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: Table-Setter
February 24, 2008 Psalm 23
Now that we’ve had a few days to calm down from last week’s thrills and spills on Skullbuster Hill, it’s time to focus our attention on a far more serious and weighty matter. This subject is near and dear to my heart, and as I grow older, I find my thoughts turning here far more frequently than they ever used to. In fact, I’ve spent many an evening pondering the depths of this topic, sometimes laying in bed at night and listening to the silence to see if I can detect the faintest whisper of wisdom from my inner voice. As the restless stirrings within finally take on shape and form, I can put words to the burning quest firing up within me: “What is there… to eat?”
In retrospect, the dismissive words of an angry man I met many years ago have taken on a prophetic quality. In the Methodist Church, pastoral changes take place in a very structured and methodical manor. One week, you say good-bye to your old pastor, and the next week you welcome your new one. So the departing pastor had given me a few tips on people to pay attention to before I arrived in town, and one of them was someone he had playfully dubbed “the town crank.” “He’s not bad if he’s on his medication,” he told me, “but he doesn’t like to take it, so keep an eye out for him.” He then proceeded to regale me with stories of how the town crank had snuck into the parsonage on a regular basis, gaining access to the locked house through an unlocked garage window. The pastor would often be startled to come home to find this eccentric character sitting at the kitchen table, asking him, “What’s for dinner?”
So when I pulled around the corner one day the first week in town and saw someone standing on the sidewalk with Betty in what looked like a one-way argument, I had a hunch that I was about to meet the town crank. He appeared to be angry about something, using his index finger to jab toward the center of Betty’s chest. As I opened the car door, his voice carried over the sounds of the neighborhood, and as I got closer, I could see the saliva jumping out of his mouth with every animated point he made. Betty seemed frozen to the sidewalk. As I came into view and he turned his glare toward me, I turned on the charm.
“Oh, you must be Mr. Brown (just so you know, I changed his name to protect his identity). It’s good to meet you. I’m Steve, and it looks like you’ve already met Betty. I’m really sorry, but we have to go inside now to fix our dinner.” Somewhere along the line I stuck my hand out in welcome. “I’m really glad you stopped by, and I hope that you’ll come again.” The expression on his face made me think I had just slapped him and referred to him as something you might want to scrape off the bottom of your shoe. Needless to say, he didn’t take my hand for a neighborly farewell shake, but instead, his voice shaking with rage, he uttered the prophetic words that have been imprinted on my memory for nearly twenty years: “Go ahead! Go and worship your belly god!” With that, he turned on his heels and stomped off to find someone else to bless with the light of his countenance.
As you can tell, my belly god is fat and happy these days, but it’s never content with what it’s been given. I haven’t been able to convince anyone else yet, but I truly believe that his curse made my belly what it is today. And yes, I think about food a lot, which is for me a serious and weighty matter. According to a recent study on restaurant serving sizes, it’s a serious and weighty matter for most of us. The restaurant industry has discovered that their customers don’t mind paying a little extra for larger portions, so the average dining establishment routinely serves up the equivalent of four servings on each plate they set in front of us. We like our food, and we like a lot of it.
Today’s portion of Psalm 23, in case you haven’t guessed it by now, has to do with food: You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. The first puzzle we have to work through is why the psalmist is picturing a table sitting out in the middle of a grazing pasture. While it turns a smooth poetic phrase, it doesn’t make any sense to our sensible modern minds. But in order to step out of our world and into the ancient one our psalmist inhabited, we have to change our mental imagery. When we picture a table, we imagine a solid wood structure with at least four legs supporting it about two and a half feet off the ground. It’s usually surrounded by four, six, or eight accompanying chairs, so that people can sit at the proper height for shoveling food into their mouths.
In the ancient world of the nomadic shepherd, however, there was no such furniture. Can you imagine trying to load a dining room set onto the back of a camel? No, everything they had was portable, ready to be set up or taken down at a moment’s notice. The same was true of the table they used. Some of you no doubt remember going on a picnic in younger years, and your destination didn’t always have a wooden picnic table conveniently located nearby. Nowadays, they chain the tables to a rock or tree so you can’t move them, either. So you would spread out your sheet, your blanket, or your quilt on the ground, and that would serve as your table and your chair when you sat down to eat.
In a similar fashion, the average shepherd would carry an animal hide that could be used at mealtime. When it came time to chow down, the rolled up skin could be whipped out and snapped open to create the perfect dining environment. Some scholars have argued that this is the root of the ancient Hebrew word for table, a reference to the hide that was stripped from an animal, usually a goat or a lamb. Of course, in the finer dining establishments of the day, someone else would set the table for you, usually a slave, perhaps with a flourish and a French accent: “Ah, your table, Mesdames et les Messieurs. And would you prefer your goat’s milk soured or curdled?” One of the attractions to eating out, of course, is that someone else does the setup, the cooking, the serving, and the cleaning. All we have to do is show up and irritably bang the table with the silverware clenched in our fists until the food shows up.
Now that we’ve solved the riddle of the table nesting in the grazing pasture, we have another word picture that jars our thinking about God. If in fact it was the work of a slave or a servant to set the table, what is the Creator of the universe doing preparing a table for the hungry critters? This is one of the traits that would set a good shepherd apart from a lazy or indifferent one. When moving a flock from one pasture to another, the good shepherd would go ahead of the sheep to prepare the field for the hungry beasts. In this sense, preparing the table meant looking for noxious weeds that might sicken or kill its unsuspecting victims, or keeping eyes and ears open for signs of slithering snakes with venomous bites that could drop an otherwise healthy animal in a matter of moments.
