There was a story being circulated back in the days when President Carter was in the White House. He was meeting with the Prime Minister of Israel about the negotiation of a peace in the Middle East. Since both were religious men and worshiped the same God they thought it would be a good idea to consult God on the matters that were before them. Carter offered to use his private phone to do it, pay the charges. So they placed the call, talked to God for five minutes. When the call was completed Carter asked the operator what the charges were. She said, “ For five minutes that’s $122.” Carter thought that was a little steep.
A few weeks later Carter was in Jerusalem visiting Prime Minister Begin. They decided once again it would be wise to consult with God. Begin said that he would place the call this time on his phone.
So he did, and they talked to God for almost an hour. After the call the operator came on the line and said, “That will be 25 cents.” Carter was dumbfounded. He turned to Begin and asked, “Why is it that when I call God in Washington for five minutes it’s $122, and you call Him from here and we talk for an hour and it only costs 25 cents?” Begin said, “Because when you call God from Jerusalem it’s a local call.” (The Reverend Mark Trotter, “What is Lost When You Keep It?”)
That’s apocryphal, that story, but it has certain credibility. For Christians, as well as for Jews, Jerusalem is the holy city, is it not? And Palestine is the holy land.
The 23rd Psalm could have been written only in that setting. The Lord is my shepherd. It is an image that could come only from that Eastern world where the shepherd occupied a unique position with his flock. As we continue our sermons on this “nightingale” of the psalms, let’s try to think ourselves into the relationship of the shepherd and his flock.
In the early morning lead his flock from their fold to the pasture lands. All day he would watch, lest harm should come to them, that they might drink where no current would frighten or endanger them. And at night he must conduct them back to the security of the fold. At a certain season of the year, he had to head them yet farther afield, far away from his own home, where he lived among them, scorched by the heat at noon and drenched by the dews at night. Should one of the lambs be unable to keep pace with the rest of the flock he carried it on his shoulder. Should one of the flock go astray he searched for it until he found it, tracking it by the tufts of wool left in the briers and thorns. Should danger assail he would prepare to risk his life…
What a picture, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Perhaps we need to press further in thinking our way into the image by looking at a more contemporary setting.
Do you listen to The Prairie Home Companion? It’s on Public Radio each Saturday afternoon at 5:30. It’s one of the most delightful offerings either radio or TV provides us. Garrison Keeler, the host, is becoming one of the media’s most popular personalities. The feature of the program is news from Lake Woebegone “where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children above average.”
The news often includes a word about Father Emil, the Roman Catholic Priest, or Rev. Imquist, the Lutheran pastor. The two play gin rummy a lot together and provide each other with spiritual counsel. One of Keeler’s most moving monologues was about Father Emil.
Father Emil was 18 in 1931 when his father sold their farm out in Western North Dakota. His father had always had bad luck farming, and he only got enough for the farm to buy a truck. His father was tall and thin and sallow and had a sad face and empty eyes so that you almost could not look into eyes. He almost never spoke - he was a silent man who brooded about his bad luck.
And on this night, the day before they were to go west to California, Emil helped his father load the furniture except for the mattresses into the truck. It was dark, and there were stars out, millions of stars outside the tiny white house out in flat, flat country - no trees around. He and his father stood there after they had loaded the truck, and his father offered him a cigarette. They stood and smoked, and Emil felt that at last his father was about to talk to him.
