Who is Our Shepherd?

           Almost every time that I officiate at a funeral, we recite the 23^rd Psalm.  Not the one translated in modern English, we recite the old King James version.  It is thankfully reproduced in the Book of Common Prayer on page 476 at the bottom of the page.  I know why this was done.  We all learned this psalm when we were children and we remember it not only from those days, but because of the wonderful comfort it has been and continues to be for us in our lives.

            The Lord is my Shepherd is a wonderful statement.  I love sheep, they are such humble creatures.  When we were in England, they seemed to cover every green space that we saw.  Herds of sheep tended by shepherds were all over the place.  I loved watching them from the cottage that we rented in the Lake District.  They seemed to have developed their own community, with leaders and others directing their movement, but it was the shepherd who was ultimately responsible for them.  When the shepherd came to them at the end of the day to move them closer to the barn, they always responded with joy and went gladly with their caretaker.  That for me was always a re-affirmation of what this great psalm is trying to tell us.

            We are all the Lord’s sheep.  When we are members of the flock, we indeed shall not want.  Our needs will be supplied.  The problem with this is that we all want much more than we have.  We want more than we need.  The psalm doesn’t say that all of our desires will be supplied.  We won’t get a lot of the things that we hunger for in our fondest dreams.  We won’t get the nice car, or the beautiful home, or even the new décor that we want for our houses.  The psalm doesn’t say that.  It simply says that when the Lord is our Shepherd, we shall not be in want.  How does that happen?  I don’t really understand it because this is a world full of critical need.  There are hungry people all over the place; there are homeless under our bridges and trying to sleep in doorways.  We are inundated with want that isn’t being supplied.  Where is all of this supply going to come from?

            We are people of faith; faith in the promise of the risen Christ that when we give ourselves into the care of our Lord, all of our needs will be supplied.  One of the ways that I believe that happens is because of the community to which we belong.  We are not only people of faith, we are also people who are gathered in a community of faith.  We have been given a mission by our Lord to take care of each other in the name of the Christ.  In Matthew 25, Jesus speaks eloquently about how we fed him, clothed him, sheltered him when he was without any of the things that he so desperately needed.  When we asked him when it was that we did these things, he told us that whenever we did this for any of the least of our brothers and sisters, we did it for him also.  That is a powerful message of mission that the church has adopted for its own over the ages. 

            But when I look at the church, often I see an organization that has become more obsessed with its own needs than the needs of the community that it serves.  Also, when we were in England, I was sometimes astounded at the opulence of the large cathedrals that were built to the glory of God, but are now falling into ruin.  This is also happening in the same way in this country.  Churches that once prospered are finding themselves floundering as congregations diminish and money seems to become more and more scarce.  I know that the answer to this is to remember the wonderful words of Psalm 23 and to know that the Lord is our undiminished Shepherd and that the mission of our God is to take care of the needs that are so overwhelming not only in our own community, but also all around us.

            The question before us is not how to devise more and more elaborate prayers, but to rediscover our mission to extend the hand of God into the needs that we see around us.  We must understand ourselves to be the hands of our Lord the Shepherd,  and to look at our world with the compassion that has been given to all of us.  The need is great and the job is enormous.  God will bless our work as we endeavor to take care of those who are in need around us. That is our mission and the call of God is strong to us to get on with it.