Psalm 23 – Part II – Following The Shepherd
Where are your
still waters? Where are your green
pastures? For some of us it may be along
a lake or a riverbank where the water is as slick as glass or a field of green,
maybe filled with colorful flowers. For
me, still waters are anything but still, my still waters are crashing with wave
after wave hitting my green pastures of sand and shells. Still waters and green pastures are about places
of peace and refreshment…and while I will admit that sitting on a boat in the
middle of a river or lake on a cool fall morning is peaceful and refreshing,
trust me, real green pastures, dotted with ragweed this time of year are
anything but peaceful and refreshing for me.
Last week we
began exploring what it means to live with the Lord as our Shepherd. Just why has this Psalm, one of a hundred
fifty we have in the Bible, become the one that so many of us, so much of the
world, has adopted as the one we know better than any of the rest? Is it because Jesus identifies himself as the
Good Shepherd and so we connect the two?
It is because the images within this Psalm resonate beautifully for
us? Is it because this Psalm covers a
broad swath of our lives—from need to rest to guidance to darkness to
protection to provision? Or is it all of
these…and more?
We began by
exploring what it means to say, “I shall not want.” We counteracted the idea that it was an
eleventh commandment mean to be added to “The Big Ten” and it got left out
because God and Moses ran out of room on the stone tablets and couldn’t shrink
the font to get it to fit. To say “I
shall not want,” is not a commitment to make ourselves void of all desires to
avoid sinning. We also considered and
eliminated the idea, that this verse, coupled with Jesus’s words about
“seeking, asking, and knocking” and the promise that whatever we prayed for and
asked in His Name we would receive, is about God granting our every wish. As we heard translations other than the King
James and Revised Standard (and their newer versions) we heard a different
translation of the phrase…rather than “I shall not want,” we heard, “I lack
nothing” and “I have everything I need.”
We began to realize, or are still realizing that it is not about having
everything we want, but realizing that God has provided everything that we
truly need. God doesn’t grant our wishes
like a genie in a lamp, but God provides those things that we truly need.
One of those
things that we need is rest and peace.
How many of you have ever had those days, those weeks, those years, when
you felt all you really needed was some rest and some peace and everything would
be okay? Fifteen years ago, our nation,
perhaps even the world, experienced this—as attacks that we thought only
happened on the other side of the world became a reality in our everyday lives. In the aftermath and ensuing wars, we became
a people that longed for times of rest and peace. The violence that swept our nation earlier
this year has made us long for times of rest and peace.
Yet these
instances of violence are not the only things that weary us. There are things that happen in our daily
lives, times of personal and family crisis that no one else knows about that
wear us down, leaving us physically, emotionally, and spiritually
exhausted—longing for still waters and green pastures. We have work, community, household demands
that leave us feeling completely drained.
We rush from a day of handling complaints over the phone and filling out
one requisition after another or lifting and carrying load after load of
building materials from one site to another to pick up the kids and help them
with their homework or to mow the grass and trim the shrubs…then we prepare
supper, either from our own labors or someone else's…from there we rush to
football practice or a dance recital, then to a soccer game or piano lessons…if
it is not one of those, it is a Civitans, Garden Club, Homeowners, or even
church meeting…then it's back home to take care of laundry and the days dishes. This doesn’t even include the unexpected…like
the call to tell you about “Aunt Sally,” or the call from the doctor’s office
confirming the diagnosis you didn’t want to hear…
We want to
scream…God…bring on those green pastures and still waters…and I don’t care if
they have ragweed or water moccasins…and God does, though without the allergens
and poisonous snakes.
He invites us to
come and find rest:
“Give ear to my
prayer, O God; do not hide yourself from my supplication. Attend to me, and answer me; I am troubled in
my complaint. I am distraught by the
noise of the enemy, because of the clamor of the wicked. For they bring trouble upon me, and in anger
they cherish enmity against me…Fear and trembling have come upon me, and horror
overwhelms me…I would hurry to find a shelter for myself from the raging wind
and tempest.”[i]
This sounds like a person in need of
green pastures and still waters…he has enemies attacking and later on he
expresses anguish as a friend betrays him.
God’s word
invites, “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never
permit the righteous to be moved.”[ii]
Jesus invites,
“Come to me, all of you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon
you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find
rest for your souls. For my yoke is
easy, and my burden is light.”[iii]
Beyond inviting,
God’s Word commands that we experience the still waters and green
pastures. In the longest of God’s Top
Ten—The Ten Commandments, God says, “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it
holy. Six days you shall labor and do
all your work. But the seventh day is a
sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your
daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in
your towns. For in six days the Lord
made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh
day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.”[iv]
Yet that Sabbath
day of rest is not about God demanding that day of us because He needs us to
stop and worship Him, it is about God giving us a gift that we need, it is
about God providing still waters and green pastures in the dry, taxing desert
of our week. Jesus makes that clear: “’The
Sabbath was made for humankind, and not mankind for the Sabbath….”[v] God did not create the Sabbath because He
needed it, He created it because He knew we needed it.
