Lent 4A

Now I See – A Sample Sermon

It was probably the big goofy grin on his face that kept some folks from recognizing him.  Oh, they’d seen him for years.   But rarely had they seen him at eye level.   Instead they’d long ago grown accustomed to seeing this hapless man sitting, legs akimbo, on the ground near the entrance to the farmer’s market.  He had a tin cup in front of him, a white cane propped up next to him, and he stared out at the world with eyes that were clearly as dead as two pale pieces of china.  He was the epitome of pathetic.  He was what every pregnant woman prayed would not happen to her child.  He was not the kind of person you wanted to linger over.  A quick glance is about all most people managed before averting their eyes.

But now, suddenly, he’s walking around town grinning like a Cheshire cat and repeating over and over—as though a mantra—“I once was blind but now I see!”   And the townsfolk stopped and stared.  “Is that?   No, couldn’t be.   Still . . . I think that’s him.”  Others chimed in, “Of course it’s not him—blind people don’t get better.  It’s probably just someone who looks like him.”   But the man himself put that idea to rest.  “No, it really is me.   I once was blind but now I see!”  And as he walked along, the goofy grin got so big it practically squinted shut those eyes that were now as alive and as limpid as lake water on a clear blue day.

A big, goofy grin.  I’m sure it’s the right way to picture this man.   But do you know what’s heartbreaking, what’s tragic, about John 9?   This man is the only one who is smiling.   How can that be?   A grand miracle had taken place!  You’d think that everywhere you looked you’d see goofy grins, broad smiles, maybe even a few folks wiping away some tears of joy.   It’s not every day, after all, that the power of God gets displayed so brilliantly.  But that doesn’t happen.  Instead this story is mostly about as grim and somber and serious as you can imagine.   The whole thing ends up being about as cheery as reading a courtroom transcript.   Why is it that no one seems able to savor the miracle?

And make no mistake: this was a very big miracle.   It’s even grander than we mostly realize.   For many of us, we’ve grown accustomed to reading stories about Jesus’ healing a blind person—a person who then starts walking or running around the same as anyone else.   We are so accustomed to this kind of thing in the gospels that we forget how powerful such a miracle is.   Because as the late neurologist Oliver Sacks once pointed out, for once-blind people to function, they need to have not just their optic hardware repaired but they need to get the necessary mental software installed, too.

The ability to see is one-part a physical phenomenon but also one-part a mental exercise. Functioning as a sighted person requires having access to a long backlog of visual experience. That’s why even today blind people who surgically receive the ability to see cannot instantly begin to act like all other seeing persons—they cannot just stroll out of the hospital following surgery.  Without having had any prior experience with things like depth perception, the formerly blind find themselves reaching for objects that are actually well out-of-reach even as they may knock over a glass of water which is closer than they thought.

Likewise the once-blind misjudge steps and bump into walls all because they have not yet acquired the knack for interpreting visual data. Some even continue to use their white canes for a while so that they can slowly begin to connect how the world has always felt through the tip of the cane with how it now looks through their eyeballs.  As it turns out, this matter of sight is a bit more complex than we might think.   But that just makes Jesus’ miracle all the more marvelous!

Yet only the one man is smiling.   Everyone else is deadly serious.  And the reason for this is as startling as it is tragic: there were some who just didn’t want God around.  Or they were OK with the idea of encountering God but then it had best be on their terms and according to their pre-conditions.   For the Pharisees it was simple: “If God were here, we’d know it because he’d look just like us, act like us, and follow our rules.  This Jesus fellow doesn’t fit that bill so his divine pretentions are as sinful as they are laughable.”  They’d know God when they saw him and Jesus . . . well, he was not it!

It’s sobering, isn’t it, to see the contortions of the Pharisees here.  They will condemn anyone, say anything, deny iron-clad facts if that’s what it takes to prop up their own views of God.   If it were not so tragic, it would be really, really funny.  But as it stands, the only funny thing in this story is the healed man’s goofy grin and his own contagious enthusiasm for Jesus.  “I once was blind but now I see!   I’ve been touched by the power of God!”  When the Pharisees tell him that God had nothing to do with this, his reaction is as honest as it is accurate: “Well, OK, but if you can explain what happened to me without reference to God, I’d love to hear it!   Because—and forgive me if I’ve mentioned this before—I once was blind but now I see!”

Some people are annoyingly happy.  For the Pharisees, there’s just too much joy going on here and so in the end they throw this man out on his ear.  If they cannot get him to stop celebrating the goodness of God, they can at least put him out of earshot.

Among the great ironies of this story in John 9 is this: both the disciples and the Pharisees try to make a connection between bad things and God.  “God must have been pretty mad at someone to produce a guy like this,” the disciples say when they first see this blind beggar, “so who messed up, Lord?   This fellow or his folks?”

That’s how a lot of people operate: you see something bad, you chalk it up to someone’s sin and make God out to be the one who punishes sin.  The universe operates on the principle of quid pro quo, of tit for tat.  Oddly, though, when the people in this story encounter the profoundly good thing of an awesome healing, they do everything in their power to not connect that good thing with God.   Some, it seems, are more comfortable with making God out to be the dispenser of punishment than the decanter of something good.

