Under the Shepherd's Care
a sermon based on Psalm 23
by Dr. David Rogne

A popular novel some years ago was one entitled "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit". It told the story of Tom, a typical young salesman, goaded on by his employer, pressured by competition, consumed by his own lust for money and power. He drove himself like a machine, senseless of what his pursuit of success was costing him. One day he took stock of himself, faced the fact that he was driven in the attainment of his goals, and he determined that, if he wanted to recover his sanity and hold his family together, he would have to revise his goals.

Every one of us finds our self in that grey flannel suit at one time or another. If we want to recover our balance, we have to refuse to be driven and choose to be led. Jack Glenn, pastor of a church in Illinois, tells of a lesson he learned a few of Christmases ago. He was interested in getting a genuine shepherd staff to replace the bent electrical-conduit one that he had.  He felt that it didn't carry much authenticity in his church's Christmas processional. He asked an Illinois sheep rancher where he might find one. The rancher told him he probably wouldn't find one. "You must remember," he said, "that in the East the sheep are led; in the West they are driven." In the Bible the good shepherd leads rather than drives. Leading is done out of love; driving comes from desperation

The Twenty-third Psalm, which depicts God as a good shepherd, is probably the best loved passage in the English Bible. Perhaps the reason for its popularity is that people like ourselves, who know what it is to feel driven, find in it, not the picture of a God who is behind us, goading us forward, but rather, the picture of a good shepherd who comforts, rescues and restores; one who is out front, watching and leading the way. If we could come to see God as involved in all our experiences, as the Psalmist did, our own attitudes would be far more positive. The basic attitude that controls the author's whole outlook on life is that he has a personal relationship with God. "The Lord is my shepherd," he writes. Having stated that, he then goes on to explain what it means to him that God is his shepherd. Let us see if his experiences can help us to be as hopeful about life as he is.

The first thing he does is to credit God with providing for his most basic needs. In a very optimistic statement he declares, "I shall not be in want." One could take exception to that and ask whether he is saying that all who decide to follow God will really have all their needs met. Was the Psalmist so blind that he never saw the righteous go hungry or good people go without clothing? I do not think the Psalmist was unaware of these things. David, the presumed author of this Psalm, was often hungry and without lodging when he was being pursued by King Saul. What he is describing here is an attitude of trust and confidence which will take a person through such difficulties with optimism. “To be in want” is a concept that is relative to one's expectations. When I go back to the old neighborhood in which I grew up, I become aware that I came from a poor neighborhood, but I didn't know then that it was a poor neighborhood. When I was going to seminary, my wife and I were probably as poor as people on welfare, but we didn't think of ourselves in those terms; we were simply temporarily doing without. Contentment is a state of mind, not necessarily related to the way in which other people see our situations. The person who is convinced of the goodness of God still has reason to be optimistic, even when times are difficult. Contentment is a gift from God, and those who have it do not feel that they are in want.

The author also sees rest as a gift "(God) makes me lie down in green pastures," he says. If we don't rest as we should, it affects our whole outlook. A woman complained to her pastor "I needed your advice on something yesterday, but when I phoned you weren't in. "I'm sorry," said the pastor, "but yesterday was my day off." "A day off?" she sniffed, "you know, the devil never takes a day off." "That's true," said the pastor, "and if I didn't have a day off I'd be just like him."

Life calls for balance between rest and activity. A friend tells how the full meaning of this Psalm was brought home to him. One morning has he was dressing he felt a sharp pain in his back. When it didn't go away, he went to see his doctor, who put him in the hospital. Like most busy people, he was pretty unhappy with what he considered to be a waste of time. His calendar was full of good activities, but his doctor told him to cancel all his appointments for a month. As he lay there, frustrated by inactivity, a minister friend came to call on him, and said, "Now, Charley, you are going to learn the meaning of "He makes me lie down."' As he thought about it, it occurred to him that sometimes God puts us on our backs in order to give us a chance to look up. If we do not willingly take a rest when we should, then weariness or illness may compel us to, and we discover that in that rest we find renewal of our spirits.

In a similar vein, the author sees quietness as something God provides. The other day I was stopped at a red light, waiting for the signal to change, when I felt my car begin to shake. A pickup truck with several young people in it had pulled up next to me with its high-powered sound system turned up to the max, belching out base vibrations that moved the earth. It occurred to me that that is one of the characteristics of our time: at all cost flee from silence and the opportunity for reflection which quietness engenders.

A great pianist was once asked by an ardent admirer "How do you handle the notes as well as you do?" The artist answered: "The notes I handle no better than many pianists, but the pauses between the notes - ah! That is where the art lies." In life, too, it is the quiet places that contribute meaning. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead defined religion as what one does with his solitude. Before that, the Psalmist, speaking for God, said: "Be still, and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10)

In these ways, the Psalmist says, God restores his soul. Unfortunately, even on vacation some of us do not receive the necessary renewal. One ranger at the Grand Tetons described rather dolefully the all-too-typical vacationer who comes driving up in his camper, altogether oblivious of the beauty surrounding him, and asks, "What is there to do around here?" Last year some of our family and friends were vacationing at Mammoth Lakes in the Sierras. One day we took a hike around the Devil's Post piles and then lay down in a lush meadow with our feet dangling in an ice cold stream. Lying there in the warm sun, watching great whipped clouds float overhead, one of the persons borrowed a line from a commercial and said rather contentedly, "It don't get no better than this," Such moments restore the soul, and as far as the Psalmist is concerned, God has created them.

