The Lord shepherds me  (Psalm 23:1)

“The Lord shepherds me”. I’ve always enjoyed learning languages. Not in any great depth, to be fair, but  have a smattering of a few, including Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek. I studied them a little when I was training as a Reader but I’m a bit rusty now. One of the bits of the Bible I used for studying was Psalm 23 and I found that the word we translate as shepherd isn’t a noun. It’s a verb. A doing word. And I kind of like that because it it reflects God’s active love for us as his children. It reflects God’s active involvement with his flock - humanity. It reflects the God who actively stepped into the sheepfold, into this world, his creation in the life of a human being; in Jesus Christ.

I also like it - however clunky it might be in English - because most of what follows it is about what God does, rather than who he is. He makes me lie down. He is with me. He sets a table. He anoints my head. Above all, perhaps, he leads. This is the primary role of a shepherd - to lead the flock to green pastures. For God that means leading his flock, humanity, to lead good lives: to define what it means to lead a good life. Perhaps more than any religion at the time - certainly more than for the Roman and Greek religions that came later, the idea that God leads us to do what is right is a core idea in Judaism and it’s reflected in Psalm 1: “Blessed is the person who does not walk in the guidance of the ungodly”.

Walk in the guidance of God. Follow the shepherd who leads us. And leads us most truly in Jesus Christ, his son, in whom he came to us not just to teach us but to show us what it is to lead a good life; to be our shepherd. Here’s a thing, though. When we’re talking about shepherds in Jesus’s time we’ve got to rid ourselves of any images we may have of ruddy-faced shepherd boys and their lasses. Shepherds were pretty much universally despised in Jesus’s times. They were outcasts. Their word was so untrustworthy they weren’t allowed to be witnesses in court. You can almost imagine, when Jesus calls himself a shepherd in John’s gospel, the apostles thinking, “Wait! You’re a what?”

Maybe that’s why Jesus emphasised that he was the good shepherd. That he’s not like the hired hands who’d run away if the sheep were threatened by, say, a mountain lion. He would be with them - with us - always. He would lay down his life for them, for us, and take it up again. See the parable of the lost sheep: “if anyone having a hundred sheep should lose one, would he not leave the ninety-nine and go and find it?” No. The shepherds of his time wouldn’t. Nor, I suspect, would we. 

But Jesus is the good shepherd. He teaches us, and showed us, that in the eyes of God each and every one of us is precious beyond measure; that you are worth the life of the son of God - each and every one of you - is worth the life of God’s son given up on the cross of Calvary; that the  good  shepherd leads his flock through the valley of the shadow of death into eternal life. No wonder some of the earliest depictions we have of Christ is of the good shepherd bringing the lost sheep home.

And that’s such an important image because we are called to follow Christ’s teachings and above all to follow his example in leading a good life. A life shaped by Jesus’s one commandment: love one another; love your neighbour as you love yourself; a commandment that bundles all the rules of the Old Testament into one easy to remember instruction. If we want to follow our shepherd, to follow Christ, that should be straightforward, right?

Yeah, but we don’t, do we? We go astray, don’t we? The world is full of shiny things that we want to keep to ourselves even if our neighbour goes hungry. We divide ourselves into tribes - political tribes, racial tribes, national tribes, religious tribes - and convince ourselves that our neighbours cannot be found across those tribal divides. We tug our forelocks to the wealthy and powerful while despising those who need benefits to keep the wolf from the door because they’re too sick to work. We go astray.

But for the good shepherd we are not lost. Through the cross of Jesus Christ we are forgiven and brought home and given a fresh chance each day to follow his teachings and to walk in his way: to live a good life. To live a life that brings light to the world and salt to the earth; to live a life that touches the lives of others and shows them they are precious; to be shepherded by God in Christ toward what we are meant to be -  God’s children, made in his image - and maybe, just maybe, beckon those around us to follow in our way.

Here’s the thing. Imagine a flock following a shepherd along a narrow path. Which sheep can actually see the shepherd? The ones at the front, right? The ones at the back follow the ones at the front. What if the point of being a Christian is to be the sheep at the front - the ones who can see the good shepherd, Christ, and follow him? What if the point of being a Christian is to lead a life so filled with kindness, generosity, compassion -  a life that accepts and embraces our neighbours however different from us they may be - that folk think, “You know what? I want to find out what inspires them”? 

The Lord shepherds me. Yes, he does. And when we go astray he’s always ready to bring us home.  Can we do less for others?

Shepherd lord inspire us to follow in the footsteps of your son always and let him be our shepherd. Help us to guide those around us to join his flock

Preached at Eastriggs and at Annan Old parish church

Complete service