[Sermon preached on 15 April 2018, 2nd Sunday after Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday) / 3rd year, ELCF Lectionary]
We all have the need to think and talk about God in a more or less concrete way. Considering that God is a mystery deeper than the deepest ocean and vaster than the universe, that is quite a challenge, to say the least. And honestly speaking, it may not be very helpful to philosophize about aspects of God that go far beyond human understanding.
The Bible provides us with metaphors or images of God that have concrete meaning for us and that apply to God as he appears to us and reveals himself to us, and as we relate to him. For example, God is described as creator, as king, as judge, and as father. The metaphor used also defines where we stand in relation to God: as creature, as subject, as defendant, and as child.
Different metaphors may appeal to us in different times of our lives and in different situations. That is what we see people doing in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
King David used many metaphors to describe his understanding of God and his relationship with him. In many of his Psalms he says, “The Lord is my …”—and then comes a metaphor:
The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer.
The Lord is my light and my salvation.
The Lord is my strength and my shield.
God is my help.
God is my King.
And here in Psalm 23:
The Lord is my Shepherd.
Where did David get these metaphors? And what did he want to express about his relationship with God through these metaphors?
First, he had been taught from early childhood about who God is and what God had done. Even though there was no Holy Scripture in writing, the great narrative of God and his people Israel was taught in homes, in public meetings, in the evenings around the camp fire, and during the great festivals. Fathers told their children how God called Abraham and promised to make him a great nation. They told about Moses, who led Israel out of Egypt, out of slavery, to wander in the wilderness for forty years and then, under the leadership of Joshua, to conquer the Promised Land. They told about the times of the judges, when God gave his people over to their enemies when they had disobeyed him, but delivered them again when they turned back to their God. That teaching made up the framework for what David knew about God.
Secondly, David had quite some personal experience with God. As a young teenager, he had taken care of the sheep of his father’s flock. He had been a good shepherd to them, leading them to places where they were safe and had plenty to eat and drink. At night, he had looked at the starry sky in amazement, and composed songs like Psalm 8:
Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
He had mountain-top experiences with God. One of them was the moment when he was chosen and anointed to become king of Israel. Sometime later, God empowered him to fight and kill the giant Philistine warrior Goliath. And after quite some years, David rose to the throne to become one of the mightiest rulers in the Middle-East.
But he also had his share of deep-and-dark valley experiences. For years he was haunted and pursued by king Saul, who was determined to kill David. Once he became king, David had to fight enemies around him and enemies from within his kingdom—and even from within his family.
All these experiences shaped how David felt about God—how he saw him.
And thirdly, there were hopes and expectations. There were God’s promises to Abraham to make Israel into a great nation that would be a blessing to the whole world. And there were many personal promises that David had received from God. And last but not least, God had promised that his throne would be established forever and that one of his descendants would sit on it and rule Israel as a mighty and independent nation.
In Psalm 23, this teaching, these experiences, and these hopes and expectations boil down to two distinct metaphors. First, in the verses 1–4, he describes God as a Shepherd. And then in verse 5, the image changes—almost unnoticeably—into that of God as a Host.
Perhaps these two metaphors describe two different stages in the life of David: the time before and during his reign as king of Israel. Or maybe David thought of life on earth and life after death. That is how we often read and understand this Psalm today. That is why it is used so often in funerals. Because it contrasts the plight of this life with the blessing of heaven.
It does not really matter which of the two views we support, or perhaps a third one. The point is that David uses these two metaphors to describe the reality of life with God. They speak about his relationship with God. They are not so much the answer to the question: “What or who is God?” They don’t define him. Rather they answer the question: “What or who is God to you?” They define the relationship between God and David.
There are three points in this Psalm, that I would like to draw your attention to. The first comes right in the opening line: “The LORD is my Shepherd.”
David uses the name that God gave to Moses in the burning bush: “YHWH” or Jehovah. The name means: “I AM”. It is translated as “the Lord” because God’s actual name was considered so holy that, when reading the Scriptures, the Jews would replace the name with Adonai, which means Lord.
And what does he say about his relationship to this God of Israel? “He is my Shepherd.” Many times in the Old Testament, God is described as the Shepherd of his people Israel. They are his flock, so to say. But David does not say: “The Lord is our Shepherd” but “my Shepherd”. He takes God very personally, so to say. In the original Hebrew poetry, it sounds like this: “Yahweh Ro’–i–, lo echsar.” In this line the stress is on the fourth syllable: “my”. David wants to emphasize that he is not just one of the flock. He has a personal one-to-one relationship with God.
It is easy to explain this individualistic streak. After all, David was king of Israel, not just an Israelite. He had a special position as God’s chosen and anointed representative—“a man after God’s own heart”. As a king he was in a sense the shepherd of Israel. So that should qualify him to make a personal statement like this and single himself out from the rest of the flock.