Apparently it’s fully possible to be in the presence of the light of the world and still be in the dark.   But if it weren’t for the fact that it’s the religious people in this story who seem the most prone to put on spiritual sunglasses to keep out the light, John 9 might be less troubling.  As it stands, however, those of us who consider ourselves religious folks today have plenty of reason to wonder whether—or how often—we fail to celebrate the work of God just in case the shape of that work doesn’t fit the bill of how we think things ought to go.   How often don’t we let our own scruples keep us from celebrating God’s presence in the lives of others?

It was shortly after World War II when the World Council of Churches decided to check on how its money was being spent in a remote area of the Balkans where the World Council was trying to help needy churches re-build after the war. So it dispatched Dr. John Mackie, who was at the time an officer with the WCC and the president of the Church of Scotland. Accompanying him were two other pastors, both of whom came from a fairly conservative, pietistic denomination. One afternoon they paid a visit to an Orthodox priest in a remote village. The man was clearly thrilled to receive the visit in that he otherwise worked in rather lonely isolation.

Immediately upon seating the guests in his study, the priest produced a box of fine Havana cigars and offered one to each of his three guests. Dr. Mackie gingerly took one, bit the end off, lit it, and took a few puffs, saying how fine it was. The other two pastors looked horrified. “No thank you! We do not smoke!” they quickly said.

Feeling bad that he maybe had offended the two brothers, the priest wanted to make amends and so left the room only to re-appear with a flagon of his finest wine. Dr. Mackie took a glassful, swirled it, sniffed it like a connoisseur, and then praised its fine quality. Soon he asked for another glass. Meanwhile his traveling companions drew back even more visibly. “No thank you! We do not drink!” they snapped. Well, later when the three returned to their car, the two pastors assailed Mackie. “Here you are an officer with the World Council and the leader of Scotland’s Church and yet you smoke and drink!?” “No, I don’t,” he barked at them. “But somebody in there had to be a Christian!”

“God cannot have been involved in this incident because it does not conform to our rules and patterns” the Pharisees concluded.  “Disagree with us, and you’re a greasy sinner.  Period.  End of discussion.”   That’s how the glory of God gets missed, even in the church yet today.   Traditions and scruples and rubrics and books of order can make us spiritually blind just as surely as any injury to our eyes could make us physically blind.    But maybe we’d smile more even as God’s people if we found ways to remain open to the endless surprises of God’s Spirit.

It’s curious, isn’t it, to notice that in John 9—so long as the wrangling and wrestling and arguing is going on in an effort to debunk the miracle that had so plainly taken place—Jesus disappears from view.   From verse 7 until verse 35 the Son of God is nowhere to be seen.  I don’t think it’s coincidental.   The minute we start denying the work of God in Christ Jesus our Lord so as to make things neat and tidy and in conformity to how we like things done, it’s pretty tough to see the real Jesus.  And it’s really difficult to generate any goofy grins over his ever-surprising and always-marvelous work.

In a memorable story, William Willimon tells us that years ago he was the pastor of a medium-sized suburban church. Every week during the church season he led the women’s Bible study group and always enjoyed the gathering of those saintly pillars of the congregation, most of whom were well into their retirement years. At one point, Mrs. Donaldson began to bring a younger woman with her to the group.  Chelsea was a single mother of two children and she had come very much from the other side of the tracks, having grown up in one of the poorest parts of the city—an area riddled with crime and drugs. But she and Mrs. Donaldson had met when Mrs. Donaldson had volunteered in a local clothing ministry, and so she gave Chelsea a nice new Bible and began to take her along to Bible study, where she was warmly enfolded into the group.

One week the topic of discussion was temptation. So Rev. Willimon led the ladies in a review on the nature of temptation and how to rely on God to resist it. Then he asked that most typical of all Bible study-like questions, “Does anyone want to share a story of a time you felt tempted but were aided by God’s strength?” One kindly soul piped up to say, “Yes, Reverend, I have one. Seems last week at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket there was some confusion in the checkout aisle. They were training a new girl and, well, next thing you know there I am in the parking lot with a loaf of bread I hadn’t paid for. Now at first I thought, ‘Well, it’s not my fault and anyway it’s only 99 cents.’ But then I thought, no, that would be wrong, so I went back in and paid for it.” Everyone nodded and smiled.

Then Mrs. Jenkins said, “Last week I overheard a couple of folks sharing some gossip about someone. It just so happened that I, too, had recently heard a few juicy tidbits about old so-and-so and this was right on the tip of my tongue to say to these other people when something stopped me and I decided, no, I won’t share in this rumor mill.” More nods.   More smiles.

