“The Lord Is My Shepherd”

A Lenten Devotion in Word and Song

 Text of Introduction and Meditations

 Introduction to the Service

If you were to ask a hundred ministers what they would say if they had only one sermon to preach, ninety-nine of them would likely respond, “I would say ‘God loves you.’”  That would be their likely response because that is the sum, the bottom line, of the Gospel:  that, whether we deserve it or not, whether we know it or not, whether we want it or not, God loves us each one, and loves us more than any of us could ever imagine. 

And if you were to ask a hundred Christians – ministers or otherwise – what one Scripture they would keep, if all other Scripture were taken away from them, many might say “John 3:16 – ‘God so loved the world….’”  But it’s my own pastoral experience that even more would say, “The twenty-third psalm, the ‘shepherd psalm;’” because it too speaks of God’s love; but it puts that love into an imagery that speaks to our hearts in a special way. 

It must have been an imagery that spoke to the heart of Jesus too.  Because, when we turn to John’s Gospel, we find Jesus talking about himself as shepherd.  Recalling Psalm 23, and indeed all of the Old Testament references to such a figure, Jesus boldly says, “I am the good shepherd.”  And ever since that day, when we Christians read even Old Testament references to Israel’s shepherd, we immediately understand that we are reading about God’s love in Jesus Christ. 

But our consideration of the “shepherd of our lives” today is no mere testamental comparison, no dry and lifeless academic exercise.  Rather, when we recall the shepherd of Israel, when we recall the “good shepherd” that Jesus said he was, we are, again, touching base with that understanding of God that may speak to our hearts more than any other image in the entire Bible; we are coming close to plumbing the very depths of our soul’s unspeakable and indescribable devotion to the One who made us and who continues to protect us – both in life and in death. 

“The Lord is my shepherd….”  “I am the good shepherd….”  In these two assertions, we are as close as we will ever get to fully describing the love-relationship that exists between the person of faith and his or her God. 

Today’s service of worship will center on that love-relationship with God, especially as we know it through Psalm twenty-three and the Gospel of John, chapter ten.  I trust that it will help focus our thoughts for the remainder of our 2008 Lenten journey – as we walk with Christ, the Good Shepherd, toward the cross. 

Toward the cross, where he, the shepherd, will take the place of the sheep, and offer his own self as a holy and acceptable sacrifice to God.

I. Meditation

God Supplies My Needs Completely

The Lord is my shepherd.  Note the emphasis:  the Lord is my shepherd.  The emphasis needs to be made, because there are shepherds and there are shepherds. 

On the one hand, there are the shepherds who are only hired hands, and who care foremost about their paycheck, while only secondarily about the sheep.  On the other hand, there are the shepherds who own the sheep, who live with the sheep, and whose every waking and sleeping thought is the sheep. 

Psalm twenty-three and John 10 both want to make it clear that God is the second kind of shepherd – the kind who so identifies with the sheep he leads that he knows their needs even before they know them; the kind who cares about them so much that he leaves nothing undone in providing for their care.

What is that kind of shepherd like?  Well, let’s put it into today’s jargon and say that Biblical talk about a “shepherd” is very much like our talk today about “leaders.”  And one of the best descriptions of a good and faithful leader I’ve ever run across was penned by the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower.  As “Ike” wrote,

In order to be a leader, a man must have followers.  And to have followers, a man must have their confidence.  Hence the supreme quality of a leader is unquestionable integrity.  Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, on a football field, in an army, or in an office.  If a man’s associates find him guilty of phoniness, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail.  His teachings and actions must square with each other.[1]

Our Shepherd is that kind of leader – the leader with integrity.  And not just the integrity of a few years, but the integrity of the whole of human history, and in particular of the whole of Biblical history.  From beginning to end of the Bible, we find God not only making promises, but keeping them too. We find God not only teaching – first via prophets and ultimately via Jesus – but we also find that God’s teachings do square with God’s actions. 

However, we scarcely need more than our own experience as evidence.  For, which one of us who is honest cannot say, “If not for the grace of God, life would be immensely lesser; but with God’s grace, I find an inexpressible fullness that has kept me going, and that keeps me going still.”  That is to say, in our own experience, God keeps his promises to care for us; God is a leader of utmost integrity; God is a shepherd who not only promises, but actually does, supply my needs completely. 

The Lord is my shepherd.  How thankful I am that it is the Lord, and no other, who can make that claim!

Please rise, as you are able,  for the hymn….

II. Meditation

God Cares For Me Wholly

“He restoreth my soul,” sings the psalmist.  And Jesus says, “Whoever enters by me will be saved.” 

That is to say, God not only cares for me in terms of my daily bread and the needs of my physical self, but God also cares for me in terms of my spiritual self.  God cares for me wholly; God cares for my whole self, body and soul. 

But our Scriptures today are especially concerned with the soul.  Why?  Because the soul represents not just what I am, but who I am.  The soul represents that which makes me different from you, and you different from the person seated next to you.  The soul represents who I am, even when all else may be taken away – the essence of my character, the essential part that must be cared for and saved (as Jesus says), or the whole will be lost. 

When our body is doing well, our soul may nonetheless be in despair, even be near death.  But when our soul is doing well, the body so often follows along.  A person in perfect physical health may nonetheless be ailing in soul; but a person who is healthy of soul is a person whose life is worthwhile no matter what shape the body is in.

A shepherd restores the soul of his sheep in many ways.  He sings to them, he talks with them, he calls to them when they wander, he reassures them simply by his presence – sitting, perhaps, up on a rock in full view of the flock, and himself able to see each individual sheep.

