The Shepherd Calls Again

A Reflection for 4^th Sunday of Easter                                    All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC

April 17, 2016                                                                        Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Acts 9:36-43               Revelation 7:9-17                    John 10:22-30             Psalm 23

The Shepherd Calls Again

In the summer of 1953, I was seven years old and had just finished 2^nd grade, and I was sent to the Presbyterian Church down the street to go to Vacation Bible School. My theology at that point was summed up by rote prayers at meals and bedtime: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake; I pray the Lord my soul to take. God bless . . ”, and the list would follow.

The theme that year was “Jesus, the Good Shepherd”. Part of the task that summer was to memorize the King James Version of the 23^rd Psalm, and if you were able to do that task, you would win a six-inch tall, glow in the dark plastic statue of Jesus the Good Shepherd. During the craft part of VBS, I put together a small simple wooden corner étagère on which the statue could be displayed. While my bedtime prayer changed in a couple years, every night the faint purple glow that sat on the top shelf of the étagère on top of my book case would tell me that the Good Shepherd was with me and I should fear no evil while I was asleep. I held on to that statue until I went off the college ten years later when I did not feel comfortable taking childlike symbols of faith to college, so they stayed home.

That fall, my older brother went to Parris Island, South Carolina to Marine Corps boot camp, and I went to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to college. While we both had our lives changed, my little brother stayed home and changed things around in our shared bedroom, and my treasures disappeared.

But I held on to the 23^rd Psalm. Even when I was going through my Atheist stage, I found comfort in reciting the memorized lines in times of difficulty, in the 2:00 in the mornings of my supposedly non-existent soul, doing Rota duty with other existentially-riveting expressions - the Gettysburg Address, “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”;  Hamlet’s “To be or not to be/ That is the question.”; Othello’s final speech, “I pray you in your letters/ when you shall these unlucky deeds relate.”; the Rolling Stones “I can’t get no satisfaction”; and Pete Seeger’s version of “We shall overcome.”

I revered the King James Version of the 23^rd Psalm as literature, but it took me many years to stop feeling ashamed of holding on to remnants of, and regressing to, a child-like faith. However, I came to realize that we never really leave any part of our faith journey behind. God has blessed every step of that path - the good, the bad, and the ugly. None of those steps were made alone for there was a power greater than myself walking with me in the green pastures and in the presence of my enemies. That blessing was what I was really able to learn about the Psalm. The blessing was there,

independent of my behavior, for the Psalm does not add the proviso of being a good person or even believing before the LORD would be with me. It is said in the present tense, not the conditional future;  a statement of fact rather than a promise pending good behavior.

I learned that whenever LORD is written in the Bible in all capital letters, it means that it is the Hebrew translation of a circumlocution of the name with no vowels, YHWH, which can be given vowels to make words like Yahweh or Jehovah. But the unpronounceable was the name of their God, the name which could not be taken in vain and therefore not to be loosely tossed about. Whenever the readers of the Holy Words would come across those unpronounceable four consonants, they would reverently try not to pronounce or add vowels, saying “The Name, Blessed be the Holy One” or, “the LORD Blessed be he.” Saying the circumlocution meant that the whole act of saying the Psalm was sacred.

We were meant not to rush through them, but meditatively to sing the psalms slowly, with deep breaths and long pauses at the end of each verse or verset so the words and images could sink in. This is the way Psalms are sung in Monasteries and Convents, holding on to the meditative reasons the psalms still have power over three thousand years later. To have the words on our lips come into our bodies, minds, and imagination meant that we could feel the water of the living stream in the desert and know that there was abundance in God’s provisions, that there was strength in the rod and staff to ward off all evil, so that God’s goodness and kindness would seep into our very being.

I learned that the Hebrew had no thought of people having a soul, but that they were souls. The Hebrew word is nephesh, which means life breath. The LORD brings back my life breath in this life, and not only alive in the next.

I learned that while we are always walking through Death’s shadow in this life, we have the assurance that God’s light can drive far away all darkness.

I learned that even if all the things I feared would harm me are present, I would be told to relax and have a seat. Take a load off my feet and feel that luxurious oil on my head as a sign of welcome. This is not the oil of anointing for a mission, but of welcome to a place where I could gather respite. The symbols of a good life - a table set with good things, a feeling of luxury, and an overflowing cup of wine - are outward and visible signs of the fact that we are not in Kansas anymore. We are in the LORD’s bosom.

I learned that the Hebrews had no word or concept of “forever”; all they knew was from horizon to horizon. An abstract concept of no beginnings and no ends were not part of their culture but came from the Greeks. Hebrews were not talking about a heaven after we die but right here and right now, in this life. The LORD is my shepherd right now.

Let me read you meditatively the 23^rd Psalm translation by Robert Alter, a Biblical scholar and poet, who tried to be faithful to the Hebrew mindset while holding on to the poetic tension:

A David Psalm

The LORD is my shepherd

            I shall not want.

In grass meadows He makes me lie down

            by quiet waters guides me.

My life he brings back.

            He leads me on pathways of justice

                        for His name’s sake.

Though I walk in the vale of death’s shadow,

            I fear no harm,

                        for You are with me.

Your rod and staff –

            it is they who console me.

You set a table before me

            in the face of my foes.

You moisten my head with oil,

            my cup overflows

Let but goodness and kindness pursie me,

            all the days of my life.

And I shall dwell in the house of the LORD

            for many long days.

Now I ask you to join with me and turn to page 476 in the Book of Common Prayer, meditatively pray with me, and learn the psalm the way we would have been taught it if our teachers wanted us to grow spiritually instead of memorizing it by rote to get it over with. We will pause, drink in the image and breathe at the periods, colons, semi-colons, and asterisks.

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.

The Shepherd Calls Again (poem)

Memories of incantations flow

from the flood of long ago years.

Even present in different spheres

the words take again strong holds.

crossing time aback before tears

moistd my daily bread with fears

but now your strength make bolds

my life breath, gives again cheers

as those promises reach mine ears

of hope, as your love anew enfolds.