It was quiet for a moment before Chelsea cleared her throat and said, “A couple of years ago my boyfriend and me were big into cocaine. Well, you know how that stuff messes with your head! So one day we’re in the pharmacy and my boyfriend all of a sudden decides to tell the cashier to give him all the money in the cash register. And she done it. It was like takin’ candy from a baby. So we ran out of there real fast. Then we see this 7-11 down the street a ways and he says to me, ‘Let’s knock that over, too.’ But something in me kinda snapped and I told him no. I robbed that pharmacy with you, but I’m not doing no 7-11. I was glad I resisted. Made me feel like somebody.  I kind of feel like that’s when God really started working in my life.”

No one nodded this time.  No one smiled.   After fidgeting nervously with the cover of his Bible for a few moments, Rev. Willimon weakly said, “Yes, well, that’s rather what we’ve been talking about today. Shall we close now in prayer!”  How difficult it is when real life is so surprising, so different from what we expect, so foreign to our experience.

Jesus disappears from this story when the main action is an attempt to define what God would or would not do.   But once we get back to just the man with the goofy grin, Jesus re-appears from out of nowhere to ask the man such a simple question: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”   “Just point him out to me,” the man replies, “I’d love to lay these eyes on the fellow!”  “It’s me,” Jesus says, and for the first time in his life, the man discovered what it is to get bleary-eyed with tears.  He worshiped Jesus without hesitation, without checking in any catechism or rule book to see if worshiping this man would be an orthodox thing to do.

It’s such a moving spectacle, at least for those with eyes to see.  Of course, it was totally boring to the few Pharisees still lingering on the fringes.  Their steely-eyed scowls told Jesus and this man all they needed to know.   But by this point in the story, even those unbelieving yahoos were not enough to overcome the joy of the last scene.   And I imagine that as Jesus eventually went on his way, this man waved at him and kept on waving until Jesus finally disappeared out of sight.

As the man turned to go back home, he was no doubt tired after such an eventful day.  On his cheeks you could trace the tracks of his tears of joy.  And as the picture on this story now fades to black, the last thing we notice as he trudges home is that once again, the edges of his mouth are starting to curl up.  Because wherever we find the real Jesus at work, there’s just no repressing all those smiles.   Or as Jesus once put it, “Blessed are you who mourn now, for you will laugh!”   In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

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God is in the habit of graciously turning grief into joy.  Sometimes, however, the Lord does so in startling ways.  So those who grieve learn to stay on the lookout for God’s gracious comfort.

The Old Testament lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday begins in deep grief over the tragic character of Israel’s King Saul.  He’s tall, strong and handsome.  You might argue that, before his downfall, Saul was also both pious and courageous.  Yet the king’s desire to serve God also sometimes clouded his judgment.  This, the narrator reports not once but twice in I Samuel 15, makes God “grieve” that God ever made Saul king.

That, however, begs the question, “Did God somehow make a mistake when God made Saul king?  Didn’t God know what kind of monarch he would turn out to be?”  They’re the kinds of questions that yield no easy answers.  Yet the Old Testament does give several examples of God being sorry about what God did.  For instance, Genesis 11:7 reports that God was “grieved” that God had created the people who lived before the Flood.

God, after all, is sovereign.  God also, however, creates people in a way that leaves room for both human success and failure.  Any notion that God doesn’t mourn human folly comes from pagan rather than biblical sources.

Samuel shares God’s sorrow.  After all, while he has invested much in Israel’s first monarchy, Saul has turned that reign into a fiasco.  So the prophet clearly regrets his role in making Saul king.

Those who preach and teach this text as well as our listeners may have similar regrets.  After all, we may grieve over what we did to a family member or failed to do for a friend, what we did at church or neglected to do in our neighborhood.  1 Samuel 16’s preachers and teachers may even want to look for ways to share their own regrets or invite hearers to somehow share theirs.

Yet while God’s people sometimes linger over such regrets, God, as one scholar notes, doesn’t waste time feeling sorry about God or people did.  God is, after all, always moving God’s creation toward the future.

So even when God’s first choice fails, God doesn’t pout or throw up God’s hands and quit.  God opens another road.  Our God is, after all, an endlessly resourceful God.  The Lord providentially turns failures, dead ends, and regrets into new beginnings.  Earlier it was time for King Saul.  He, however, has brought his monarchy to a dead end.  So now it’s time for God to open a new chapter in Israel’s life by choosing a new monarch for her.

Sometimes, however, opening a new chapter is dangerous.  In this case, it worries Samuel.  After all, while God has sent him to Bethlehem to anoint a new king, Israel already has a king.  And as the leaders of the world and even Saul himself will later persistently show, no throne has real room for more than one king.

So God disguises the true nature of Samuel’s mission. While Samuel invites Jesse and his sons to a sacrifice, the prophet and we know that sacrifice isn’t the main reason for the prophet’s visit.  In fact, we’re not even sure Samuel sacrificed anything that day.

You and I are certain, however, that the prophet is visiting Jesse’s family to anoint Israel’s newest king.  So when Jesse’s oldest son steps in front of Samuel, we can almost hear him whisper to himself, “This has to be the guy.  This Eliab’s a take-charge guy who would make a perfect king.  He’s got ‘future’ written all over him.”

