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The shepherd is a persistent image in the Bible, an image that helps us understand who God is. God is a shepherd. "He himself has made us, and we are his," sings the psalmist. "We are his people and the sheep of his hand." (Psalm. 100) "I myself will search for my sheep and look after them," says the Sovereign Lord. "As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock, so will I look after my sheep. And I will rescue them, and gather them from all the distant places where they have scattered." (Ezekiel 34:11-13) And, of course, there is the great psalm of David, the best-known of all: But some things are so familiar, we have heard them so often, that we no longer really hear them.The Lord is my shepherd; I suspect that most of you here this morning are like me -- that you don't know diddly-squat about sheep or shepherds. But we do have images of shepherds. The image of a shepherd I grew up with comes from movies about Scotland. He is, of course, wearing tweeds. He is smoking a pipe and looks like Bing Crosby. And he has a dog, who runs back and forth barking at the sheep. The dog's job is to turn wayward sheep back toward the flock to keep them from straying, or to drive them all ahead of him toward their destination. But in the lands of the Bible, in the days of David and Jesus, it was different. Most people in those places and in those times, did know something about sheep and shepherds, and what they knew was very different from the image I grew up with. The shepherd in the Bible does not use dogs to drive sheep from behind. The shepherd in the Bible walks ahead of the sheep. And he doesn't wear tweeds. He wears the dirty clothes of hard work, and he counts on his sheep to follow the tune he whistles or plays, or to follow the song he sings. The shepherd in the Bible counts on his sheep to follow him because they know who he is, because they know his voice, his whistle or tune. When he was walking in the Temple precincts that day, Jesus knew all these things about shepherds, and he knew that the everyone else knew them, too. And when the people asked him, "How long are you going to keep us in suspense, Jesus? Tell us plainly: Are you the Messiah?" Jesus replied, "I have told you. The works I do in my Father's name speak for me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me because they know my voice. And I give them eternal life, and they will never perish." The evangelist is telling us that Jesus is shepherd the way God is shepherd. In fact, John says, Jesus the "Good Shepherd" and God the "Good Shepherd" are one, the shepherd who does not drive his sheep but who calls them to himself, and who leads them with his voice and through his deeds. That's why William Temple translates the phrase, "the Good Shepherd," the way he translates it. Temple translates this phrase as "the Shepherd, the Beautiful One." Not as "the Good Shepherd," but as "the Beautiful Shepherd." And that's because the Greek word for "good" here is not the word agathos, but the word kalos. Agathos would speak of the shepherd as good in the sense of righteous, or maybe efficient. An agathos shepherd really knows how to do his job, and how to do it the right way. An agathos shepherd really knows how to round 'em up and fence 'em in. But kalos speaks of the shepherd as good in the sense of lovely, or attractive, or gracious, or winsome, or beautiful. The Good Shepherd, the kalos Shepherd, the Shepherd, the Beautiful One, the Gracious, Shepherd, the Winsome Shepherd, the Good Shepherd that Jesus is and that God is, is not one who drives the sheep from behind. The kalos shepherd is one who calls his sheep from out ahead of them and who wins them to himself. And they follow him because he's attractive to them, because they know him and trust him. They follow because his rod and staff have always cleared the wolves from their paths and because, always before, he has led them to places where they could graze and drink safely and feel protected and safe. And therefore, even if the valley he is leading them through is as dark as death itself, the sheep follow because the shepherd is with them and is himself leading them through it, not driving them into it, and because his rod and staff guide and strengthen them. It is a rare funeral when the Twenty-third Psalm is not invited to speak a word over the grave, and this is not just because everyone knows it by heart. It's because this psalm dares to speak about real life and real death, even about darkness and about the end. But even as it speaks about a valley as dark as death itself, it names that valley as a place where the Good Shepherd, the Beautiful, Winsome Shepherd, is walking with us to comfort and strengthen. Whenever life forces us into some dry desert or tosses us about on some tempestuous sea, or whenever we find ourselves wandering about aimlessly in the wilderness, this psalm speaks an appropriate word. It reminds us that green valleys and still waters lie ahead, where God will restore us. For the Shepherd, the Beautiful One, you see, is already there ahead of us. He's up in front, not back behind. The Shepherd is making the journey with us. The Twenty-third Psalm speaks to us in a special way at troubled times because it dares to call the valley by name and to call us through that valley to the other side, where the Good Shepherd has already gone. This is why John's Good Shepherd image comes to us as Easter Gospel. It's about Jesus after the Resurrection, not just a report from John about something Jesus once said when he was teaching his disciples. The Good Shepherd is the Shepherd who has himself walked through the valley of the shadow of death and has emerged victorious on the other side, emerged in the presence of God, bringing the goodness and mercy of God with him. After Good Friday, we disciples had pretty much lost our taste for discipleship. The world had had its way with Jesus. The world had treated him as the world treats all prophets; it nailed him to a cross and sealed him in a tomb. And now on the evening of Easter Day we find ourselves alone, "like sheep without a shepherd." So fearful are we that we have locked ourselves up in a room. "It was a good campaign while it lasted," someone says. "We almost got him elected Messiah. But what can you do? Can't fight City Hall. Caesar had the guns. What can you do?" The table is prepared for a meal, but no one feels much like eating at our funeral meal for Jesus. Then there is a noise outside the door. "Who's there?" someone shouts. He goes to the door and stares into the darkness, words are exchanged, and then he throws open the door and calls to the rest of us, "We're gonna' need more wine! Turn up the music. Set another place at the table!" And when we see him, we remember the promise of David's psalm: "Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Rabbi