Psalm 23
John 10:10:11-19
Jesus says: “I am the good shepherd.”
In urban churches surrounded by concrete, in rural churches neighbored by fields, stained glass windows show Jesus, shepherd’s staff in hand, leading sheep through green pastures. On the walls of church school classrooms we see pictures of a smiling Jesus, carrying a lamb on his shoulders.
“I am the good shepherd,” Jesus says.
The image of God as a shepherd is ancient, yet it still speaks powerfully to our modern hearts, wandering and lost, looking for a home in the universe. Even in our technological age, we want to believe Jesus when he says, “I am the good shepherd.”
When life is confusing and we don’t know which way to turn, when life hurts and we are filled with grief, when we face the mystery of death, for many, the words start to form on our lips even without thinking: “The Lord is my shepherd.”
In over 30 years of ordained ministry it has been a humbling privilege to be with people at or near the time of death. In these sacred times I often find myself turning to the familiar words of the Twenty-third Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd…though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
For all of its pre-modern imagery of sheep and shepherds, rod and staff, this Psalm speaks words of comfort to us today. It comforts us with the assurance of the strong presence of God even at the far edges of life.
While these words are often read in hospitals and at funerals, we miss the power of this psalm if we confine its use to such places and occasions. These words also speak to us as we face the mystery of life. The psalm addresses us in our everyday situations of eating, drinking, and seeking security. In the common, familiar activities of life, we are also assured of the strong presence of God.
For a few minutes this morning, then, let’s walk through that Psalm together.
The first nine words are deceptively simple: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
With those words we make a statement of faith that is contrary to so much in our culture.
In the ancient world, kings were thought of as the shepherds of their people. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God speaks against the shepherd kings who mistreated the people and promises that God will become the good shepherd. To say “The Lord is my shepherd,” is to declare loyalty to the living God above all other rulers and powers who would lay claim to our allegiance.
In doing so we begin to see all that we have, all that we are as a gift from God. We affirm: “I shall not want.”
A better translation is: “I lack nothing.” These are words of abundance.
I invite you—as an individual cared for by the Good Shepherd—to open yourself to seeing that ancient reality at work in your own life.
I lack nothing. I shall not want.
There are times when it seems like we need more from God than God is willing to give. But it might be that God is giving more than we are willing to recognize.
I lack nothing. I shall not want.
How might your life, your world change if you started and ended each day with that affirmation of faith?
If by the eyes of faith we see that life itself is pure gift, then generosity and gratitude begin to flow easily and readily in both prosperity and adversity.
From the place of fear, we are led to gratitude.
From the place of selfishness, we are led to extravagant generosity.[i]
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
“God makes me lie down in green pastures; God leads me beside still water; God restores my soul.”
Life depends on God, the psalmist tells us. Life depends solely on God.
We can sense the Shepherd’s careful providing for all things: the food and drink of green pastures and still waters. To speak these words is to affirm that God “restores my soul,” or better translated, God “keeps me alive.”
We find life in the care of the shepherd God who gives us rest.
Somewhere I heard about Albert Einstein’s sailing style. He would get in his boat and just sit there, looking at the water, drifting here and there in the harbor. All the other boats were zipping around him, tacking back and forth. There in the midst of this was Einstein—a calm, restful presence.
Most of us? Well, we’re no Einsteins. We're going faster and faster all the time. We seem to have lost the power to rest.
Walk beside still waters. Lie down in green pastures.
Let your soul be restored.
Let your drooping spirit be revived.
Let God keep you alive.
The opening words of this Psalm make it seem as though followers of the Shepherd God have got it made. We hear: “I have everything I need.” We see images of green pastures and still waters.
The easy life.
But all of this is for a purpose: The New Zealand Prayerbook puts it this way: “You guide me in right pathways for your name’s sake.”
Where is God taking us?
Straight, direct, right paths are those that will take the sheep where they need to go. The sheep have been out. They have been given rest. Now, along right paths, they are guided.
What if we speak—as the translations with which we are most familiar do—about “paths of righteousness?”
Kathleen Norris says that “at its root, in Hebrew, the word [righteous] means “one whose aim is true.”[ii]
We know that even our best efforts never seem as good to other people as they do to ourselves.
Acts that we see as filled with selfless love are tainted with self‑interest.
Attempts to help someone else often produce the opposite results.
So, none of us needs to get overblown ideas about our own goodness—our own “righteousness.”
Righteousness describes a relationship. Whatever upholds a relationship—acts of faithfulness, love, understanding, trustworthiness—whatever upholds a relationship is righteous. Unrighteous acts break the covenants we make with each other and with God.
