The View From Beside the Shepherd--May 5, 2023

The View From Beside the Shepherd--May 5, 2023

"The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; 

for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; 

you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, 

and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever." [Psalm 23]

If you are an animal of just about any kind in the wild, just about every other creature around is a threat to your existence in some way.  At least, you could see them that way.  Obviously predators are a danger--say, if you're a sheep, every wolf out there sees you as lunch, and you would rather not be too close to them.  But in a sense, other animals that aren't predators, including other sheep, might feel like a threat to you, too.  Deer, rabbits, and other grazing animals are all competing for the same grass you eat.  Even other sheep are all looking to fill their bellies with the same pasture you need for life, and every time you see another member of your flock, you could call to mind every other past time they got to the greener grass before you and left you with only stems and roots.  There's a reason they say that the Law of the Jungle is basically "every critter for itself" and that only the strong survive--it's very easy to see the whole world as a threat to your existence out in nature.

But there is something fundamentally different about the way things work for sheep who are in the care of a shepherd.  Their relationship with the shepherd reorients their relationship with all the other sheep--even with the wolves.  It's not just that the sheep in a flock learn to recognize the shepherd's voice and come to trust the shepherd.  It's that when the sheep can entrust their lives to the shepherd's care, they no longer have to see other sheep as threats or competition, because the shepherd's job is to provide for the well-being of all of them.  So, do the other sheep still need to eat?  Of course--but making sure there's enough is the shepherd's job, and that falls to him or her to worry about.  When you can trust that you are in the care of a competent shepherd, you no longer have to fuss over that time the other sheep ate the grass you were hoping to get, or the time that some other sheep got to the quiet waters to drink before you made it to the stream.  There is no need to hold any of those things like grudges against the other sheep, and there's no need to see the other sheep as a threat, because you know the shepherd's role is to make sure there's enough for all.  

Your ability to trust in the shepherd changes your relationship with all the rest of the flock around you, so that they are no longer competitors or enemies, but fellow creatures being cared for by the same shepherd. Even the presence of predators "out there" beyond the pasture isn't quite so scary, because you know that the shepherd's role includes protecting you from their grip.  They may still be out there, but you don't have to be constantly frozen with fear or consumed with paranoia that they're around every corner, because you know the shepherd takes responsibility for guarding you all.   Life in the care of a shepherd offers so much more peace of mind, precisely because you don't have to be obsessed with getting an advantage over the other animals.

That's part of what I love about the extended metaphor we get in the Twenty-Third Psalm.  As lovely and quaint as the image of sheep quietly grazing might be, the psalm doesn't stay only in green pastures and still waters.  The poet here is well aware that there will be dark valleys and even the presence of enemies [or thieves and predators, if you're a sheep], and yet he says, "I will not fear" in the face of all those things.  What makes the difference?  The presence of the shepherd changes how he sees everything around.  Other sheep are not threats, because the shepherd is making sure there's enough for all--and what do you know, there turns out to be such abundance that even "my cup overflows."  Other hostile animals no longer have to petrify me with fear, because the shepherd has promised to be our protection.  In other words, I don't have to be afraid to live my own life, and I don't have to view everyone around me as a danger to my well-being, either.  All of that is made possible by the relationship created by the shepherd.

I want to suggest that at least this much is all part of what the 23rd Psalm is about.  Like N.T. Wright would say, while it may mean more than this, it certainly doesn't mean less.  And yet all too often, we church folks have relegated this psalm to the realm of nice-sounding-but-basically-impractical-poetry.  [Of course, we're not very good as a culture at understanding the power and usefulness of poetry in general, but that's a gripe for another day.]  We trot this poem out once in a while as a lovely set of words to memorize or print on a greeting card with watercolor sheep and pastures in the background, but we don't do a good job of thinking out what these words mean, and how they change our view of everything.  But for the poet first writing these words, this wasn't merely a hobby or an exercise in creative writing--it was a life-giving realization that God's presence frees us from animosity and fear toward everyone else around us, the same way the presence of a shepherd affects the flock.

So today, what if we took these words seriously in a way we haven't before?  What if we allowed these well-worn images to shape our faithful imagination and to see the world differently because we trust that God is our shepherd?  What if we no longer needed to be consumed by fear in ways that keep us from reaching out to neighbors and strangers, or in ways that make us pre-emptively attack or lash out at those we were taught to see as threats?  Because that change begins when we take seriously the words, "The Lord is my shepherd..."

O God, be our shepherd and let it free us from grudge-holding, fear, and hostility toward others.