Harold Kushner tells us that this is the way the disciples would have heard the Twenty-third Psalm on that night of the Resurrection, because they would have heard it in Hebrew. And in Hebrew, the word the King James Bible translates as "follow" is really a much stronger verb which means "to pursue." And the disciples would have known that there is one time when God the Shepherd, the Beautiful One, does follows his sheep, and that is when he's pursuing them because they are lost. Coming to us as he does on this side of the Cross, on this side of the Resurrection, coming to us as he came to the disciples that evening of Easter Day, coming to us when we are locked up in fear or dismay, coming to us at this time of moral confusion and cultural disintegration and of terror stalking the streets at home and abroad, coming to us as he does on this side of the Cross and the grave, the Good Shepherd bids us not to fear. He bids us speak truth to power just as he spoke truth to Caiaphas and Herod and Pilate in the days of their terror and disintegration and confusion and death, because he has himself been through the dark valley and can tell us, in truth, that the goodness and mercy of God shall surely pursue us even there. Even here. The pursuing Shepherd -- that's the image that speaks to us when we are locked up behind closed doors in fear on the evening of Easter Day after Herod and Pilate have had their way on Good Friday. The pursuing Shepherd -- that's the image Jesus himself tells us about, the Shepherd who leaves ninety-nine safe, contented sheep where they are and who goes out into the wilderness to search for the one sheep who is lost. It's a pursuing Shepherd who hunts for his lost sheep until he finds him. And then he grabs him and says, "Gotcha, you little rascal!" And then he lifts us on his shoulders, and breathlessly he returns us to the fold, saying, "Let's have a party! Because I've found the one who was lost!" It's this experience of God as breathless Goodness and Mercy who pursue us out to our lostness -- this experience of an active, pursuing Shepherd -- that made the Good Shepherd the predominant image of Jesus for at least the first six hundred years of Christian art, Jesus with the lamb over his shoulders. This is Goodness and Mercy whom the disciples experienced when they were locked up that night of the Resurrection, unable to breath because of their fear -- not just an experience of dear old predictable Goodness, with Mercy in tow, trudging up a hill behind them, but the experience of a pursuing Goodness and Mercy who had sought them out in their wilderness, the experience of a breathless Goodness and Mercy who spends his breath to breathe life into them again, the experience of a living Goodness and Mercy who led them to living waters and wiped away every tear from their eyes. This Shepherd, the Beautiful One, who leads us by his winsome voice and comforting presence and who is always out seeking, pursuing, those who are lost, this Shepherd is the final word of David's psalm. We wander into dark alleys or twisting paths, we find ourselves in some white-water rapids we should never have gotten into, like sheep without a shepherd who cannot swim a stroke and who will surely drown, and we find that God has already run ahead of us and is waiting for us at the next bend in the river. He pursues us, even into the valley of darkness: "Gotcha!" he says. "Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever." Goodness? The word has many meanings in the Old Testament. "Goodness" names all those benefits of the presence of God. It is the goodness of knowing that even in the dark valley God stands with us so that fear does not have the final word. And "Mercy?" Mercy's name is hesed, the ever-present, steadfast love of God. Mercy's names are kindness and faithfulness, the kind faithfulness of God, who is faithful to us even when we are not faithful to him. That's who is pursuing us, the psalmist says, Goodness and Mercy, the steadfast kindness and the strengthening presence of God. Every day of our lives. Always in person. Rabbi Kushner tells about a woman who was sitting and looking out her office window when a co-worker walked by and asked her if she like to go for a cup of coffee. "The woman thought for a moment, and then said, 'Sure.' Over coffee, the woman told her friend, 'I have to tell you what your invitation meant to me. Two days ago, my long-time boyfriend left me, telling me on the way out all the things that were wrong with me. I was devastated. I was sure no one would ever love me again. When you saw me staring out the window a few minutes ago, I was trying to summon the courage, or maybe it wouldn't be courage, to open it and jump out, taking my life because I felt so alone. Your invitation to join you for coffee called me back to life. It said to me that there are still people in the world who care about me. I don't know how to thank you.'" (The Lord is My Shepherd, p. 105) Then there was the old man and his nurse. They knew him around town as a mean old man. Resentful. Bitter. Some said that his bitterness was justified. His beloved wife had died giving birth to their only child. The child herself died shortly afterwards from complications of the birth. "He has reason to be bitter," they said in the town. Never went to church. "Where was God when his wife and daughter died?" he asked. Never had anything to do with anyone after that. And when, in his sixties, he was taken to the hospital to die, no one visited, no flowers were sent. He went there to die alone. There was the nurse, of course. Well, she wasn't actually a nurse yet, just a student nurse, in training. She didn't yet know everything they teach you in nursing school about the necessity for detachment, the necessity of keeping a professional distance from your patients. She befriended the old man. It had been so long since he'd had a friend that he didn't know how to act with one. "Go away," he said. "Leave me alone." She would smile and try to coax him to eat his jello. At night, she would tuck him in. "Don't need nobody to help me," he would growl. Soon, he grew so weak that he didn't have the strength to resist her kindness. And late one night, after her duties were over, she pulled up a chair and sat by his bed and sang to him as she held his rough, old hand. He looked up at her in the dim light, and he wondered if what he saw was the face of a little one he had never gotten to see as an adult. A tear formed in his eye when she kissed him good night, and for the first time in forty years, he whispered, "God bless you." And as she left the room, two others remained. Goodness and Mercy were their names, Goodness and Mercy who whispered softly in the old man's ear the last word he would hear before slipping away into the dark valley. "Gotcha," he heard. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. |