Lazy or indifferent shepherds wouldn’t take the time or effort for such precautions, and would allow the sheep to be exposed to deadly dangers. In likening himself to the Good Shepherd, Jesus is telling his fledgling flock that he wants to create a safe place for sacred nurturing to take place. In telling us that God sometimes takes on the role of servant for the greater good of the flock, the psalmist is telling us that God values us more than we value titles of respect, and that God will stoop to even the most menial of tasks to demonstrate the depths of that love to us.
For the image of a table has more to it than the food that our bellies crave; its imagery is richer and finer than the richest of sauces or the finest of fare. For me, it brings back memories of family time spent around the table, or holiday feasts with extra company and distant relatives gathered together to celebrate the gracious gift of love lived out in our day to day existence. Aside from meeting Betty there, the highlight of my time in seminary wasn’t the time we spent sleepwalking through lectures or poring over ponderous tomes in the library: it was the lingering time we spent over our meals, forging the bonds of fellowship, challenging each other to plunge deeper into the things of God and to broaden our understanding of who God is in the varying cultures and experiences we brought to the table.
Right at the heart of the Shepherd’s Psalm, right at the heart of Jesus’ self-definition, we discover the hidden treasure of the fellowship to be found with each other and with God in the bonds of community. It is God’s intention and design to create a safe place where community can flourish in our midst. At the very core of Jesus’ sacred mission, we understand that Jesus wanted to create a new community that focused on the lost and wandering sheep. At the very core and formation of that sacred mission, Jesus trained his leadership to look for people beyond the walls and fences that were designed to keep people out. Jesus trained them to look for people who were spiritually thirsty, for folks whose lives were messy, to pay attention to the attention-seeking behavior of those who were hungry for purpose and meaning in their lives.
The good shepherd trained other shepherds to touch the untouchable people of the world, to love the unlovable, to venture forth into the very human world of sickness, of crippling pain, of heart-wrenching grief, of bewildering rejection, of soul-searing betrayal, and of all the hates and hurts that isolate people in their loneliness and misery. Whether the imposed barrier was mental illness, or what we today would call epileptic seizures, or being born into the wrong kind of family, or growing up in an abusive or dysfunctional household, or being enslaved to an addiction, the good shepherd rolled out the welcoming table of fellowship in the community of compassion.
The good shepherd met the flock where they were, in their own world, intent on bringing God out of the Temple proper and out onto the paths and trails where folks wandered, feeling harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. This sacred mission that has been entrusted to us is God’s call to us to ponder the improbable: that we are near and dear to God’s heart, and so is our neighbor. This mission is God’s call to us to rouse ourselves from our sleepwalking through the dull monotony of the day’s chores to help forge a safe place where divine community can flourish in our midst.
In order to live more fully in the heart of God’s intent for us, we might have to change our mental imagery of who God is, we might be called upon to reach out to someone who doesn’t fit the mold of what we have defined as “the right kind of person.” This mission calls upon us to make a mental shift toward being the table-setters for all the hungry and thirsty people we will meet this week. Even as the image of the Creator of the universe stooping to set a table jars our thinking, so our call is to take on the role of servants, so that others will find room when they come to join us.
Order of Service back to sermon
"NC" refers to The New Century Hymnal, The Pilgrim Press (1995)
A Candle for Peace NC #575, verse 4
Call to Worship
Leader: Generous God, we come to you thirsty. We are parched from the challenges of simply living our lives. We deal with aging, illness, loneliness, and financial strains.
People: Our world deals with poverty, war, many types of abuse and injustice, random public shootings, and suicide bombers.
Leader: We pray to you, God of mercy, that you might shower us and your hurting world with the living water that refreshes our souls.
People: Guide us back to your well, O God. You alone offer the living water that sustains us.
Leader: Open our eyes; strengthen our faith; nourish our souls. Quench our thirst with the Love that is you.
ALL: Surely God’s goodness and love will overflow our lives and will follow us all the days of our lives.
Hymn NC #23 and 27
Responsive Prayer
Leader: God of forgiveness and mercy, hold us close in those everlasting arms of your tenderness and compassion. When we run from you or abandon your guiding light, welcome us back with mercy.
People: Open our hearts, that we may receive your grace and your love. We pour out our prayers to you this day. Hold back the rushing waters of trial and trouble so that we may be nourished by the life-giving spring of your love.
Leader: Cleanse our sins with your gracious forgiveness, that we may walk forth as newly inspired children of your grace. Give us grace to continue as your faithful followers.
People: Lord God, we remember before you today the victims and families involved in the recent random public shootings. Fill the families and survivors with your grace and mercy. Raise up compassionate people to care for them.
Leader: We pray for our soldiers wherever they are involved in fighting for and working for peace. Bring them home soon. We pray for strength and courage for those who have returned with physical, emotional or mental wounds.
People: Gracious God, we place our families into your loving hands. You know their needs and the helplessness we sometimes feel in meeting those needs. Show us how to love them with your everlasting love.
Pastoral Prayer, Lord’s Prayer
Hymn NC #28 For the Beauty of the Earth
Psalm 95, Exodus 17:1-7, John 4:4-14
Sermon The Shepherds’ Keep: Table-Setter
Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC #503 O Savior Let Me Walk with You
Leader: Go forth trusting in God’s promises. Stand firm in the Lord. Dwell continually in God’s presence.
People: Go forth with us, O God, and give us courage to walk in your ways. Help us to experience your peace and joy in the midst of our daily tasks.
Leader: May the compassionate love of our Lord Jesus Christ draw you close, keep you safe, and bring you joy and peace
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