The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
May 3, 2009

4 Easter – B
Acts 4:23-37
Psalm 23
1 John 3:1-8
John 10:11-16

The Fourth Sunday of Easter is often called Good Shepherd Sunday. The readings include the Good Shepherd passage from John’s Gospel and the Twenty-third Psalm.

The shepherd is a strong and persistent image in the Bible, an image that can help us understand something about what God is like.

“He himself has made us, and we are his,” sings the psalmist, ”we are his people and the sheep of his hand.” (Psalm. 100)

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. 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 David’s best-known of all:


The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul;
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
for his Name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence
of mine enemies;
thou anointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

But some things are so familiar, we have heard them so many times, that we no longer really listen to them, so let’s explore Psalm 23 a little today to see what we hear this morning.

I suspect that most of you here today are like me – that you don’t know diddly-squat about sheep or shepherds. But we do have images of sheep and shepherds. The image I grew up with comes from movies set in Montana or Scotland. The shepherd, of course, is wearing tweeds. And he has a dog, who goes back and forth barking at the sheep. The dog’s job is to turn straying sheep back toward the flock, to keep them from wandering away, 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 then, and in that place, did know something about sheep and shepherds, and shepherding then, I am told, was very different from the image I grew up with. The shepherd in the Bible does not use dogs to drive sheep from behind. Nor does he wear tweeds. The shepherd in the Bible walks ahead of the sheep, wearing the dirty clothes of hard work, and he counts on his sheep to follow the tune he plays on his pipe or the song or whistle on his lips.

The shepherd in the Bible counts on his sheep to follow him because the sheep know who the shepherd is, because they know his voice or whistle or tune. Shepherds in the land of the Bible in the days of David and Jesus led their sheep; they didn’t drive them.

And that’s why William Temple translates the phrase, “The Good Shepherd,” as “the Shepherd, the Beautiful One.” For Temple, Jesus is “the Beautiful Shepherd.” And that’s because the Greek word for “good” here is not the more usual word, agathos, but kalos. Agathos would describe the shepherd as good as in efficient, or maybe as righteous, as one who really knows how to round up sheep and lock ‘em in.

But kalos names the shepherd good as in lovely, or attractive, or gracious, or winsome, or beautiful. The kalos Shepherd, the Winsome Shepherd, the Beautiful One, does not drive his sheep from behind; the kalos shepherd wins his sheep from out ahead of them and draws them to himself. They follow him because he’s attractive to them, because they know his voice, because he plays a lovely tune, 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 abundantly and in safety.

Therefore, even if the valley he is leading them through is as dark as death itself, the sheep follow, because their shepherd is with them and is himself leading them through it, not driving them into it, and his rod and staff guide and strengthen them.

It is a rare funeral where the Twenty-third psalm is not invited to speak a word over the grave, and that’s 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 the end. It dares to speak about a valley as dark as death itself, and it names that dark valley as a place where the Good Shepherd, the Beautiful, Gracious Shepherd, comforts and strengthens us.

The Twenty-third Psalm and John’s passage about Jesus as the Good Shepherd come to us as Easter readings. They appear here because they are meant to speak a word about Jesus after the Crucifixion and Resurrection. The Good Shepherd is the Shepherd who has already walked through the valley of the shadow of death and has emerged victorious on the other side, emerged in the presence of God with goodness and mercy following him.

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After Friday, we disciples had lost our taste for following, 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 then we found ourselves alone, ”like sheep without a shepherd.” So fearful were we that we locked ourselves up in a room. “It was a good campaign while it lasted,” someone said. “We almost got him elected Messiah. But what can you do? Can’t fight City Hall. Caesar had the money and the guns. What can you do?”

The table was prepared for a meal, but no one felt much like eating at our funeral meal for Jesus. Then there was a knock at the door. “Who's there?” someone shouted. He went to the door and stared into the darkness. Words were exchanged. And then he threw open the door and called to the rest of us, ”We’re gonna’ need more wine! Set another place at the table!”

Whenever we are locked up in fear, whenever life forces us into some dry desert or tosses us about in some kind of rage, or whenever we find ourselves wandering about aimlessly in life, this psalm speaks an appropriate word. It reminds us that green valleys and still waters lie ahead, and therefore it restores our souls. For the Shepherd, the Beautiful One, you see, is already there, ahead of us. He’s up in front, not back behind. The Shepherd has already made the journey. 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 led the way.

Coming to us as he does on this side of the Cross, on this side of the Resurrection, as he came to the disciples that Easter night; coming to us when we are locked up in fear or dismay; coming to us at this time of economic disintegration at home and political uncertainty and all kinds of disintegration abroad; coming to us as he does on this side of the Cross and the grave, the Winsome Shepherd bids us not to fear, because he has himself been through the dark valley and can tell us, in truth, that goodness and mercy shall surely follow us even there. Even here today.

The Twenty-third Psalm speaks to us even at the hour of our death, and at the hour of the deaths of those we love. It can speak to us when all sorts of bad things happen to good people, because the Shepherd, the Beautiful One, who has preceded us into the shadow of that valley calls us through it, bringing mercy and goodness with him. That’s comfort. That’s strength.

Consider particularly the final verse of the psalm, for there we find that goodness and mercy, and the table the shepherd has set for us, are on the other side of the dark valley.

Patrick Miller, in his commentary on the Twenty-third Psalm, notes that the Hebrew word the King James Bible translates as “follow” in this final verse can also be translated as The Jerusalem Bible translates it – not as “follow,” but as “pursue.” “Surely goodness and mercy will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

The promise and the hope of the psalmist is of life regardless of circumstance. “Pursue” gives an image of a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine safe, contented sheep where they are for a bit, while he goes off to find just one stupid sheep who has strayed from the path. It’s a pursuing shepherd who hunts a lost sheep down in some side canyon and grabs him, and says, “Gotcha, you little rascal!” and then lifts that sheep over his shoulder and breathlessly returns to the others, saying, ”Let’s celebrate! Because I’ve found the one who was lost!” It’s a pursuing shepherd who tells us that he has other sheep who are not of this fold which he must find and lead home as well.

It’s this experience of God as an active, pursuing Shepherd that made The Good Shepherd the predominant means of depicting Jesus for at least the first six hundred years of Christian art – Jesus with the lamb over his shoulder, Jesus whose goodness and mercy precedes us through the valley and prepares the table for us and anoints our heads like those of kings.

“Surely, goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.” This is the faith of one who knows God to be good and merciful. Goodness? The word has many meanings in the Old Testament. Goodness names all those benefits of the presence of God regardless of circumstance. And Mercy? Mercy’s Old Testament name is hesed, steadfast love, kindness, the faithfulness of God, even when we are not faithful. That’s who is pursuing us, the psalmist says – Goodness and Mercy – and the name of Goodness and Mercy in the New Testament is Jesus, the steadfast kindness and the strengthening presence of God. It is Goodness and Mercy himself who stands with us, even pursues us, through the dark valley, so that fear does not have the final word.

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They knew him 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 much 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 had 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, maybe fifty 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!”

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.