Stewardship Series III
Psalm 23, The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.
Martin Luther wrote of the psalms, “Would you see the holy Christian church painted in living color… and put into one little picture? Then pick up the Psalter, and you have a fine, bright, pure mirror that will show you...your true self, God himself and all creatures.” For Luther the Psalms were a never ending resource for life and faith.
Our theme today is Resourced. When we read, “The Lord is my Shepherd” we picture Christ the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for us becoming the resource for all our wants and needs in life even unto eternal life. With the Lord as my shepherd I shall not want. God the giver of all good things gives me all the good things I need to support this body and life.
But we think we need more than the shepherd gives. Our eyes are always on the other side of the fence, where pastures are presumed greener. When we raised sheep on the farm, it wasn’t enough to put up a fence with strands of barbed wire, that held the cattle in. Woven wire was needed for the sheep; otherwise, they would venture into the alfalfa field and literally gorge themselves to death. We are, after all, sheep who have gone astray, everyone of us going our own way.
It’s against our appetites and desires that we confess that the Lord is my shepherd. The sainted Martin Franzmann began a Thanksgiving Day sermon declaring, “We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.” Then he asks, “Why, then, do we give the appearance of being pastured on weeds? Why are we such worn and draggle-tailed sheep?” He cites a couple of reasons, One is lurking paganism, “If we have good weather in June we will pay in January…if things are good now, it can’t last…If things are bad now, it had to come. The second problem is the perspective of the flattened nose. If God gives us 99 percent good and 1 percent bad, we flatten our nose against that 1 percent…We are like a person who sticks his nose in a dish of ripe limburger cheese and the whole world stinks.
From such a perspective we can’t see that God has not abandoned this world, this flock, nor myself. Rather than abandoning our stumbling, fumbling world, God entered our pasture. Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd, laid down his life for you and me, his straying sheep. Notice, I said, “his straying sheep.” We may abandon God for a moment, a day, a year, a decade, but God has never abandoned us. The cross on which the Lamb of God was crucified always stands as our resource, like a beacon guiding us back into the flock.
But our lurking paganism and the perspective of the flattened nose makes us look at ourselves and our life and how I think it should be. We make our own comfort the center of all things. We are like the princess in the fable. She had 20 mattresses under her, and under the 20th mattress was one dry pea. When they asked her how she slept, she said, “Terribly.” It’s all well and good that our Good Shepherd died in agony on the cross. But it’s this one little pea under 20 of God’s cushioning blessing and grace that makes our whole life one sleepless night.
However, the one and lasting truth is that the Lord is my shepherd and he leads me to rest in green pastures and beside quiet waters. There my shepherd revived my whole being in the life giving waters of Holy Baptism. Here in the word I come to him with my spirit exhausted and my life weary from the pace and problems, the worry and anxieties of the week. I come worn down. The foundation of my faith is weakened by the battering events of the week. Here God’s grace in Jesus Christ, my Shepherd, flows out to me and causes my life to be restored. He leads me in paths which convey me to my salvation. He does so by leading me to himself. For it is Christ who said that he was drawing all people to himself on the cross. There upon the cross I see God’s Savior, my Savior. The resource for my life.
Yes, he is the resource for life even in the dark valley’s where death casts it long and thick shadow. I recall a photograph in a restaurant along I-80 in Iowa. In the foreground is a pastoral scene of cows grazing on green grass amidst the rolling countryside. But in the background, emerging out of the clouds is a funnel moving across the rolling pasture land directly toward the grazing cattle.
Sudden descent into the valley of deep darkness can happen to any of us. However, even there My Lord, My shepherd is not absent. “You are with me.” Baptism and our faith does not guarantee a pathway which leads around the dark valleys of life. But it does promise the presence of the Lord with me as I proceed through the dark valley. It is not you and me who walk that lonesome valley by our self. It is our Lord, Jesus Christ, who did make that trek alone and abandoned that he might now lead us through it. He knows the way. He is the way.
This same Lord is also the perfect host. In the presence of enemies he sets a banquet before me-even the last enemy death. He anoints me with the joy of his presence. He provides me with an overflowing cup of his mercy and forgiveness. The meal I take in Holy Communion is a prelude to the great banquet I will attend in eternity with the Good Shepherd. Thus our coming together with others as “the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand” to worship and sing praise to God anticipates the day when we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
In Scotland, so the story goes, a church sent one of their more gifted sons to study to be a pastor. They would pay his whole way, if only he promised to come back and be their pastor. So it happened. There came the day when their favorite son led the worship. When it came time to read the 23rd Psalm the kings English rolled off his tongue like drops of honey. The people cheered, clapped and knowingly nodded to one another in approval. The next Sunday the reader was an elderly woman of the community, stooped and wrinkled. The kings English came forth in halting and stumbling words. The people did not cheer and clap. Rather they nodded their heads in rapt silence, many weeping.
After the service, the young pastor asked the woman why the people nodded and wept at her reading and clapped and cheered at his. The old woman answered, “You, young man know the psalm well, but I know the shepherd.”
Know the shepherd. The shepherd knows you and you shall not want.
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