Psalm 23
Saint John 10:1-10
A pastor friend of mine introduced me to the website Six Word Memoirs in which people are invited to write the story of their lives in exactly a half-a-dozen words.
Legend has it that the idea began when the novelist Ernest Hemingway was asked to write a full story in six words and he responded: "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn." I must confess I don’t understand that one but there were others that I did.
Like this one from Lin-Manuel Miranda, quoting the main character from his musical Hamilton: “Immigrants, We get the job done.” Or this from George Takai, Mr. Sulu from Star Trek whose family was “relocated” at the beginning of World War II: “Even after internment, still love America.” And there was this humorous memoir from Stephen Colbert: “Well. I thought it was funny.”
Some six word memoirs can make you cry or think.
“Alcohol brought us together, then separated.” Or, “I still making coffee for two.”1
You can submit your life story and perhaps have it published on the website: www.sixwordmemoirs.com.
I have no idea what yours would be but during this national health crisis when I have been studying the old, familiar words of the twenty-third psalm I am beginning to think what I’d like mine to be. I have also come to an idea of what God’s six words are.
They were spoken by Jesus just as he was about to be taken from his disciples up into heaven. “Lo, I am with you always.” That what the angel told his earthly father Joseph that Jesus would be called, “they will call him ‘Immanu El.” (The name means, ‘God is with us.’)”2
Some scholars believe that this idea is at the very centre of Psalm 23 and one, with clearly too much time on his hands, has gone to great lengths to try and prove it.
At the heart of Psalm 23 are the words, “For Thou art with me.” There are exactly 26 Hebrew words before that phrase, and exactly 26 words after it. What’s more, in the verses leading up to that phrase, the poet speaks of God in the third person: “he” does this and “he” does that. But when we get to this numerical center, the psalmist transitions into speaking to God directly, in the second person: for “Thou” art with me, “Thy” rod and staff, “Thou” dost prepare.3
God is present. God is with us! That may be paticularly important in a time when our presence with each other is limited.
We think of those families who aren’t able to go visit their loved ones in a hospital or nursing home because, for very good reasons, those places are off limits to guests from the outside. Even more heartbreaking are those who were unable to be with mothers, dads, brothers, sisters or friends, when they died and who afterwards found their mourning to be limited to ten close family members and friends.
That is not how we want it to be. We want it to be like it was for Irv and Murial Kaage. Did you see their story on the news?
They were fixtures in the Edison Park community where Irv ran a newspaper stand on a busy corner near the Metra station and until the children were born Murial operated a Beauty Salon right across the street. They were married for 77 years.
Irv lost his battle to complications due to the dreaded Covid virus last Sunday and Murial followed him in death barely 36 hours later. However, before Irv succumbed, Lutheran General Hospital “moved their beds together so they could hold hands.”
While it was hard for the family to lose both pillars in such a short time, their son said it was better that way, adding, “they couldn’t be apart.”4
That is the way God is with us and also the way we are to be with each other. But how?
The images in the psalm while familiar, when you think about them, are less than pleasing.
If Jesus is the Good Shepherd, representing the Lord who is our shepherd, then who are we? We are the sheep, the wooly ones. Barbara Brown Taylor, the Episcopal priest who I’ve often quoted, writes, “Most of us think of sheep as slobbering, untidy, dumb animals who exist only to be shaved or slaughtered.” So maybe the question should not be who needs a shepherd but who wants to be a sheep?5
Actually I always thought that sheep get a bad rap because while they may not be very bright at least they are not predators. They may wander off and get lost but the only thing lower than I on the food chain am a blade of grass. Still they are not the models for our lives to be because we want to be in charge. So we might not choose to be a shepherd.
Except that while sheep may have a low place on the food chain shepherd’s had the same place in the social order of their day.
The fact is, beside the sheep, shepherds in Jesus day couldn’t make or even ask anybody to stay in line. According to Fr. Raymond Brown: “To modern romantics the shepherds described [in Scripture] take on the gentleness of their flocks . . . In fact, in Jesus’ time shepherds were often considered as dishonest, outside the law.”6
Dr. James Howell remembers that the “first shepherd I ever saw was wearing an Elvis T-shirt, big green galoshes, swatting sheep on the rear end with his stick, and hollering expletives.”7 Not quite a roll model either.
