Pascha IV

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 23, 1 Peter 2:20b-25; John 10:1-10

How do you sing Schubert’s “Ave Maria” so that it is heard as if for the first time by the listener who has sat through it at how many weddings and funerals? Or view with fresh eyes and new understandings Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” which has been so manipulated by graphic designers and advertisers? Is the same not true for the beloved Psalm 23?

“The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want”.

Like so many familiar, comforting and beautiful passages of sacred scripture, how do we hear them, sing them and pray them with renewed depth and insight and thus encounter their richness and radical qualities anew?

“The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want”.

How do we, living in a consumer-oriented culture like ours where we are regularly taught by clever advertisers to want everything, sing and pray, “there is nothing I shall want”? Is it true, that God is our only necessity in life? When you pray, “there is nothing I shall want,” what is your first thought? What is the understanding the psalm is leading us to embrace?

Consider similar words of Jesus: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or what you will wear…strive for the kingdom of God and all these things will be given you”.

“Strive for the kingdom of God…the Lord is my shepherd…” The verbs cascade throughout the psalm: God gives, leads, refreshes, guides, feeds, anoints. Our God is actively caring for us. God offering us rest, relaxation, and peace in unsettled and fear-filled times. What or whom are you afraid of at this time in your life? Why are you and I afraid? Often we are afraid of losing something or having something taken from us, what is that for you?

The psalm continues with God assuaging our thirsts, restoring our whole being not just our souls, guiding us to a moral life, giving us courage when afraid in the dark valley. What does it mean to walk in a dark valley?

The contemporary rendering of Psalm 23 sheds light here. “Shepherd me, Oh God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears from death into life”. Note the word “beyond”; beyond want, beyond fear, beyond the valley of darkness in companionship with God. It does not mean there are no dark valleys, no predators, no enemies. It means you must walk through the valley, “beyond want and  fear” with God at your side. There is no skipping over, no sidestepping the dark valleys of our lives. We must, with our shepherd-God, go through them. Just like Jesus had to go through the Passion and Cross. Are you in a dark valley at this time in your life? Can you name the darkness, the despair, the fear?

God is also host as well as a shepherd preparing a banquet…is it in the sight of our enemies…or along with our enemies? The Hebrew can be variously translated. “In the sight of our enemies” might led us to see this a victory banquet with God upholding us against our enemies. “Along with our enemies” speaks of the healing of divisions. Which is it?

Who are our enemies, who undermines us, actively works against us, hates us? Either way, do we want to eat in the presence of our enemies? Whether physical, spiritual, emotional enemies, we need to recall this image of God as host and cook for both us and our enemies.

Note throughout the psalm the chasm between what God provides and what advertisers say we need and should want…“there is nothing I shall want”

I was recently introduced to the phrase “God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it!” How many of us really think that what we do affects God’s commitment to us? God has made a choice for us and there is nothing we can do about it. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me…again the Hebrew may be translated as, “shall dog, chase, run after me all my life”. There’s a difference following me and chasing after me. Imagine that, every moment of our lives God is pursuing us, hounding us, with goodness and mercy.

So what kind of God is this shepherd?