The second thing the Psalmist shares with us is that the Lord is a shepherd who guides. "He leads me in right paths”, says the author. A while back I was driving along Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood when I saw an older run-down looking building that had written on it the rather presumptuous words: "The crossroads of the world." I am sure that many people have come to Hollywood hoping to find a road that would take them to fame and fortune, but I couldn't help but wonder how many of them set out on a road that looked promising at first, only to discover that it led to some very disappointing destination. A traveler in ancient Greece had lost his way, and seeking to find it, asked directions of a man by the roadside, who turned out to be Socrates. "How can I reach Mount Olympus?" asked the traveler. Socrates is said to have replied, "Just make sure that every step you take goes in that direction."  When we set out on a path, it is helpful to have a guide we can fix our eyes on, who will lead us to our destination. For the Christian, that guide is Jesus.

Though the Psalmist is confident of God's guidance, he is also realistic. He acknowledges that his path will pass through dark places, but he believes that God is with him. Our thoughts most frequently go to death when hearing this because our King James Bible uses the phrase, "the valley of the shadow of death." The Hebrew text, however, refers simply to “the darkest valley” meaning any of those sorrow-producing experiences which make the sun seem to set on our lives. A disheartened veteran, all but washed out by life, confessed that he didn't know what he believed, but "I know I don't believe all that 'God is love' stuff," he said. He recounted how he had been in two wars, hadn't been able to find a job for eighteen months, and had seen his wife die of cancer. "Now," he said, “I’m waiting for the nuclear bomb to fall.” I don’t think we can argue with such expressions of helplessness. The loving thing is to listen to them, to try to feel what they are feeling and to demonstrate love in whatever way we can.

The Psalmist is not saying that these things don't happen to people. He is simply giving his testimony that, because he feels God is with him, these negative experiences have lost their power to enslave him in fear. In New York City and in other urban areas, a group of young people has sprung up who call themselves "Guardian Angels." They wear red berets and travel in groups of eight so they are not likely to be out-numbered. Their purpose is to protect people, especially the elderly, from hoodlums and robbers in subways, busses and public places. They cannot guarantee protection, but their presence can give peace of mind to the vulnerable, so that the elderly do not have to stay indoors imprisoned by fear. The Psalmist is saying that, while there are no guarantees of immunity from danger, he has found the assurance of God's nearness sufficient to keep him going.

The Psalmist continues his work by changing slightly his metaphor for God from shepherd to oriental host, perhaps to the idea of a Bedouin sheik. Such people still exist in Palestine. I have seen their large black tents out on the arid desert, offering protection from the blazing sun. It is part of the tradition of hospitality in the Near East that if a person attaches himself to the tent of a host, even by so limited an act as touching a tent-rope, the host becomes responsible for that person's sustenance and protection for as long as the guest chooses to stay. Even if the guest is being pursued by enemies, they can only sit around and watch while the one whom they pursued is entertained in their sight.  So the author writes of God, "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil."  In other words, “You pour healing oil on my wounds and scratches.”

Not only is the Psalmist filled with gratitude for God's past providence, he is convinced now that such loving concern will continue. Whether one is hopeful or trustful is often the result of experiences they have had in the past. Immediately following World War II the Allied Armies gathered up many hungry, homeless children and placed them in large camps. The children were abundantly fed and cared for, however, at night many of them did not sleep well. They seemed restless and afraid. It was discovered that they feared that there would be nothing to eat the next day. A psychologist prescribed that after the children were put to bed, each one should receive a slice of bread to hold. It was not to be eaten. It was just to be held. The results were amazing. The children would go to sleep, subconsciously feeling that there would be something to eat in the morning. Little by little, they developed a renewed trust in life based on personal experience.

I have discovered that a few nice words offered at a funeral do not suddenly give a survivor faith or a sense of trust in God. That kind of trust is built up before hand out of countless lesser experiences that enable a person to look hopefully toward the future. In times of crisis we cannot be injected with faith, we must draw on what is already there. That is what the Psalmist is doing as he affirms out of his past experience: "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life."

Finally the Psalmist comes face to face with his own mortality, and here, too, he finds reason to be hopeful: "I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."  For the person who trusts in God, even death is gain. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who has written so much on the subject of dying, tells how a little eight-year-old boy, dying with an inoperable brain tumor, drew pictures telling what he was going through as he approached death. In an early picture, a tiny figure representing the boy himself is trying to kill a huge, threatening person, with only an ineffectual little popgun. The big figure, death, stands between the little person and a house. The boy was saying that he couldn't get home. In the boy's next picture, death is represented by a huge military tank, about to crush a little person who futilely waves a stop sign. The last picture he drew before he died was an outline of a flying bird. The tip of the upper wing was colored bright yellow, as if reaching up into the sunlight. And the boy, through a telling lapse of speech, confirmed his identification with the peaceful, free-flying bird, for he pointed to the splash of color and said, "And there you see the bird going home, and there is a little bit of sunshine on my wing." He was on his way home. Through the words of this beautiful Psalm, the Psalmist has offered his testimony to God's loving care. Today we are being invited to make that testimony our own.