is the stronghold of our lives.
Leader: We come to worship this morning, calling on the One who brings warmth and light into the midst of all our winters.
People: Our God, you who are radiant light, shine into our hearts.
Leader: Our God, you who are the Light of the World, illuminate your words that our lives may reflect your Word made flesh.
Hymn Family #2 How Great Thou Art
Responsive Prayer
Leader: Loving God, you know us better than we know ourselves. Our prayers are in your heart even before they are on our lips.
People: Your love surrounds us and your presence is always with us. When we make you the center of our lives, your love showers out of us in whatever we do.
Leader: Help us to use your love as our badge of courage, casting out our fears, and showing your love to a world that so desperately needs it.
People: You know our hearts’ desire to serve you. We pray that you will keep us true to that desire. We pray that we might give ourselves completely to you.
Leader; Loving God, hear our prayers for those who need the sound of your love spoken clearly into their winter-weary souls.
People: Merciful God, we claim your loving presence for those who are anxious or fearful today; for those who are sick or dying; for those who are lonely or grieving; for those who live in poverty or hopelessness.
Leader: Be their Gentle Healer. Collect their tears in your hands. Let them feel your presence beside them. Give them strength to let go of all that holds them back from experiencing your love.
People: Help us to respond to your love with extravagant love. Let us see each day as a chance to do spontaneous, risky acts of love in Christ’s name, whose love, so amazing and so divine, demands our souls, our lives, our all.
Pastoral Prayer, Lord’s Prayer
Hymn Family #258 When I Survey
Psalm 23, John 10:1-18
Sermon The Shepherds’ Keep
Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn Family #606 He Leadeth Me
Benediction
Leader: Gracious God, as we look to the week ahead, we ask you to bless us with light and joy.
People: Gracious God, as we look to the week ahead, we ask you to bless us with hope and abundance.
Leader: Your Spirit, O Lord, calls us to faith and challenges us to serve.
People: Your Spirit, O Lord, marks us as your own. What a great comfort to be your children!
Leader: Bless us, O Lord, in the name of Jesus, who calls us to follow his example, living a life of love and worship.
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