SETTING THE CONTEXT

We continue our reflections on the 23^rd Psalm today. The images of shepherds and sheep were very familiar to the ancient audience and are still familiar to Christians in other lands. Rabbi Harold Kushner says that the phrase translated “right paths” is actually more complex and interesting in the Hebrew. It literally means “roundabout ways that end up in the right direction.”^[i]

Read Psalm 23:1-3

This next story only appears in the Gospel of John. It is important to understand the hatred between the Jewish people and the Samaritan people. The breach started 725 years before Christ when the Assyrians occupied Israel. When the Assyrians conquered Samaria they deported some 20,000 people, mostly from the upper class. Those who were left intermarried foreigners brought in to repopulate the land. These foreigners worshipped pagan idols. When the full-blooded monotheistic Jewish people returned to Israel there was deep bitterness and hatred. The rivalry intensified 200 years before Christ over the correct location to worship God. The Samaritans refused to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem and worshipped at a temple they built on Mount Gerizim. The Jewish king burned down their temple in 128 B.C.^[ii] So you can see how radical it was that Jesus would speak to a Samaritan plus the Samaritan was a woman which was another strict social barrier that Jesus violated.

Read John 4:5-30, 39-42

THE SERMON

Sheep have a real tendency to wander and to get themselves in trouble. Donna Gaddy in her meditation in the Lenten devotional talks about her experiences in central California. She says, “It was a constant effort to keep these sheep on the right path. There certainly were not many temptations- lawns, flowerbeds or shrubbery –that their bright little eyes managed to miss.”^[iii] Former sheep rancher Phillip Keller talks about how sheep left to their own devices will overgraze a pasture and create deep ruts on the sheep trails destroying the land. They leave parasites in certain favored spots which can lead to the whole herd being infected. He says, “The final upshot is that both land and owner are ruined while the sheep become thin, wasted and sickly.”^[iv]

He talks about another mortal danger to sheep. It is when they become cast. Cast or cast down is an old English shepherd’s term for a sheep who has turned over on it’s back and can’t get up by itself. It is like a turtle that is rolled over on its shell. This is a very frightening and dangerous situation for the sheep. On a very hot sunny day a cast sheep can die in a few hours. If it is cool and rainy the cast sheep may survive several days flaying in helpless frustration. Predators watch for cast sheep for they are easy prey. This is why shepherds look over and count their sheep every day. As Keller states, “Nothing seems to so arouse his constant care and diligent attention to the flock as the fact that even the largest, fattest, strongest, and sometimes healthiest sheep can become cast and be a casualty.”^[v]

Before we get too judgmental toward the sheep, it seems to me that we have somewhat the same tendencies. As I read his description, I thought of how many times we become cast over the course of our lives. Sometimes a tragedy or bad experience knocks us off our feet. We lay there kicking our legs in frustration and just can’t seem to get back on them again without some help. Sheep can become cast when they roll into a soft rounded hollow in the ground. We sometimes become cast when we put what is more comfortable over what is right. When we look for the easy path rather than the right path, so we lie to ourselves or others, drown our problems in some temporary relief like alcohol or drugs or we get into a bad relationship or some fad program hoping it will magically fix everything. There are so many different ways we choose the easy road instead of the right road.  Sheep also become cast when they get weighed down with too much wool. We too can get cast by excess. It may be excessive possessions, worries, activities, or demands upon us that weigh us down. Sheep get cast when they get overfed and become too heavy. We too can become cast by overindulgence. Our desire for more tempts us to place our trust in things rather than in God. It can lead us to all kinds of troubles; we may wind up in financial trouble with high credit card balances, home mortgages that we can’t afford or just having more bills than we have income. Our overindulgence may lead us to unhealthy eating habits or lifestyle choices. There are as many ways to become cast or knocked off our feet as there are people.

With all this in mind it can be overwhelming. Then we hear the reassuring words of Psalm 23. “The LORD is my shepherd … he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.” The Good Shepherd knows all about cast sheep. God sent Jesus into the world to bring healing to broken people, to people knocked flat on their backs whether by circumstances beyond their control or by consequences from their choices. Jesus in his healing ministry restored people in many ways. He restored them physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. Many times when we think about healing, we think of it in the narrow terms of cure. A person is healed when their disease or disability is cured. However healing can take place in other ways, through acceptance by others, through a sense of peace or support and the gift of love that you were unaware of before the healing. He brings that healing to those who accept his offer like the Samaritan woman did, “Sir, give me this water so that I may never be thirsty.” He restores my soul.

As Christians we have a Sacrament for Failure.^[vi] I am going to keep preaching about this because I believe it is so important to living our Christian faith. The LORD knows that we easily stray, that we have a rebellious tendency and so we have a way to return to the answer as George put it on Ash Wednesday. The Sacrament for Failure is: confession, admitting to God and sometimes it is helpful to tell another person what you have done; repentance or having a change of heart and attitude, truly desiring to change whatever led to the failure in the first place; receiving forgiveness. God forgives a repentant heart, but sometimes we have the worst time accepting it. The final step in the process is walking on a new path freed from the chains of our failure. You see the Good Shepherd does not just tip us upright again. If we are willing to follow him, he will lead us on the right paths. As I’ve said before the right path may not always be the easy path or a path that makes sense to us. Rabbi Harold Kushner says that the Hebrew phrase translated “right paths” literally means “roundabout ways that end up in the right direction.”^[vii] If you’ve ever hiked across country you know that many times you can’t take a straight path to get to where you need to go you have to go around the mountain or zig zag to miss a ravine. Sometimes God leads us on paths that zig and zag, but if the leading is of God we can trust that it is in the right direction.

Talk about paths, who would have thought that Jesus would go through that nasty place called Samaria! And then for him to stop and share his blessing with a Samaritan woman was completely shocking to his Jewish audience. I think it would be like him talking to a Taliban member today. This person is our enemy yet the Samaritan woman perceived that he was someone special and she got right down to the heart of the division between the two peoples. You are obviously a man of God so tell me, where is the correct place to worship? Did you notice that Jesus didn’t directly answer her question instead he said that God would lead them down a new path. As the villagers came to him, he restored a whole new flock and began to lead them down a new path as their Savior.

Keller describes how a good shepherd responds to a cast sheep. He said, “A shepherd can spend hours searching for a wayward sheep fearing that it is cast somewhere. When he sees the overturned sheep from the distance he feels commingled fear and joy, fear that he is too late to save the animal and joy that the lost one has been found. If the sheep is alive, he will tenderly roll the sheep on its side and hold it there to let the pressure stabilize. Then he would lift it onto its feet, straddling the animal to hold it erect and rubbing its limbs while the blood flows back into its legs. It often took time to get the sheep strong enough to hold its own weight. And during this whole time the shepherd would talk to the sheep in language that combined tenderness with rebuke, compassion and correction. Often when the sheep started to walk on its own it would stumble, stagger and collapse as it tried to regain its balance and strength, but the shepherd would be right there to help and support the sheep until it was able to dash back to the flock.^[viii] We, like sheep, may have a real tendency to wander and get ourselves in trouble, but we do have a Good Shepherd who loves us enough to constantly watch over and care for us, who restores our souls. We have a Shepherd who will roll us over when we are cast speaking to us with tenderness as well as rebuke, with compassion and correction. Jesus will lead us in right paths, even if they are “roundabout ways that end up in the right direction” for he is the Good Shepherd. Amen.

Sermon delived by Rev. Nancy Cushman on February 24, 2008.