Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
March 10, 2002 The Fourth Sunday of Lent
Psalm 23
I guess I am not the world’s most patient person. For example, I get impatient and frustrated when I am standing in line at an ATM and the person in front of me just stares at the machine without doing anything, completely clueless, as if they are waiting for the machine to speak to them and provide proper instructions. Or waiting at the Post Office while the person in front of me grapples with the complexities of the 34-cent stamp. Or getting behind someone, obviously lost, as they careen down the highway at a dangerous 20 miles per hour. My wife seems to lose patience with me in those moments, as if there is something bad about giving the clueless driver in front of me a little push down the road now and then. So yes, maybe I am not the world’s most patient person, but if I ran the universe, things sure would be different… or would they? For, although it pains me to admit it, in those moments when I dare to be most honest with myself, I realize that I just might be as clueless as anyone else…. just as lost…. just as confused.
The 23rd Psalm. For so many of us it truly has been a source of comfort and hope all the days of our lives. But as we read and reflect on this Psalm as Christians, it is important to remember that for even longer it has been a cherished hymn for Jews. It might be helpful to consider what it says concerning the nature of the Jews’ relationship with God. In a recent article in Christian Century magazine, Craig Barnes describes that relationship with these words: “They were a people who were called Israel, which means, ‘those who have struggled with God.’ They struggled for a home that they were always trying to get into, hold onto or get back to. They struggled for peace, for food and for a future. Most important, they struggled for their faith in God. The Hebrews longed to live with God as sheep live with a shepherd, but their life was hard. And they were too afraid to keep believing that this Shepherd was leading them to green pastures, or that goodness and mercy would always follow them. So they frequently rushed down more promising paths toward more manageable gods, which always led them into unmanageable trouble… then they would return to worship, where this story was told and retold.”
Concludes Barnes, “So it is not surprising that so many of the psalms describe the churning, disruptive experience of being lost and found, judged and forgiven, sent away and brought back. It is all part of the pathos of people who got scared and lost their way, and of the high drama of a God who searches to find God’s lost sheep.”
Interesting. Is the 23rd Psalm simply a source of comfort, telling us not to worry, everything is OK? Or could it be a reminder of how far we, in our frantic search for worldly security and comfort, have veered off course? Could it be a reminder of how quickly we look to almost anything but God for green pastures, still waters, and a full cup? Could it be a guidepost for clueless people…. people like us?
Gypsy Smith was an old time evangelist. He had actually been raised as a real gypsy in England. He told the story of a time when the gypsy band of which he was a member had completed some fruit picking and was moving its wagons across the Medway River. The river was in flood. The passage was dangerous. One older woman slipped from her wagon and was immediately pummeled by the floodwaters. Her son, a strong swimmer, knew she could not swim at all, so he plunged in after her. Their companions watched a tragic event unfold: the son trying so hard to help his mother; his mother, in panic, flailing away at him and the stream. They could hear him shout: “Mother let go, and I’ll save you!” But she would not – could not – and eventually drowned with her son close at hand.
On the day of the funeral, as Gypsy Smith recalled it, when the services were concluded, the son dropped to his knees by his mother’s coffin and cried, “Mother, mother. I tried to save you. But you would not let me!” Do you suppose God ever says anything like that to us as we hurry about in stressed, hyper-activity, convinced we can make it to the green pastures on our own?
I think back to my impatience with a world that doesn’t operate the way I think it should – with all those hapless souls out there who seem so lost, so clueless. Then I think about the opening words of the Psalm – “The Lord is my Shepherd.” I agree with Craig Barnes when he writes, “I don’t mind calling the Lord my Shepherd, but I’ve never been too flattered by being called one of his sheep. I had hoped to be the eagle of the Lord, or maybe the cunning tiger. Sheep aren’t particularly smart. They scare easily, and have a knack for getting lost.”