God also restores our soul in many ways.  It’s what Jesus means when he talks about the shepherd “saving” the sheep.  God sings and talks with us both through prayer and through Scripture.  And, if we should ever feel alone, we need only stop our busy-ness for a while, be still and look within; and, yes, we find God already there, sitting patiently with us, waiting for us to settle down enough for the conversation that God has been ready to welcome before we even imagined needing it. 

Do you remember Viktor Frankl’s story of the Nazi police who came one night to the home of a faithful Jewish man?  Frankl imagines they gave the man only a few seconds to grab something of meaning to take with him, before they led him away to be taken to a concentration camp.  Thinking quickly, the man grabbed his Bible – his Torah, as Jews call it.  But he knew they wouldn’t let him keep the whole book, so he quickly turned to Deuteronomy, tore out one single verse and stuffed it deep into his coat pocket. 

This was the coat that was given to Frankl in Dachau.  When Frankl felt and then pulled out the little scrap of paper, he read these words in Hebrew, “Shema, Yisroel, Adonai elohenu echod” – “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one.”  It is the central creed of Judaism:  it expresses everything a Jew believes and stands for. 

And Frankl imagined that, until the very end when the original owner of the coat was put to death in the gas chamber, he would plunge his hand deep into his coat, touch that tiny scrap of paper, know the presence of God, and feel his soul restored and strengthened – even saved – for and from the ordeal he was going through. 

He restoreth my soul….

Please remain seated for the hymn….

III. Meditation

God Guides Me Faithfully

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…,” affirms the psalmist.  And Jesus says, “The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep….”

The two verses complement and explain each other.  For, the reason that you and I fear no evil, as we walk through life’s dark valleys is simply because the shepherd who leads us puts his own self on the line for us.  God does not promise to save us from life’s dark valleys; but what God does promise is to go to every length to protect us in those valleys – even to the length of giving God’s own life on the cross, when that was called for.

In my own experience as pastor, there are two ways that people will react when they go through the dark valleys of life.  Some will lash out angrily, blame God, and throw away any faith they once had as “useless.”  Others, though, will let their pain or grief drive them inward and downward; and, when they reach the bottom, they will find that God is right there. 

For this latter group of people, the worst moments of life also turn out to be the moments when the presence of God is most apparent.  Maybe God was not so evident in life’s “up” moments; but in life’s “down” moments, when we most need God, there God is.

That’s because, friends, we worship a “crucified God.”  Which to many is an oxymoron, I know.  But that is the God revealed to us as Christians – a crucified God.  Which is to say, God chooses to identify with the worst that life can throw at us.  That’s why the supreme Christian symbol remains the cross – even though the resurrection really destroyed the cross.  But the human mind remains fixated on the cross, nevertheless: because the cross reveals the truth about God and life, like nothing else can:  the cross reveals the truth that God is with us even in the darkest valleys of life; the cross reveals the truth that life’s only true Shepherd will protect us in life’s darkest valleys, even if he has to give his own life for us.  As he did.

My shepherd guides and supports me faithfully, even in the worst that life can bring.

Please rise, as you are able, for the hymn….

 IV. Meditation

God Preserves Me Eternally

“…and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” sings the psalmist.  And Jesus says, “I lay down my life in order to take it up again.”

Karl Marx derided religion as the “opiate of the people.”  As far as he was concerned, the Christian hope in a life after death was nothing but a shot to end the pain, nothing but a habit of “spiritual heroin” to make life bearable – when, instead, people should know how bad life really is, and rise up to revolt against the rich who make life so miserable for others by keeping all the good things for themselves.

Marx perhaps should have read American history, and found that it is possible to have both a strong faith in life after death and to join in legitimate revolt against oppressive power. 

In any event, neither Marx nor his successors ever came close, in any Communist society, to destroying the Christian faith in a life after death.  Nor has anyone else in the past two thousand years.  Rather, the Christian belief in a life after death has been the glory of the faithful throughout the centuries, and even today remains a strong anchor for those who face death themselves, or who face it in those whom they love. 

And, contrary to Marx, this belief does far more than merely numb the senses to life’s pain and society’s sometime-oppression.  But the belief in a life after death actually enhances life here and now.  It does so by freeing us from our anxiety over the inevitable termination of this earthly life, and thus giving us more energy to spend on the present.  For that reason, contrary to Marx, it’s not a belief in God’s gift of eternal life that prevents life here and now from being all it can be; rather, it’s the lack of such a belief that saps life’s energy, and drags life down. 

Still, mere belief is one thing, and proof is another.  But proof is precisely what we Christians believe we have in the resurrection of Jesus, again, who said, “I lay down my life in order to take it up again.”  That’s why the resurrection is no optional matter with us, but the very center of our faith:  because it is proof that God can and will give us a new life, after this mortal life has passed away – as we unite ourselves to the risen Christ by faith. 

“What happens at the end of the day?” someone asks.  For the Christian, there is no “end of the day.”  Rather, in Christ, the sun shines on and on.  And, when death comes, we continue dwelling in the light of day – but on another shore. 

God preserves me eternally….Or, as the psalmist puts it, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.  Because. . . Christ did lay down his life, take it up again, and did so to take us with him.

Please remain seated for the hymn…. 

Pastoral Blessing

From “Gentle Shepherd” by Bill & gloria gaither
May Father God, our Gentle Shepherd,

come and lead us.
For we need that guidance, to help us find our way.

May Christ the Son, our Gentle Shepherd,

Come and feed us.
For we need His strength from day to day.

May Holy Spirit, our Gentle Shepherd,

Come and tend us

For there's no other we can turn to,
Who can help us face another day.

May the Blessed Trinity, shepherd of our life,

come and guide us into the week ahead,
For we need that guidance, to help us find our way.

[Bill and Gloria Gaither]

The blessing of God Almighty – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – be with you and abide with you, this day and forevermore.  Amen.