Perhaps, then, the prophet’s already reaching for his bottle of oil when God stops him in his tracks.  “Looks aren’t everything,” God reminds him.  “While people look at faces, I’m mostly interested in what’s in people’s hearts.”

When he first introduces us to Saul, 1 Samuel’s narrator refers to him as “an impressive young man.”  Now, however, God insists that the good looks that impress people don’t necessarily impress God.  God is most interested in the quality of the new king’s character, in a heart that loves and serves God.

Appearances naturally impress most of us more than character.  If you wonder that, ask yourself how many unattractive people grace our advertisements, movies and television shows.  Aren’t good-looking people the ones who get the most dates, first jobs and least criticism?

Our God, however, looks beneath the skin.  God wants to know if people know, for example, how to weep and pray with others.  God wants to know if people have a passion for justice and a heart for the lost.

So the parade of Jesse’s sons continues.  Abinidab, Shammah and their five brothers all pass before an expectant Samuel.  Yet God renders the same negative verdict on each of them.  In fact, the narrator doesn’t even bother to name most of Jesse’s sons whom the Lord rejects.

So must God and Samuel grieve forever for Saul?  Has Samuel looked for a new king in the wrong family?  Has the prophet somehow missed a vital clue?  Or is there, perhaps, another son who hasn’t yet marched in his family’s parade?

When the prophet asks Jesse if he has any more sons, we can only imagine how much this question baffles Jesse.  Remember, Samuel still hasn’t told him why his sons have to parade before him.  What’s more, the prophet insists the Lord has already rejected his most important sons.

Why, then, Jesse must surely wonder, does the prophet ask about the family runt?  Yet he answers, “Well, there’s still the youngest” (note that he doesn’t even give him a name yet).  “He’s out working on our family farm.  “Go get him,” the prophet basically tells Jesse.  “In fact, let’s just stop and wait for him to get back.”  So the story stops: no shepherd, no parade, and no coronation.

When the youngest (we still don’t know his name) finally saunters in, we can imagine that, as one pastor notes, thistles and perhaps a disgusting odor cling to him.  How, Samuel and we may wonder, can this be the person for whom we’ve been standing around and waiting?  On top of that, God has just told Samuel not to pay any attention to a person’s appearance.  Yet what’s the very first thing the narrator tells us about Jesse’s youngest son?  “He was ruddy, with a fine appearance and handsome features.”

Clearly what one scholar calls “this picture of health” dazzles the narrator.  However, the shepherd’s good looks are not what impress God.  It’s in his heart that God seems to see what God wants in a king.  “This is the one,” God tells his prophet.

So Samuel, perhaps with a startled look shading his face, reaches for his bottle of oil.  He pours it over the shepherd boy’s head, anointing him as Israel’s next, and, for now, anyway, least likely, king.  Only after all of this happens do we (and, presumably, Samuel) finally learn the new monarch’s name: David.

“Blessed are you who weep now,” David’s descendant will someday say in Luke 6:21.  “For you will laugh.”  God and Samuel have wept over Saul.  Now, however, it’s time for them to laugh.  David will, after all, turn out to be Israel’s greatest king.

Those whom we teach and to whom we preach have also wept.  Attached to such grief is often the kind of regret God and Samuel experienced over making Saul king.  You and I may regret not having done more for or having done something to those who have died.

To live on this side of the new creation’s curtain is to grieve, for no one lives forever.  So to live on this side of the new creation is also to regret, for we’re all sorry for things we’ve done and failed to do.  Thankfully, then, God is graciously in the business of turning grief into joy.

Don’t, however, be surprised by the ways God may graciously choose to do so.  God turns Samuel and the rest of Israel’s weeping into laughter.  However, God does so through the least likely person, “the youngest” of Jesse’s sons.

Of course, it’s neither the first nor the last time God surprises us with the way God turns tears into laughter.  Much like God chose David over his brothers, after all, God chooses Jacob over Esau, Rachel over Leah, and Joseph over his older brothers.

What’s more, David eventually has a descendant who looks no more like a source of comfort than his ancestor does.  Jesus is, after all, born to peasants in a barn, rejected throughout his life as an itinerant preacher and finally even tried and executed as a common criminal.

Yet it’s precisely through this unlikely great grandson of Israel’s most unlikely king that God comforts God’s grieving, regretful children.  David’s descendant Jesus is, after all, the One who lives, dies and rises again to turn our weeping over our sins into laughter over our salvation.  Christ is the One who also sends his Spirit to heal our broken hearts and bind up our wounds.

He often does so, however, through surprising people.  So this morning preachers, teachers and hearers alike may not think of themselves as likely candidates for turning anyone’s sorrow into joy.  Yet we’re precisely the kinds of people whom God longs to use to turning sorrow into joy, mourning into dancing.

Illustration Idea

Perhaps those who preach and teach 1 Samuel 16 have similar stories to one my wife and I have.  We were at a very low point on a Tuesday afternoon.  Little more than thirty-six hours earlier we’d learned that I have an often manageable but usually incurable cancer.

