Lent 4 The Lord Is My Shepherd, St. Mark’s March 22, 2020
If you are wondering where God is in all this coronavirus mess, stay with us for a few more minutes. As we live socially distant, trying to avoid the coronavirus, the psalm appointed many, many years ago, just for today, is the 23rd Psalm where we are told that God is our shepherd, who leads us and cares for us. I hope we will pray this psalm every day until we can again become physically connected. In fact, let’s say it again. (PAGE 612 BCP )
1 The Lord is my shepherd; *
I shall not be in want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures *
and leads me beside still waters.
3 He revives my soul *
and guides me along right pathways for his Name's sake.
4 Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil; *
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
5 You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me;
you have anointed my head with oil,
and my cup is running over.
6 Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, *
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
This is the most read psalm at funerals and with the sick, so let us follow the lead of so many others before us whom we loved./ Those in our ancestry and the sick are crying out to us now to know what they know. The God of love is not only above us and inside of us, but our God is beside us, our companion through the most difficult storms, crises, and disasters. God never ever leaves us alone or abandons us. /
Often we think this image of a shepherd was only relevant for ancient times. Certainly, the word picture of the Good Shepherd was very meaningful in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament where the post exile Hebrews sing this 23rd Psalm while tending sheep. But in the 21th century with our urbanized society of agribusiness and electronic fences, this scripture image may be a dusty antique of the past. We simply do not encounter sheep and shepherds except at a petting zoo, or perhaps at a drive through of the live nativity pageant that was at the Church of the Nazarene, our sister church next to us on Mississippi. We also are not excited about comparing ourselves to sheep. They are low on the animal IQ list. We do not expect an animal episode of the game show “Jeopardy” featuring a competition between sheep any time soon.
But to the Hebrews, the Good Shepherd is a meaningful image of a God who is loving, listening, caring, protecting, and leading his flock to nourishment and safety./ Is there a metaphor that we might use today to understand our God who is loving, nurturing, healing, caring? Hold that thought. We will get back to it. But for right now, let’s listen closely to discern how we may best hear the Good Shepherd’s voice beside us during this crisis. Is the message of the psalm only for the dying and those who are sick?
Our present culture is full of many voices. A symptom of the mental illness schizophrenia is hearing voices—loud, demanding seductive voices, pulling apart the sanity of a centered soul. Watch the award-winning movie, A Beautiful Mind, the story of the Nobel prize winning mathematician, John Nash, and you will understand. In many ways we live in a schizophrenic culture. We are bombarded with voices demanding, analyzing, projecting, pleading, persuading, seeking to control our hearts and our minds./ Especially now we hear a multitude of different voices telling us about the coronavirus./
If we look at the 23rd psalm, an old family friend, with a new pair of glasses, we might see where we may find help./ There are four places where the voice of our caregiver, our protector, seems to be the strongest in this timeless psalm.
The first place is beside still waters, where we are made to lie down in green pastures where our fearful soul is revived. Remember the story about a desert father who goes to teach his novice about HEARING the voice of God. The old monk sends the novice out to fetch a bowl of water from a desert pool. The young monk returns and they both sit for hours,/ never speaking,/ watching quietly as the murky liquid becomes clear,/ as the sediment slowly settles to the bottom./ The Good Shepherd, the good listener calls us to quiet places and speaks to us there, often outdoors in the green and blue, in the silence of the wind. If you want to hear the voice of the Good Nurturer, the psalmist is telling us to find a still place in our lives, often outdoors, even for a few moments. Perhaps this is one gift from our confinement from the coronavirus. Many of us may have more time for silence, for prayer, listening for the voice of the Good Shepherd./ Those with small children now at home will especially be needing this quiet time. Again, the place of less noise may best be outdoors or early or late in the day or night. /
The voice of the Shepherd also leads us to right paths, actively seeking paths of righteousness. This is the second place we more clearly hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, the Good Leader: where we are searching for the path of our calling and our truth. This again may be another gift of the coronavirus. Some may now have more time to connect on our phones, emails, social media to friends, family, and our neighbors who are more vulnerable. We may also have more time to study and read scripture especially using the ancient Benedictine practice of lectio divina. We read scripture slowly,/ listening for the word or phrase that speaks to us from our life./ We meditate on that word and think about how it moves us./ We then offer to God how our heart is moved by the word./ Lastly we rest in silence in the Good Shepherd’s arms./
The third place we might hear the voice of the Good Shepherd is “where God spreads a table before us in the presence of those who trouble us, our enemy.” Today our enemy is this messy virus that shares itself across all borders, except two. Its spread is stopped by some basic hygiene steps, especially handwashing that we should have been doing all along, as well as unfortunately our social distanc/ing. The psalmist reminds us that the Good Shepherd is here with us/ and perhaps especially in the presence of this viral enemy./
The psalm promises the shepherd’s voice at one more place we all are experiencing. This is the place we need to hear that voice the most. This is the valley of the shadow, the valley where hurt and despair and death threaten to overcome us. We have learned most about this place in our Mourner’s Path groups where we hear stories from those who have experienced the death of a loved one. Over time, they remember someone inside or outside or beside them, guiding and caring for them./
The psalmist tells us that fear, fear of an evil illness also lives with us in this valley of isolation and darkness. Knowing God is beside us as our constant companion/ invites Courage also to be our constant guide. How does the Good Shepherd keep giving us courage? Courage is Fear that has said its prayers. // But sometimes it is too difficult to find courage. But remember that all of us, at this your St. Mark’s family, are praying for each other. This is where courage and prayer speak to each other. Courage and prayers meet and knit together in this community./ When we are in so much pain that we ourselves can no longer say our prayers,/ others are saying them for us./
And so, my WOOLLY friends,/ it seems this ancient, dusty metaphor of the Good Shepherd is very much a part of us, gifted to us from our heritage. Perhaps it IS such a timeless metaphor because it does not have the baggage of all our other present-day images. /The coronavirus, our enemy,/ has given us the gift of time. While we separate ourselves from each other, may we with all our might, use this time to put ourselves into position to hear more clearly the voice of that Good Shepherd. This voice may not be in complete sentences./ It may be silence that moves the heart. It may be a song, a messy diaper, a teenager that we haven’t been able to talk with for some time,/ a family member who keeps calling, a flute, a bird call, a hungry family at the food pantry, a phone call, a text, an email, food to our neighbor. The Good Shepherd, the Good Guide, the Good Listener, the Good Nurturer, now invites us to allow the Good Shepherd to be by our side, to care for us, to love us,/ today/ and for all our days./ The Good Shepherd is reminding us and our children that we all have been anointed with holy oil at our baptism, that the cup of love from the Good Shepherd is running over with goodness and mercy and love,/ and that we will live in the House of God forever.
Barbara Brown Taylor, “the Shepherd’s Flute” in Bread of Angels , pp.80-84.
Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Voice of the Shepherd” in The Preaching Life, pp. 140- 146.
Joanna. joannaseibert.com