The Lord is My Shepherd: God's Guidance

Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 7/17/11
The Lord is My Shepherd: God’s Guidance
Psalm 139:1-6
John 10:11-18
 

I am in the midst, this month, of a five part series on the 23rd Psalm. The last two weeks in the traditional service we’ve looked at “The Lord is my shepherd” and “I shall not want.” This morning we turn to the last phrase of the first stanza, the phrase that reads, “He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
Now at first glance the phrase is kind of troubling. You get the impression God is leading us in these right paths not for our sake but for the sake of his own reputation – his name and the way people are going to think of him. Isn’t that what it means to say “for his name’s sake?” But that is not what David is saying at all.
The key to this phrase lies in understanding what David means when he uses this word “name”. For the Hebrew, a name wasn’t just a label. A name, rather, captured and expressed the essence of the bearer. That’s why it was so significant when God’s changed Abram’s name to Abraham which means “ancestor of a multitude”, and Jacob’s name to Israel which means “God rules” or “one who strives with God”. The change in name expressed a change in their status, a change of something that was fundamental to their very nature.
For the same reason, God’s revelation of his name to Moses through the encounter with the burning bush was a profoundly powerful moment. God was revealing to Moses something of God’s own essence: his name is “Yahweh,” I am. And it for the same reason that for generations Jews refused to speak or write the name of God – substituting instead three consonants which were later mis-translated as “Jehovah”. Because it expressed the very nature of God, God’s name was treated as something sacred.
So when David writes that God leads us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake, what he is really saying is that God leads us in these paths in order to be consistent with God’s own nature. It is inconceivable that God would do otherwise.
That still leaves us with the question, however, of what it means to be led along paths of righteousness in the first place.
Years ago I spent a summer working on a cattle ranch out in Wyoming. One day some of the other ranch-hands and I were up on the summer range repairing some fencing. We looked up and saw a flock of sheep coming towards us. It was kind of a beautiful thing in its way; this gently-moving flood of life pouring over and down the side of a hill.
But at that moment a marked change came over our boss. Cliff was usually gentle and easy-going, but seeing those sheep he muttered a few words that won’t be repeated here, and then headed off in a very determined way towards those sheep and their shepherd.
When he came back he told us the shepherd had agreed to stay just one night, and would be moving on the next day. Cliff was carrying himself with the distinct air of someone who believed himself to be quite magnanimous which surprised me because I didn’t see anything generous about forcing those sheep and their shepherd to keep moving before they had really had any time to rest. Where’s the kindness in giving them just 24 hours to move on?
That’s when my education in the nature of sheep really began. I had always assumed from my careful study of tv westerns that the cattle rancher’s disdain for sheep was a macho thing. Cattle were big and brawny and powerful. They were a real man’s animal. Sheep on the other hand – well, everyone has head of Mary and her little lamb. It is just about impossible to picture John Wayne with a bunch of sheep.
It turns out that’s not the issue at all. The real reason for the antipathy is the devastation a flock can wreak in a relatively short period to even the richest pasture. Cattle will generally chew grass down to within an inch or so of the ground. Sheep, on the other hand, will graze it all the way to the ground itself and so damage the roots. What’s more, they have sharp hooves that tend to tear up and destroy whatever roots remain.
But it doesn’t stop there. Sheep bestow yet another indignity to the land that sustains them. They don’t like to move which means that if you aren’t careful they will end up infesting the ground with all kinds of parasites as a result of staying in one place for too long.
As my boss explained all this, I could begin to see why he was so eager to see those sheep move on. I, too, began to wonder why God would create anything so unsavory as a bunch of sheep to trample and destroy the beautiful grasses of this earth.
Now you may be thinking that I just bought into my bosses own prejudices. Maybe I did, but listen to what author Phillip Keller – a guy who loves sheep and took care of them for years – has to say:
If left to themselves [sheep] will follow the same trails until they become ruts; graze the same hills until they turn to desert wastes; pollute their own ground until it is corrupt with disease and parasites. Many of the world’s finest sheep ranges have been ruined beyond repair by over-grazing, poor management and indifferent or ignorant sheep owners.
This coming from a man who counted his years as a sheep rancher as some of the most enjoyable of his entire life!
So what does the careful shepherd do? He keeps his sheep moving. He makes sure they never stay in one place too long. He moves them along “right paths” from one pasture to another. The good shepherd knows the ground. He knows the various paths and that’s important. Some might lead up the side of a cliff to a dead end. Others might lead to a crossing where the water runs far too swiftly. The good shepherd knows which paths are safe, and which ones will lead to the best pastures.
In much the same way, David tells us, God guides us along those right paths that bring us life. We may not like the path we are on. We may feel that it is far too challenging, or we may be frightened by what we see around us. But what God knows and what we so often forget is that moving along these paths – moving from one pasture to the next – is essential to life itself.
We are a little bit more like those sheep than we may care to admit.
Like them, we usually aren’t all that thrilled with change. We figure that if something was good enough for the last fifty years then it is good enough for the next fifty as well. We would just as soon stay right where we are even if that means we end up “overgrazing”.
Consider what we are doing to the very environment that sustains us. In 2008, we poured about 30 billion metric tons of CO2 into the air. That is up about 7 billion tons from just five years before. Here in the United States we are responsible for about 18% of that total. That works about to about 19 metric tons of carbon emissions per person.
To me it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that generating that kind of pollution between us and the Sun year after year might have an impact on our climate. Certainly, it is going to have an impact on what we breathe. Just how long would you want to sit in a garage with your car engine running? That’s the stuff we are talking about.
We’re seeing the impact of this “overgrazing” on our health. Today four out of every ten people in this country can expect to contract cancer at some point in their lives. Two out of every ten will die from it. Now part of that might be attributable to our longer life-spans and that’s a good thing. But surely part is the result of what we are putting into our air and soil and water.
Right now our state is very involved in this move towards fractal drilling. Just what exactly are the chemicals being used in that process, and what kind of chemicals or metals might it release from the ground itself? Is there a risk of impacting one of our richest resources here in Pennsylvania; our water?
I’m pro-business, and pro-industry. They are essential to a region’s health and well-being: not only generating needed product, but creating jobs and increasing the tax base. And I’m all in favor of making lots more millionaires out of farmers who are selling their drilling rights. But can’t we be pro-business and good stewards of the environment at the same time?
Of course there is a personal dimension to this tendency to overgraze. It is the very nature of addictive behavior: too much food, or too much smoking, or too much drinking, or too much work… this list, of course, goes on and on. Overgrazing. And the consequences are devastating for the very things we care most about: our families; our health; our reputations; our sense of self.
But the story doesn’t have to end there. We have hope. We have this good shepherd who chooses to be there for us. A shepherd who not only guides us along those paths that lead to life; but one who bandage our wounds, help us get back to our feet when we stumble, protect us from the wolves, and carry us when we are too weary to take another step. We have the good shepherd, and the good shepherd can make all the difference.
David tells us the shepherd leads along paths of righteousness. Constant movement. Constant change. He leads us along paths of righteousness not because he is a masochist or a control freak but because he cares too much to let us stay in one place; he leads us – poking and prodding along the way – because it is these paths alone that will lead us to those full, rich abundant pastures that can nurture and sustain our very soul.
God’s guidance might frighten us. It will certainly challenge us. But it will always, always provide God’s very best for us. He leads us on these paths because that’s his nature. It is one way God expresses just how much he cares.