"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life."

How pleasant to come to church on a Spring Sunday and encounter an old friend. Sometimes Sunday can be a jarring, discordant experience. You settle down into the pew only to be hit over the head by some unfamiliar idea, some alien biblical text, poked in the ribs by a pushy preacher peddling an even pushier biblical passage.

Not this Sunday. The Fourth Sunday in Easter is known, in the church's year, as "Shepherd Sunday." All the texts have to do with sheep and shepherds, all appointed on behalf of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. This day the Psalm simply had to be Twenty-Three, the Shepherd Psalm.

"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." I cannot remember when I did not know this Psalm. Can you? Even if a person knows n…