But that is not the whole truth. In the New Testament—in John 10—Jesus, the Son of God, calls himself the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd knows each and every sheep of his flock by name. He knows his sheep personally, and the sheep know his voice and listen when their name is called out. That was a reality in sheep farming in those days, before the industrialization of sheep farming and the introduction of ear tags with barcodes. It is still a reality in many parts of the world.
Jesus wants us to recognize him both as our Shepherd and as my Shepherd. We should not become so individualistic in our faith as to ignore the rest of the flock. As Christians we are called into a community of believers, into the family of God, into the kingdom of heaven. We belong together. But that does not give us an excuse to hide anonymously in the flock, or to delegate our Christian faith and calling to the church as a community or institution. Jesus wants to have a personal relationship with each one of us. Each and every one of us counts. Jesus is your Shepherd and mine. I am not his only sheep, but he is my only Shepherd.
The second point in this psalm is that life is a journey. Psalm 23 is a psalm of comfort and assurance. It looks like it promises an easy and lazy life of comfort and abundance for the sheep of God’s flock. But that’s not what David is saying here. The tense of the verbs used in the verses 1–4 do not express a matter-of-fact statement of what life is like every day. Rather, they express purpose or assurance. They look into the future and see where the Lord is leading. Older translations said: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” That understanding turns the picture into a very realistic one. Those of you, who know sheep farming in an African or Middle East context, will have no trouble seeing this.
In Israel the dry season can be fairly long and hot. When I was in Israel in October 2009, it had not been raining for many months. Much of the countryside was dried out completely. Shepherds had to lead their flocks over long distances through rough places to bring them to plains with fresh water and green grass. There were dangerous stretches on the way, and shepherds had to be careful in choosing the right path. There were dark valleys that provided relatively safe passage through dangerous mountain ridges. But for sheep to be ready to enter the darkness, the shepherd had to go in front. They would trust the route only, if the shepherd whose voice they knew was going ahead of them.
Often, life reminds us more of dried out plains with virtually nothing to eat than of green pastures and refreshing streams of water. Often, we feel as if we live in deep darkness rather than bright daylight. Faith in God does not make life any easier. Following the Good Shepherd does not solve our problems once and for all. But what we do know is that when we follow Christ, we are going the right path. We are moving in the right direction. Our future will be one of abundance and peace. God’s goodness and love will pursue us as we pursue the kingdom of God and his righteousness. It is worth the troublesome journey, because we trust God for bringing us to that perfect destination, where we will be guests of honor of God the Mighty Host.
And that brings us to our third point. Looking at the psalm as Hebrew poetry, we find that the structure is like a mountain. It’s climax is not, as we often think, in the closing verses, even though they promise us a happy ending. The climax is right in the middle. The center phrase—the message which David wants to leave us with—is in verse 4: “You are with me.” It is great to know that we are on a journey towards a bright and glorious future, where there will be no tears, or pain, or grief, or lack of the essentials. But already now—as we journey over dry and miserable plains and through deep and dark valleys—God is with us. As long as we follow the Shepherd, we are not alone.
We can find a powerful illustration of what this means in Exodus 33. The people of Israel are on their way from Egypt to the promised Land through the wilderness. God is shepherding his flock through his servant Moses. Pretty much the same picture that the first part of Psalm 23 sketches for us. But the people are rebellious and turn against God and Moses. Moses is meeting with God on the holy mountain to receive the covenant tablets with the Ten Commandments. But in the meantime, the people down in the valley force his brother Aaron to make a golden calf for them, so they can worship their god in their own way. And then God gets really angry. But what he says is actually quite amazing.
God could have threatened to destroy his people. In fact, he is so furious that it might very well happen, if they are not careful. But, God says, I allow you to go to the Promised Land and conquer it. But… I will not go with you. I have had enough.
And how does Moses react? He says: No way! If you don’t come with us, there is no way we could go and conquer the land. There is no joy, no fulfillment in moving to the Promised Land, if we must live there without you. And so Moses twists God’s arm, so to say, in order to make him come with his people after all.
If the Shepherd of Israel had left his people, they would have never made it to the Promised Land. They would have had no chance of conquering the fortified cities and drive out or destroy the original tribes of Canaan. The promises given to Abraham would come true only, if the people followed their Great Shepherd in obedience.
In the same way, if we don’t follow God’s guidance in our lives, if we don’t listen to his voice and stay close to him, we may well find ourselves separated from him, and wandering in the wilderness of life without knowing where to go: a lost sheep. Only if we do follow, and if we do listen to his voice, we can be assured of his presence with us. And when he is with us, we are safe whatever the circumstances.
David was not much of a saint. He did many things that caused God great distress. But God loved him. David was a man after God’s heart, so the Bible says. And that is why God never left him.
We may not be saints either. There are many things in our lives, too, that make God sad. We should repent of those and seek God’s forgiveness and reconciliation. God gave Israel the promise: “Return to me, and I will return to you.” That same promise and that same call to repentance God addresses to us through Jesus, the Good Shepherd. If we answer that call and claim that promise, we can have that same assurance that David had: “You are with me.”
Amen.