Less than twenty-four hours earlier I’d also endured a very uncomfortable bone marrow biopsy.  Doctors had just done surgery to implant a catheter in my chest that was somewhat uncomfortable.  I was still experiencing miserable bouts of profuse sweating.

Yet in my misery, who should walk in the door of my hospital room but four dear members of a sister Christian Reformed Church?  The news of my sickness and sight of me clearly weighed heavily on them.

Yet these Christian brothers and sisters had the courage to sit and talk with us.  Then their pastor had the grace to pray with us … in Bahasa Indonesian!  God began to turn our tears into laughter … in a language of which I speak no more than five words.

On the Fourth Sunday of Lent, we are given a tough assignment by the RCL: preach on Psalm 23, the best known, best loved text in the entire Bible.  Rolf Jacobsen summarizes the difficulty of such an assignment.  We can run the risk of trivializing the sublime.  Or we can turn the sermon into an autopsy on a beloved text by taking it apart and examining each word in minute detail. Or we can strain our homiletical muscles trying to wring some new profundity from the text.   Perhaps we should forget about preaching on Psalm 23 and be content with using it as we always do—simply reading it at gravesides, in hospital rooms, and on other occasions of personal crisis.

On the other hand, it is a perfect choice for this stage of our Lenten journey.  On the First Sunday of Lent, Psalm 32 gave us a good start by setting the right tone, a perfect mixture of penitence and joy.  Psalm 121 assured us that the Lord is watching over us as we journey into his presence on the cross.  Psalm 95 warned us that we must not harden our hearts when we hear God’s voice, even if the journey is difficult and his word is challenging.  Now Psalm 23 assures us the Yahweh not only watches over us (as if from a distance), but he also walks along with us as a Shepherd.  This is precisely the kind of thing we need to hear at this stage of our journey.

Notice how prevalent the language of movement is in Psalm 23: the Shepherd leads and guides, we walk, and Yahweh’s goodness and mercy follow us.  And notice the movement from the meadows with green pastures and quiet waters to the mansion with full table and overflowing cup.  Psalm 23 takes us from the wilds filled with enemies to the house of the Lord filled with love.  And it assures us pilgrims that we are not alone.  Our Shepherd will lead, and feed, and protect, and save us until we reach our destination.  There is nothing we need for our Lenten pilgrimage that he will not provide.

So, let’s see what we can do with this overly familiar Psalm.  I have four suggestions for some homiletical hooks.  First, we should explore the metaphor with which it begins.  “The Lord is my Shepherd.”  Theologians and ordinary believers have long struggled with how to describe God.   If God is the “Wholly/Holy Other,” the Infinite One whom finite minds cannot comprehend, how can we say anything meaningful about God?

John Calvin always said that we know God through his works, through what he has done in history.  More contemporary theologians say the same thing in a different way, preferring to emphasize story.  We know God through the narrative of what God did in history.  One of the ways we tell the Story is with metaphors.  So, God is a Rock, a Warrior, a Judge, a King, a Light, a Fire.  Obviously, God is not literally a Rock, but there are things about Rocks that help us understand God.

Here the metaphor is deceptively simple.  “Yahweh is my Shepherd.”  I say “deceptively,” because the metaphor is both pastoral and political, and even prophetic.  The superscription says that this is a Psalm of David, suggesting that he wrote it.  The Old Testament reading for today (I Samuel 16) reminds us that David was originally a shepherd.  Thus, he was simply drawing on his own humble experience as he describes Yahweh’s care for him.  But scholars also tell us that ancient Near Eastern Kings were often referred to as Shepherds.  Thus, this metaphor points not only to God’s humble involvement in our lives, but also to God’s royal power and authority as he gently leads us.

Still other scholars suggest that the author of Psalm 23 merely used David’s name.  It was actually written (or at least finalized) sometime around the Exile of Israel.  If that’s true, then the use of the Shepherd metaphor was designed to remind Israel of those marvelous prophetic promises to God’s people as they walked through their darkest valley in the presence of their enemies.

Think of Isaiah 40:11, where the prophet uses these lovely words to comfort the exiles: “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those who have young.”  In Ezekiel 34:11.12, God speaks of to his people scattered throughout the Babylonian Empire.  “I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.  As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep.  I will rescue them from all the places where they scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.”  Ezekiel 34 goes on in terms remarkably like Jesus’ parable of the Lost Sheep in Luke 15.  (I’ll say more about that later.)

The use of this shepherd metaphor evokes all of that rich pastoral, political and prophetic background.  So it will pay rich dividends to explore the deeply personal, surprisingly political, and even eschatological implications of this deceptively simple metaphor.  Everything that follows in Psalm 23 depends on that metaphor.  It is because Yahweh is our Shepherd that “I shall not be in want.”