The “paths of righteousness” are the ways of restoring relationships, healing brokenness, working for justice in the public square.
Walking along the “paths of righteousness,” we come to what has been called the “structural and theological center of the psalm”—those confident words: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Do you notice the change here? The psalmist moves away from talking about God—God leads me, God guides me, God restores my soul. Now the psalmist starts talking toGod—“You are with me.” For the rest of the psalm, the language is personal. The words become a direct address to the living and present God.
These words speak to us of God’s presence as we face the mystery of death. These words speak certainty in the presence of the greatest uncertainty. Each of us dies as an individual, but the psalmist tells us we do not die by ourselves.
This is one of the great and comforting hopes that we have: that as our lives come to an end we are not alone. The One who gives us life, who guides us on right paths, will still be there as we walk the way unknown to each of us but common to all.
That is a wonderful affirmation.
And as we listen carefully to the 23rd psalm, we discover that God is with us not only in our dying but also in our living.
Joseph Sittler was a Lutheran theologian who, in the years before his death, lost his eyesight. He recalled listening those words and hearing something that he’d never heard before.
“The text does not speak of the valley of death but the valley of the shadow of death…The psalm suggests that even while we live, the assured future arrival of the death casts a shadow over us…The wonderful truth is that God is with us now. It is not simply that God will be with us in the experience of death itself; it is that God will walk with us through all of life, a life over which death sometimes casts its shadow.”[iii]
It has been said that the Christian story is a story of accompaniment—that God so loved the world that God became one of us and accompanies us in our life and in the challenges of growth and change. God accompanies us also in the sorrow, in the suffering, in the confronting of illness and death and tragedy that are also part of the fabric of our lives.[iv]
Each of us can say: “In the valley of the shadow of death, you, O God, are with me.”
God is with us in our living.
God is with us even when our living is difficult.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”
As this psalm moves toward its conclusion, the image of God changes from shepherd to that of host. The shepherd is the protector of the sheep and also the protector of travelers who find hospitality in the tent from enemies and danger in the desert. Rules of hospitality are clear that once in the tent—and especially once food is spread before one—a person is guaranteed immunity from enemies.
Now if the word “enemies” seems a little too strong, perhaps you would prefer the translation that speaks of a table “in the presence of those who trouble me.” Someone once told me that he didn’t think of having a lot of “enemies,” but “people who trouble” him? Sure.
You know what he means, don’t you? And the psalmist suggests that even in the midst of the irritations and aggravations of life God is spreading out a feast of good things.
Can we open our eyes and our hearts enough to see everything that is being offered?
Find your place at the table of abundance even in the presence of those who trouble you.
The God who is the good shepherd is also the God of abundant generosity. In listening to the psalmist we discover the God who is lavish with gifts, whose grace is sufficient for all our needs. We see—first in sketchy outline, then in remarkable clarity and detail—the God who generously gives to us.
Remember how this psalm ends? “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
I read this at funerals as a word of hope—an affirmation that eternity is in God’s hands and that we are in God’s eternity. Forever.
It’s true that the better translation of the Hebrew words of the psalm is “I will dwell in the house of the Lord for all my days.” The original author was not speaking about life after death so much as abiding in the temple of God in Jerusalem as long as this life remained. And yet, as we hear these words in the light of the resurrection, they give us a hint of eternity.
We long for that which is lasting. Even when we are strong and fleet of foot and nimble of mind, we know that life is not “forever.” While we live, we walk “through the valley of the shadow of death.”
The person who “dwells in the house of the Lord” is the one who worships and serves the living God.
The psalmist struggles to picture what it means to live by a radical trust in God in the midst of terror, enmity, and death—some of the greatest challenges of faith. This faith will carry us through our darkest hours in our living and in our dying. This trust empowers us to believe that life has meaning, even though our immediate experience may be telling us otherwise. This trust empowers us to set out in new directions when life calls for change.
We belong to God, who cares and provides for us.
We belong to God, who challenges and provokes us.
In our living and in our dying, God the good shepherd leads us all.
[i] Page: 3
NIB Exodus 35-36.
[ii] Page: 5
Kathleen Norris Amazing Grace pg. 97.
[iii] Page: 7
Martin Marty, Context, August 1 & 15, 1984, quoted in Richard Wing, 3;00 a.m.: Meditations for the Middle of the Night, pg. 49-50.
[iv] Page: 7
Diana Eck in Laufer and Lewis, Inspired, pg. 56-57.