And after awhile his father cleared his throat and he said, “It’s about time to make something of yourself. It’s about time you started on your own I think.” Emil said, “I thought I was going with you,” and his father said, “It time to make something of yourself.” So Emil left that night. He slept in fields and he hitchhiked for three days till he reached a monastery; and when he got there, they took him in; and they gave him a room and they gave him food to eat, and for the first time in his life he felt as if God loved him, and so he became one of them. He awoke every morning to hear the monks singing off somewhere, a beautiful song, and knew that he was loved, at night he was so happy that he would walk for miles by himself, which he still does in Lake Woebegone,
When it’s not too cold, as was the case the other night, he pulled on a sweater and his big black topcoat and his stocking cap and set off down the street. It was about 9 o’clock — walking along in that gait that all Catholic children in Lake Woebegone have been able to recognize since they were tiny — a slight limp, so when he walks, it’s almost like a waltz — walking down the street, looking at the houses, the stars shining high above beyond the branches, the houses shining too, some of them with a little bluish television light. The children sit and lean toward the television and watch attractive men and women talk. Men and women who are more attractive for being behind the veil of very poor reception attractive men and women talk, and an audience laughs someplace and these children laugh too. They sit and stare at attractive men and women who really do not care about them, cannot care about them, and the one who does walking down the street, who they might not even notice if they saw him, but who walks by every house, and as he walks by, says to himself, the names of every one who is inside, which of course he knows, and which is sort of a blessing, “Know that you are loved little children,” Father Emil is glad to be out walking by himself.
Every year he takes the Youth group up to look at the stars, and there’s always a few kids every year who sit close to him, and when they watch the stars, they say things that they think they’re supposed to say. They say, “It sure makes you feel close to God, doesn’t it Father.” “You sure feel like God has a plan, don’t you Father.” Trying to impress a priest, and one as old as he is. Ridiculous. He tries to remember how that song went that the Monks sang in the morning, but it’s so far away. It’s just so far off. It’s just like the sound of an ocean miles away. And then, suddenly, he doesn’t recognize this house. He looks around. He doesn’t see where he is —— strange — lost in Woebegone. Where is he? Who are these people? He turns around, and sees a figure approaching a black figure, coming closer and closer. And holding out its hand to him. He says, “Oh! Father!” “Is that you Ralph?” “Just out for a walk, I didn’t know it was you Father. I thought you were a tree or something.” So they walk along together.
So, Ralph says, “Have you heard the one about the Norwegian, Father?” “The one who got drunk; he was out with all the other Norskies drinking, and he come home late at night and found that the door was locked, and his wife wouldn’t let him in. He pounded on the door, the old Norwegian did, and his wife said, “You’re not coming in here in the condition you’re in,” she said, “you’ll go out with the pigs.”
I’ve seen shepherds in the Western part of our country, driving their sheep very much like cowboys drive cattle. But in the East, it’s different. I’ve seen them often in the Holy Land - the shepherd leading the flock, going ahead of the sheep. I remember how fascinating it was when I first went to the Holy Land - all along the road from Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea - to see often a shepherd walking through what seemed such barren land, with 40 or 50 sheep following behind.
So the Shepherd leads…seeking green pastures and still waters. For what purpose? He restores my soul.
That’s the primary task of the Shepherd——to find the green pasture and the springs of water that will sustain the life of his flock. That’s the work of God in our life. Christ, the Good Shepherd leads us to places and experiences which “restore our soul”.
II
It would be good to stay at this point for awhile the work of the Good Shepherd giving us rest, refreshing our fainting powers, restoring our soul. We don’t want to forget that.
He make us lie down in green pastures; yes; if we will stay with Him, He will lead us to still waters and will restore our soul.
But that rest and renewal is not to wallow in. Our mid-day breaks can be extended too long. So there is another picture here of the leading shepherd, another aspect of the Shepherd’s care on which I want us to focus.
“He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
David, our Psalmist, will not let us distort the picture, the purpose of repose and refreshment is to prepare us for tasks and ma action. David knew, as you and I must learn, that we communion and waive or ignore the imperative call to righteousness.
Keep the perspective now. Our faith journey following the Shepherd, will include those experiences of deep communion when we rest in the Lord, when we’re enriched by the knowledge of his presence. We may even from time to time experience a mystical binding to the Lord. But all this – including our coming together for worship in this beautiful place each Sunday — must lead to commitment to walk the paths of righteousness, to take greater risks in love.
Did you read how Ferdinand Marcos said that his religious devotion kept him from committing suicide? It’s too bad it did not keep him from stealing his country blind and persecuting his opponents. Or his wife, Imelda, who complained that the media coverage was only showing her extravagances and the luxury of the palace in Manila, and not showing the prayer room in the palace which would prove how pious they were.