But (and here’s the second homiletical hook) that clause also deserves careful scrutiny, because it can be easily misunderstood.  It does not imply the submersion of my desires in some kind of Buddhist River of the All.  And it does not mean that I will get everything I want from my generous Shepherd in some kind of “Health and Wealth” abundance.  The meaning of “want” is determined by what follows in Psalm 23.  Because Yahweh is my Shepherd, I will not lack anything I need for my pilgrimage into the Presence of the Lord.  He will get me safely home, in the same way that he got Israel safely home from Egypt and from Exile.

Indeed, that is exactly what Moses said at the end of Israel’s 40 year pilgrimage through the wilderness.  “The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands.  He has watched over your journey through this desert.  These forty years the Lord your God has been with you, and you have lacked nothing.”  (Deut. 2:7, and see the way Israel’s religious leaders used the words of Moses in Nehemiah 9:21).  The wonderful old hymn, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” sums it up in these simple words, “all I have needed thy hand hath provided.  Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.”  Properly preached, the opening verse of Psalm 23 will provide deep, realistic comfort to the serious pilgrims in your congregation.

That brings us to my third preaching suggestion.  Speaking of realism, a good sermon on Psalm 23 should direct people’s attention to the shift that happens in verse 4, because it signals a terribly important truth.  In verses 1-3, everything is good.  Yahweh makes me lie down in green pastures, leads me beside quiet waters, and restores my soul.  In a word, he guides me in the right paths.  This is the way life should be if the Lord is my Shepherd.  He takes care of me.

But notice how the tone shifts in verses 4 and 5.  Now I walk through the valley of the shadow of death (or the darkest valley, according to recent and allegedly more accurate translations), where there is evil.  And there are enemies all around me, even at the table God sets for me.  Yes, God is with me; his rod and staff comfort me; he prepares a table for me.  But the Psalmist is honest about the presence of danger and evil and crisis in the life of faith.  That is an important truth for our people to hear, if they are to stay on the path up to Jerusalem and the cross.  If we don’t know that God’s beloved sheep can have very hard times, then hard times might make us lose our faith in the Shepherd and we’ll stop following.  So it’s important to note the shift in mood as we move from verse 3 to verse 4.

But it’s more important to highlight the shift of pronouns.  While life is all good in verses 1-3, Yahweh is “he,” third person singular.  I believe in him; he is an article of my faith.  But in verse 4, Yahweh is “you,” second person singular.  Now, in the valley of the shadow, in the presence of my enemies, God is not just someone I talk about; he is someone I talk to.  He is not merely someone I believe in; he is someone I walk with.  He is not just someone whose existence I confess; he is someone with whom I commune in even the worst of times.

Rolf Jacobsen summarizes what has happened in Psalm 23 and what happens in our lives.  “According to the Psalm, the place where God turns from an ‘it’ about which we memorize creedal statements into a ’you’ with whom we have a relationship and in whom we trust is in the darkest valley.”  Is it accidental that Psalm 23 follows Psalm 22, which opens with those famous words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Can it be that the only way we can come to the kind of faith voiced in Psalm 23 is to pass through the dark valley described in Psalm 22?   This is a profound truth that must be shared with our congregants who might be struggling through the darkness like the blind man in the Gospel reading for today (John 9).

This profound truth leads us to the cross where our Lord took those words of Psalm 22 on his own lips.  This is my fourth suggestion for preaching on Psalm 23.  It is precisely because Jesus walked through that dark valley for us that he deserves the name he gave himself in John 10.  Can there be any doubt that he was thinking of Psalm 23 when he said, “I am the Good Shepherd… and I lay down my life for my sheep.”  Whatever else you do with Psalm 23 on this Fourth Sunday of Lent, be sure to preach Christ from it.  He is the personal Shepherd we all need on our pilgrimage.  He is the great King who will Shepherd the nations.  He is the fulfillment of all the prophetic promises.  We cannot preach Psalm 23 properly unless we make it all about Jesus.

That may sound like an a-historical simplification, but it is precisely how the church read Psalm 23 from the earliest days.  In his Christ in the Psalms, Patrick Henry Reardon goes to some length to show that a Christ centered reading of Psalm 23 was “absolutely universal.”  “For instance, in Matthew, written in Syria, the theme of Jesus as the Good Shepherd was especially related to evangelism and the sending out of the Apostles (9:36-38).  This emphasis is consonant with the parable of the Shepherd’s searching for lost sheep in 18:12-4.

In Mark’s Gospel, written in Rome, the theme of the Good Shepherd was especially associated with the multiplication of the loaves, where Jesus had his flock recline on the green grass (6:39, an echo of Psalm 23).”  Reardon goes on to point out that pictures of Jesus as shepherd are scattered through the catacombs, that letters written from Rome mention that metaphor (I Peter 2:25 and 5:4, and maybe even Hebrews 13:20).

Of course, we find the most profound references to Jesus as the Good Shepherd in John’s Gospel, written in Asia Minor.  John 10 makes that Christological interpretation of Psalm 23 unassailable, he says.  Reardon shows his Orthodox convictions when he goes so far as to claim that the “quiet waters” are a reference to baptism, that “anointing my head with oil” is about the sacrament of ordination, and that “the table set before me” is the Eucharist.  Clearly, Reardon is enthusiastic about preaching Christ from Psalm 23.  I hope that you will be too.

