To begin the message today I want to briefly explain what the lectionary is. All of us here today come from many faith backgrounds, different practices and customs. Also, some are new to this church. I don’t want to assume that you are across what we do here and why. So bear with me for a minute.
At this church it is our practice to follow readings from the lectionary. The lectionary is a pre-selected collection of bible readings assigned to Sundays. It follows a three year cycle and over those three years it covers much of the bible.
The lectionary readings for any given Sunday usually include a reading from the gospels, an old testament reading, a psalm and a new testament reading other than the gospels.
This discipline opens the door for us to thoroughly explore the bible over the three year cycle and because the lectionary is followed worldwide by many Christian denominations it provides a sense of oneness. Hugh often says that people all around the world are hearing the same bible readings that we in Gungahlin are hearing each Sunday.
Usually the practice is to give the message based on the gospel reading. It is not compulsory, but it is the usual practice. Thus ends the lesson on the lectionary.
Now to confuse you all, today, as you have probably noticed we have not heard multiple readings. Today we have only heard from one of the readings set down by the lectionary and that is Psalm 23.
We have heard it read by Jess in English and in Sinhala by Kanthi. We have heard a song based on Psalm 23 and we have sung it to the very familiar tune of Crimond. So today is Psalm 23 on steroids.
Psalm 23 may be the most well known passage from the bible. You don’t have to be church folk to know it. You hear it at weddings, funerals and all sorts of public events. It is so familiar I’m sure many of you can recite it from memory although to be honest most of you, like today, probably use the King James version.
Because of this familiarity, what more can be said about Psalm 23? Well probably nothing new, but it is useful from time to time to revisit familiar bible readings and stories to see if they speak to us anew – because life changes, times change and we change. What we learnt from a passage once may not be what we learn from it now. So, there is a point in going over old ground, even as familiar as this psalm.
In preparing for this service, I considered giving the message on the gospel reading, but as I reread the 23rd psalm something stood out that hadn’t before. What stood out for me was the opening line.
“The Lord is my shepherd.”
Now the writers of the bible and Christian liturgy have wrestled with finding words, descriptors and titles that adequately capture who God is and so logically they sought out words they were familiar with. They searched for words that captured the image of power, of someone who was wise, of someone who was worth following and devoting our lives to.
And the pool of such words is pretty slim. Mostly they chose words they were familiar with such as king, lord and master. I have no problem with this. If we were writing today, we too would struggle to find the right words – president (I don’t think so), prime minister, supreme leader etc are just as inadequate.
So I feel for the ancient writers but that doesn’t get around the shortcomings of these words in describing God.
Consider these words that are used to describe God– king, lord, master.
In one sense they have run their course. They are words that in the first half of the 21st century are no longer positive uplifting descriptors and indeed have not been for a long time.
Many of us are comfortable in using these words because we understand the intentions of the biblical writers in using them, but they do not describe the totality of God.
We no longer have kings. Those kings that are left in the world are usually powerless ceremonial figures we trot out for ribbon cutting and garden shows.
In fact the term was never a term of respect. History is littered with the damage done by kings. Many of the kings of the bible were bloodthirsty tyrants, think only of King Herod.
Later ages were scarred by the behaviour of kings. Many of you from different cultures can probably relate stories of tyrannical kings. For me, my main knowledge is of European history. I’m afraid that is a sign of the generation I was born into.
European history is scarred by the bloody wars of kings. Those who know their European history will know about the wars of the roses, the hundred years war, the war of Spanish succession and World War 1 which was essentially a war between the kings of Europe.
Many, many atrocities have been done in the name of kings. The Spanish pillaged Central and South America, the English kings began the displacement of native North Americans. Australia was claimed in the name of the English king and so the destruction of indigenous Australia began and we are still living with the consequences.
Sadly, the impact of European monarchs was world wide. They oppressed and enslaved the native peoples of Asia and Africa and the South Pacific, including the horrific genocide in the Congo done in the name of the Belgian King Leopold.
And it is because of this, no matter the intentions of the writers of the bible to describe God as king is sadly inadequate.
The same too applies to the word “Lord”. Lords are aristocrats who have wealth and position purely through the accident of birth. Now originally the title of lord was seized by some ancestor winning a war but after that lords think they have the right to literally ‘lord it over us’ because of who were their ancestors. There is no merit attached to their position, nothing inherently demanding our respect.
And finally master. Human history has been driven by the spirit of people to free themselves from their masters, none moreso than the Jewish people of Jesus’ time wishing to free themselves from their Roman masters.
More recently, the democratic revolutions in England, France and the United States were inspired by this drive for freedom. The nations of Africa and Asia struggled to free themselves from their colonial masters, no more so than in post World War 2 India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and many, many parts of Africa.
Groups within different societies have fought to free themselves from their masters such as the civil rights movement in the USA, the fight against apartheid in South Africa and the modern liberation movements in particular the womens’ liberation movement.
And add to this the global slave trade which sadly persists today. The slaves are ruled by masters.
To be called master in the modern world is no compliment.
As times change so does terminology and the ancient scriptures are not immune from this.
So where does that leave us? Do we have to throw out all the words we have traditionally used to describe God. I sense that’s a bridge too far for most of us.
But my friends, the eternal God is also eternally relevant and in the 23rd psalm a seed is sown to show us how to see God anew.
“The Lord is my shepherd”.
Here the psalmist has cleverly taken the traditional word “Lord” and transitioned into something else, something that captures the essence of God in a new way. The psalmist has intentionally linked the words lord and shepherd.
But why a shepherd? A shepherd protects us, watches over us, guides us, keeps us safe, makes sure we are fed, is with us all the time, knows us, knows when one of us is sick, injured or missing. Kings don’t do that, lords don’t do that, masters don’t do that.
The 23rd psalm uses different words to describe God so we can understand better the wholeness of God.
The psalmist doesn’t want this to be the whole story. In using the word shepherd, the relationship is changed to a relationship built on love, belonging and compassion. It is significant that the word shepherd describes probably the lowliest of agricultural workers. Power is thus changed to humility. This is a very different picture of God.
Psalm 23 provides great comfort to us through the ups and downs of life, but let us not overlook the first verse, the verse that opens up a new way of seeing God, relating to God and serving God.
We do not have to reject all the other words used to describe God, because frankly no words are adequate, even shepherd.
It’s simply that in Psalm 23 another word is used. And the word is not a word chosen by latter day theologians struggling with archaic language. Instead the word is here, right here within our sacred writings, here at the beginning of perhaps its most famous text.
God cannot be reduced to a few words, names or titles and when we try these are always inadequate.
But, the familiar opening of the 23rd psalm shows us that whatever we are searching for, whatever we need to draw near to God, God will provide, even if we’ve read it a hundred times before and only see it now.
God is king, lord and master but God is also shepherd.
Amen