That makes the point doesn’t it? Unless the ecstasy of God’s indwelling presence becomes the agony of sacrifice and obedience for God’s Kingdom by going the second mile, turning the other cheek, fulfilling our moral imperatives, and serving the least and the lost, then our ecstasy is pure baloney, our piety is a rank form of idolatry, and our religious talk is mere rhetoric.” (Don Shelby, “When Our Ecstasy is Baloney.”)
That’s one of the primary reasons I’m a Methodist. John Wesley, our father in the faith, passionately argued that there could be “no holiness but social holiness...and to turn Christianity into a solitary religion is to destroy it.”
One of Wesley’s last written words was a letter to William Wilberforce, lone voice and an isolated force, waged a radical campaign against slavery. Wesley’s letter, written only a few days before his death, was a last—breath challenge to Wilberforce to walk on in the paths of righteousness Listen to that letter:
Unless the Divine Power has raised you up to be as thanasius, conrra mundrum, I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils, but if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Oh, be not weary in well- doing. Go on, in name of God and in the power of his might, til even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall vanish away before it. (The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., edited by John Telford (London: The Epworth Press, 1931).
Did you catch the Latin w in the first sentence? “Unless the Divine Power has raised you up to be as thanasius, contra mundum…”
Contra-mundum — against the world.
The Shepherd leads us that way - in paths in righteousness, for His Name’s Sake. And we must follow, even when it appears unpatriotic, even when it puts us at odds with family and friends. Issues of justice and peace in South Africa, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and Poland; issues of poverty and hunger, pornography and unemployment in Memphis – are issues along the paths of righteousness for our Shepherd’s namesake.
III
“He makes me lie down in green pastures.”
“He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.”
“He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
The question is: Are we willing to be led?
I hear it over and over again. “I’m afraid of what the Lord may do with me and where he might lead me.” Even when it is not spoken, I sense that fear boiling in the lives of people paralyzing them in their discipleship.
Why is it that tend we tend to always associate God’s Will with the unpleasant enough? We talk about discovering and doing God’s Will in the same tone and with the same reservation that I used to resist my mother’s entreaty to take a dose of castor oil or black draught.
Why can’t we see it – it may be tough to make some of those hard decisions about God’s will. It will require discipline and discernment to stay in His will. But the inner peace that comes, the feelings of worthiness, the ease of conscience, the assurance of God’s good pleasure and eternal life will affect any price.
Many years ago, King Edward II and his Queen Alexandra were out walking on the moors some distance from their summer palace at Windsor. Suddenly, the queen stumbled and seriously sprained her ankle. Night was just beginning to fall. She was in great pain and could stand on only one leg. Finally by leaning on her husband and hobbling on the other leg they were able to reach the home of a humble cottager who had already gone to bed. The king pounded on the door until someone from within cried, “Who’s there?” The King shouted, “It is Edward. It is your king. Let me in.” The man behind the door shouted back: “Enough of your pranks - be off with you and a man get his sleep!” But Edward continued pounding on the door. The cottager shouted, “I’ll teach you to torment an honest man who is trying to get his sleep.” He rushed downstairs with a stick in his hand ready to throw the intruder off his porch. Then in the dim light of his candle he saw that it was indeed his king! He gasped, stepped back, dropped to his knees and invited the king and queen to come in. Help was quickly summoned.
Years later when the cottager had grown old and company would come over, he would relive that experience. He would tell of that wonderful night when the king came to his humble home. He would rock back and forth before the fire, smoking his pipe, and in a voice touched with awe he would say, “And to think, I almost didn’t let him in! I almost didn’t let him in!”
(Dr. Joe A. Harding, “The Power of Passionate Purpose! “, Central United Protestant Church, Rich Washington, March 23, 1986)
We are in the same danger. The Shepherd wants to lead us. The question is – Are we willing to be led?