I must say one more word about Christ as the Good Shepherd.  Verse 6 has been translated “goodness and love will follow me…,” as though goodness and love are like a pair of puppies that come tripping along on our heels.  But the Hebrew word translated “following” is much more powerful than that.  It really means “pursue,” evoking an image of a sheepdog chasing down wandering sheep.  Indeed, that Hebrew word is often used of enemies pursuing the righteous.  Here it means that even when enemies pursue, even when the path leads through the darkest valley, God in his goodness and love will continue to pursue his harassed and perhaps lost sheep.

One cannot help but think here of Jesus’ parable in Luke 15, where the good shepherd leaves the 99 in the open country and risks life and limb to find the one lost sheep. Out into the wilds he goes until he finds the lost one, takes it in his arms or slings it over his shoulders and carries it home, where it will dwell in the house of the Lord.  Scholars wonder about David’s reference to that “house,” because, of course, the Temple hadn’t been built yet.  But as we preach this Psalm, we must keep in mind Jesus’ claim that he was the new temple.

Psalm 23, read in this Christological light, is a deep assurance that Jesus is the Good Shepherd, providing all we need for our journey, so that we will arrive at last in his presence in the Father’s house.  Jesus said in John 10:27-30, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.  My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.  I and the Father are one.”  Even if we wander away and get lost, his goodness and love will pursue us all the days of our lives, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

We are grateful so many hundreds of pastors visit our website every day.   CEP’s resources have always been and will always remain free.   But if you and your church find this useful, would you consider making a donation to help fund the Center’s work?  Or might your church schedule an offering for the Center some Sunday?   If interested in donating, please visit this page.   Thank You!

Illustration Idea

The newer reading of Psalm 23:6 reminded me of Francis Thompson’s famous poem, “The Hound of Heaven.”  It begins like this.

“I fled him down the nights and down the years.

I fled him down the arches of the years.

I fled him down the labyrinthine ways

Of my mind, and in the midst of tears

I hid from him, and under running laughter.

Then, after several more verses come these memorable lines:

Still with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

Came on the following feet, and Voice above their beat:

‘Nought shelters thee that will not shelter me.”

Those are the words of our Sheep Dog/Shepherd Savior, who will not stop pursuing us until we find our shelter in the house of the Lord.

In one of the verses of this Lectionary selection Paul says that “it is shameless even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.”  Apparently the Lectionary agrees because it has carved out these verses from within a wider context where Paul does name—at least a bit more specifically—what some of those deeds of darkness are.   But the Lectionary would have us look away from the verses just prior to and just following this lection.  Maybe we shouldn’t.

Because if we do look at that wider context, we will see that Paul talks about things like sexual immorality but also greed, drunkenness but also coarse speech.  It’s a curious assortment of activities and sins, some of which count as things the church has traditionally been very tough on—sexual immorality—and some of which often gets a pass in the church (greed or somebody with a bit of “good old boy” coarse talk).  Yet for Paul they are all on the same level of things we ought not do if we are living in the light of Christ.

Earlier in this same letter Paul had made it clear to the Ephesians that not so long ago—and spiritually speaking—they had been dead (cf. Eph. 2:1).  Now the image is one of being in darkness, which may be the same idea stated differently.  But the point of all such imagery is to highlight the utterly dramatic change that comes when we gain union with Christ through baptism (and the “wake up, sleeper” imagery here is almost certainly a reference to baptismal rites in the early church).

This is, of course, typical of Paul’s New Testament writing.  Again and again the Apostle roots the whole of our existence as believers and the core of our new identity firmly in baptism.  Baptism is the ultimate “before-and-after” moment for disciples.   In those waters the old self drowns and a new self is raised to life.  True, the death of the old self seems to remain oddly incomplete.  Like some zombie walker from The Walking Dead, the old self is mostly gone but still can lurch forward and inflict some damage if we are not careful.  Living in the light that baptism introduced into our lives still takes some intentionality and—as Ephesians 5 makes clear—some active resistance to the old ways of darkness.

It also requires community, as Paul will go on to say in some other verses later in this chapter when he encourages the believers to speak and sing to one another as a way to build up and celebrate the whole new way of life we have in Christ.   We are to encourage one another, build one another up, pick one another up if we fall, and even rebuke one another if we sense a brother or sister is about to drive over some spiritual or moral cliff.

Of course, all of this traffics very near the edge of a different kind of theological cliff, and that is the deadly peril of moralism in the church.   Moralistic preaching has long been a staple of too many of us preachers.  And why not?  It’s easier to wag the finger, to guilt people into behaving, to scare people into staying on the straight and narrow.