Cast your
burdens…
Come to me…I
will give you rest…
Remember the
sabbath day…
In grassy
meadows he lets me lie. By tranquil streams he leads me to restore my spirit.
Why is it that if
God provides and even commands these opportunities for grassy meadows and
tranquil streams, we constantly feel overwhelmed, tired, and worn out?
There's an old
phrase that many of us, if not all of us are familiar with, “You can lead a
horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.”
Or in this case, “You can lead a sheep to water, but you can’t make them
drink.”
God provides us
with the Sabbath. Now, most Christians
have moved that day set apart as sacred from the Jewish celebration of Sabbath,
which means “seventh day,” to the first day of the week, Sunday, remembering
that Jesus rose on the first day of the week.
Yet how many of us truly observe this time of green pastures and
tranquil waters? How many of us truly
take the time to stop working for an entire day and devote it to worship,
family, and rest? I’ve had folks that talk
of having to work for thirty or more days without a day off—sometimes it was
difficult to know whether they were bragging about their endurance or talking
about how weary they were. They chose to
not stop and take a sabbath rest, to skip by the green pastures and still
waters…and just keep right own laboring.
Others might stop for an hour or two and head right back to work,
thinking, a little glimpse of the pastures and water will do me and I really
have too much to do to stop for an entire day.
Other times we might let extra demands creep in and still that time
away…at times the church has been guilty of not letting folks take that
Sabbath—a day of worship, family, and fellowship—that is why we, at St. Paul’s,
made a decision a couple of years ago that we would not take away from the
Sabbath and decided that we would discourage and avoid business meetings on
Sunday afternoons or evenings. When we
refuse stop and observe the Sabbath and take the gift of rest God offers, we
are saying, “No thanks God, you have offered me this opportunity and gift, but
I don't really want to lie down in your grassy meadows or sit by your tranquil
streams.”
God invites us
to cast our burdens, Jesus tells come to him when we are weary and unload our
burdens and take up his yoke. God offers
us this opportunity of lying in the green pastures and still waters with these opportunities. Yet sometimes we refuse or only halfway
appreciate the gift. How many times do
we bring our burdens, our heavy loads, and lay them before the throne of God,
enjoying the rest for just a moment, and then when we get up to leave whatever
time of prayer we are offering them to God, rather than leave the burdens with
Him, or take up the easy yoke that Jesus offers, we pick those heavy loads of
stress, worry, and anxiety up again and take them with us once more, possibly
feeling more weighed down that when we first walked in—choosing to be weighed
down, refusing the still waters and green pastures that God so freely answers.
My brothers and
sisters, we cannot ignore the opportunities that God gives us to take a Sabbath
break. It is a precious gift from God
that He gives us for a reason. God wants
to give us rest, He seeks to restore us.
Why? In order that we might
respond to the calling that He is placing upon us. The green pastures and still waters are a
temporary stop in the dessert of life.
They are an opportunity to refuel and refresh ourselves, but they are
not an invitation to retire from life itself.
We are restored because God is preparing us to labor in His Name. We might come to the garden alone while the
dew is still on the roses…yet in the end, He bids us go…
We most often
hear this verse in the language of the King James and Revised Standard, “He
leads me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake” or “He leads me in
right paths for his name’s sake.” If you
are like me, you haven’t thought much about this part of God’s leading in our
lives, or simply thought of it in terms of God setting us on the right
path---helping us turn from the sinful ways of our past to living obedient
lives. That is part of it, but as we
discussed the Biblical understanding of righteousness in our last series, that
the righteousness of God is found in God’s efforts to restore our world to its
original design at the point of Creation—a world free of sin, disease, and
scarcity. As God sets us on paths of
righteousness, God sends us be part of, as the New Jerusalem Bible translates
it, his saving justice. God gives us
rest that we might be part of His efforts to restore all the world.
It is where last
week ties into this week. Last week we
talked about how we do not lack anything we need…that we whether it be clothes,
shelter, food, safety, or opportunity, we have all that we truly need. God is our shepherd and we do not want, we do
not lack anything we truly need. Yet we
acknowledged that there are those throughout the world, from South Sudan to
Iraq and Syria to Chicago, Baton Rouge, and parts of Burlington itself, that
people do not have clean clothing, a roof over their heads, enough food to eat,
or the security to live from day to day.
God gives us rest in order that we might labor for Him, that we might
work alongside Him to truly make His presence known, that we might look into
the world, see the need, and purse (and offer) God’s saving justice. We are to be about clothing the naked, providing
shelter for the homeless, giving food to the hungry, finding healthcare for
those who don’t have any, and so on, visiting those who are shut-in, having to
be looked after or are otherwise alone.
It means that we are to be about the work of God, responding to
injustice wherever we see it, in the same manner that Christ would respond…we
are to be the presence of the Great Shepherd, offering His love and His grace,
that all may be able to say, “Yahweh is my shepherd, I lack nothing—I shall not
want—I have everything I need. We offer
them places of green pastures and still water that they might rest alongside us
and join us on the paths of God’s righteousness.”
In the Name of
the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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