I agree. I don’t like to think of myself as one of the lost sheep. I suspect you don’t either. We are relatively intelligent, we sort of have our act together. We certainly don’t look lost. But the Psalmist seems to want to lump us all together – all sheep in need of a shepherd – scared, confused, clueless, lost sheep. It is you, he says, yes you, who are lost. It is you who have lost your way in a relationship that has offered more hurt than love, in a job that leaves you depleted and spent, in the guilt of not being good enough, smart enough, good-looking enough. It is you who are lost in the battle with declining health or the declining health of a loved one, you who are lost in grief, in anger, in shame and regret for things done or left undone, in exhaustion from having tried so hard to create green pastures all by yourself. Oh, you are lost and clueless sheep all right, and without a good shepherd you may never get home.
“I tried to save you, but you would not let me.” We have put our faith and trust in so many different things and are as lost as ever. Could there be another way, another focus for our trust?
Preaching professor, Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “I was talking with a friend of mine who was remembering a scene from his boyhood in a southern town. He used to go down to the river with some of the older boys and watch them swing far out over the fast-moving water on a rope tied to the branch of a tree. He sat and watched them arc across the sky and then let go of the rope, falling and disappearing into the current. A little ways downstream their heads broke the surface of the water and they swam back to shore, egging him on, urging him to take a turn in the air.
“My friend was afraid, but decided to try. He grasped the rope, got a running start, and swung far out over the water. At the height of his ride he willed his hands to let go of the rope, but they would not – it was so far, the water was so fast, he was so afraid. So he hung there, dangling between sky and river, until someone hauled him back to earth. I do not know how many tries it took him before he finally let go, but he said that when he finally did, it was because of his friends. ‘They had all gone ahead of me,’ he said. ‘I had watched each of them let go and finally I just made up my mind that if they could do it, I could do it too. Without knowing what would happen, without knowing whether I would make it or how it would be, I just opened my hands and let go…”
Sometimes we just have to let go – let go of our consuming anxiety, our desires for worldly security and safety, let go and put our trust in something, someone, else. “I tried to help you, but you would not let me.” The Psalmist says it like this: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me. God’s grace, God’s love, God’s kindness will run after me and chase me down, grab me and hold me.”
Old Testament professor, Walter Brueggemann says, “The verb, ‘follow’ is a powerful, active verb. We are being chased by God’s powerful love. We run from it. We try to escape. We fear that goodness because then we are no longer in control. We do not trust such a generosity, and we think our own best efforts are better than God’s mercy.”
But the Psalmist suggests that the time has come to quite running – Lent is a time to quit running – to let ourselves be caught and embraced in love, like a sheep with safe pasture, like a traveler on a dangerous journey who finds rich and unexpected food. God does not will for us lives of fear and endless anxiety. Life is meant to be an embrace. Ah, but will we trust it, will we allow ourselves to be caught, can we let go and trust we will be caught, buoyed up, supported by grace?
Henry Ward Beecher, perhaps the most influential preacher of the Civil War period, wrote of a childhood that we today would call deprived. The family was often mired in poverty, hungry, with too few prospects. During one particularly bad time, young Henry heard his parents having a discussion. His mother was deeply depressed, with good reason. But then Henry heard his father say this: “My dear, I have trusted God now for forty years; I have never regretted that trust; and I am not, however frightening the future looks, going to begin to distrust him now.”
He knew what the Psalmist knew, what we all need to know. Things on the journey, even the journey through the valley of the shadow of death, are not as they seem when God is present. We are safer, more cared for that we ever imagined. In the words of Brueggemann, “The journey, with the power and purpose of God, changes the circumstances in which we live. Wilderness becomes home, isolation becomes companionship, and scarcity becomes generosity. That is how the life of faith is, very different to be sure, from the life where God is not at the core.” In this Lenten season, indeed in all seasons, may we see past our anxiety, our greed, our fear, our need to be in control. In place of all that, may we see ourselves as the sheep of this good shepherd, as travelers in God’s good valley, as citizens at home in God’s good house – a house where we truly are free and joyous and generous, unencumbered and grateful. “The Lord is my shepherd.”
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