What is tricky is encouraging morality and a whole new way of living as Christians WITHOUT relying on the kind of stern lecturing and de facto “work your way to heaven” legalism that too many people quietly believe as it is.  The far more difficult task for us preachers is to point to the goodness of the light by sticking to salvation by grace alone.  We behave differently than the people of the darkness not because we are just generally better folks to begin with and no in order to MAKE God love us.  No, we act differently because through baptism we ARE different.  Period.

The Apostle Paul’s many moral imperatives never boil down to “Behave so that God will love you” or “Become what you are not by trying harder, will ya?”    No, the indicative precedes the imperative for Paul.  First Christ died and did it all for us and gives it all to us by grace alone.  Then we can be told to “Be who you are!”    Paul never sees the living out of a moral life as a stretch for believers, as something unnatural.   Quite the opposite: living that way should come very naturally for people who are new creations in Christ and through baptism.  Yes, we can all have conversations about what is the best way to behave in this or that sphere of life.  But that Christians lives should be distinctive in marked ways ought not be in dispute.

The difficulty is that they are not always so distinct, and you have to guess this was somewhat true in Ephesus long ago too or else Paul would not have had to write what he did.   In a city like Ephesus, so shot-through with all that was secular and tawdry and pagan and idolatrous in the Greco-Roman world—it was easy to lapse back into the old ways of talking, partying, hoarding.  It was easy to be as greedy as before you met Christ, to acquiesce in even some pretty nasty sexual behaviors in your neighbors or friends.  And so again and again and throughout most of Paul’s letters the call back to baptismal identity has to be issued.

In the church today we are afraid to do this.   We don’t want to be caricatured as fire-and-brimstone Puritanical moralists.   We don’t want to be associated with the worst fringe of the church that shouts damnation at gay people or threatens violence against outsiders.  We want people to believe that we mean it when we say “God is love.”   We want to be identified with the Jesus who spoke kindly to prostitutes, touched the unclean lepers, forgave the very people whom the uptight moralistic Pharisees of the day would not even deign to look at, much less love.

And yet . . . we also face a generation that is increasingly drawn to Christian Smith’s description of “moral therapeutic deism” in which God is pretty much an old softy who has only passing interest in our lives, much less the moral shape of them.   We live in a time with a lot of pressure on some churches to go along to get along, to shoot for the lowest common denominator on most everything in a nod toward pluralism and tolerance, even if it washes out the distinctiveness of the faith along the way.

I don’t think the Apostle Paul ever found it terribly easy to strike the right balance between grace and morality.   It agonized him to see people taking his Gospel message of grace and turn it into a license for loose living.  He could not let that go.  But then again, he could not let immoral living just slide, either.  And so he brought it back again and again to the joy of grace.   Paul was good at highlight the beauty of right living as the fruit of grace, as something that is simply a JOY to do because it aligns so well with how life on this planet was designed to go.

The issue is not whether or not preachers should point to right living.   We must.   The issue is whether we ourselves see that kind of holy lifestyle as so attractive, winsome, and gorgeous that we can incite others to catch our enthusiasm for it.  We ought not try to shame people or scare people into shaping up and flying right.   We ought instead to be having such a good time doing this ourselves that others will want to buy into that.

We are grateful so many hundreds of pastors visit our website every day.   CEP’s resources have always been and will always remain free.   But if you and your church find this useful, would you consider making a donation to help fund the Center’s work?  Or might your church schedule an offering for the Center some Sunday?   If interested in donating, please visit this page.   Thank You!

Illustration Idea

Most of us who watch even a modicum of TV these days have surely seen the series of ads for the Lincoln MKX car featuring the actor Matthew McConaughey.   (Click here to see a typical 30-second example).  Of course, like most ads, this is ridiculous.  At the end of the day a car is just a car.  It’s a tool, a necessary evil in the modern world.  Half the time when we are stuck in our cars, we wish we weren’t.   And no matter how sure most of us are when we buy a new car that THIS car will stay neat and clean and always look good inside and out, sooner or later they get filthy, dust gathers on the dashboard, the floor mats get pine needles stuck in them along with lint and other stuff, and we don’t always take the time to clean it up.

But the folks at Lincoln want to sell you on an experience.  “The feeling stays with you” is the ad’s tag line, as though just driving this car is as elegant, handsome, winsome, and satisfying as Mr. McConaughey looks behind the wheel as he tries to convey a glowing, warm, and just downright happy ambiance through his facial expressions.

I realize I may be stretching things here but the point is they are making you interested in this car because of how it makes you feel, how much fun it is to drive, how the latest features make it cool and intriguing.   Lincoln could, of course, just lecture us on how well built the car is, how reliable its components are, how they use really good materials for the engine, the dashboard, the leather seats.   They could TELL us that this car would be good for us and so we MUST get one.

Instead they want us to believe this is fun, elegant, romantic, and flat out a nice way to get around.  Might we in the church get farther with pushing a moral lifestyle if we stopped lecturing people on how good it is and instead could demonstrate to people that being inside the lifestyle is attractive, fun, full of joy and satisfaction?   If those of us living this way did this just generally, might others be more intrigued in ways that shoving facts at them in bold, in-your-face ways never could achieve?