So, if we don’t want to be a sheep and we don’t want to be a shepherd what image might be fitting for us?
Dr. Howell suggests that there may be some place for us between sheep and shepherd. He leads us to the work of British writer and mystic Evelyn Underhill who suggested that we might really want to be one among the sheepdogs employed by the Good Shepherd. Then she asked if we had ever you ever watched a good sheepdog at work?
I have not only watched it. I experienced it.
When I was about two, my family was adopted by a collie. They are members of the herding breeds.
When my uncles who were a little crazy and more than a little lazy were supposed to be watching me and I wandered down the street instead of getting up off the front stoop they would just yell to the dog, “Go get David.” The dog, who had never seen a herd of anything would promptly rush after me and push me with her head, bump me with her body or, if I was being particularly uncooperative she would grab my arm in her mouth or nip at me heals until I was returned sometimes battered and bruised home.
The teeth marks on my arms and heels and the bruises from the times when she got a little too exuberant and I fell made my aunt furious and for interesting visits to the doctors. (I am sure that now D.C.F.S. would have been alerted.)
Before Maya Dogg adopted me, my canine companion was a border collie mix named Ladd A. Dogg. (Yes, all my dogs’ lasts names are Dogg, spelled with two “g’s.”) Ladd was about five when she was turned into to PAWS Chicago because she kept chasing the couple’s toddler. When the adoption advisor told me that she had been know to chase children I said, “Good for her! What did her family expect? She’s a herding dog and herding dogs herd.”
Underhill continued, a sheepdog “just goes on with his job quite steadily. Yet his faithfulness, his intimate understanding with his master, is one of the loveliest things in the world. Now and then he just looks at the shepherd. When the time comes for rest, they can generally be found together.”
That’s an image I can relate too.
God doesn’t just follow me with goodness and mercy because the Hebrew word used is Radaph which means to chase after, to pursue. God chases after me when I wander away with the same steadfastness that my collie had when I took off down the street.
While I know I would never be as content to be a sheep hanging around and doing nothing all day. And I know I could never be a shepherd staying outside in all kinds of weather and, worse of all, sleeping on the ground. I do know that I could be a sheepdog – leading, poking, prodding, bumping and encouraging others to find comfort in God who is always with us. And then resting next to God, trusting that I had done my part.
So what would my six word memoir be?
“I’m a sheepdog for the shepherd!”
__________
1. “Can You Tell Your Life Story In Exactly Six Words?” NPR. NPR, February 3, 2010. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123289019.
2. St. Matthew 1:23. (CJB) [CJB=The Complete Jewish Bible]
3. Chad Bird. “Three Hidden Hebrew Treasures in Psalm 23.” 1517, July 27, 2019. https://www.1517.org/articles/three-hidden-hebrew-treasures-in-psalm-23.
4. Mark, Brown. “Edison Park Mainstays 7 Decade Love Story Ends 36 Hours Apart.” Chicago Sun-Times, April 28, 2020. https://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/2020/4/28/21240464/irv-kaage-muriel-kaages-corner-newsstand-edison-park-love-story-coronavirus-covid19-obituaries.
5. Joseph, Harvard. “Who Needs A Shepherd.” Sunday Morning Sermon. presented at the First Presbyterian Church of Durham, North Carolina, April 21, 2013.
6. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. (New York: Doubleday, 2008), p. 420.
7. James, Howell. “Weekly Preaching: May 3, 2020.” Web log. Ministry Matters (blog). MinistryMatters.com, April 20, 2020. https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/10301/weekly-preaching-may-3-2020.
8. Evelyn Underhill. “The Sheep Dog.” Web log. Locust and Wild Honey (blog), July 22, 2010. http://locusthoney.blogspot.com/2010/07/the-sheep-dog-evelyn-underhill.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment