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A sermon on Psalm 23, John 10:1-10
by Rev. Chris Bohnhoff

Here we are, back to reality after the celebration of Easter. Now that the breathtaking discovery that death is not the ultimate authority as we feared, we turn to the task of making meaning out of this new piece of information that is somehow new no matter how many times we receive it.

And not only was death not the ultimate authority over Jesus; the entire Bible teaches that the same holds true for us! Our task for Eastertide is to reorient ourselves to this reality and allow it to shape our way of being once again for the coming year.

As we begin, will you pray with me? Merciful God, living presence, thank you for the ever-present offer of new life. Thank you for traveling with us, and for your wise ways of protection and wayfinding; for the abundance you lay before us. Lend us your peace that we may put our awe and reverence where they may be life giving, not in places of clinging and fear. And help us, once our sense of your presence is secure, to show your shepherding love to those in our lives who need it most. Amen.

In the Biblical landscape, please excuse the preacher humor, but you can’t shake a rod and staff without hitting a shepherd. They’re everywhere! From the nomadic shepherds who first heard word of Jesus’ birth, to David, who tended his family’s or his village’s flock before taking down Goliath. It’s clear from the Bible’s characters and stories that shepherding played a central role in Israel’s culture, both as an important job and as a shaper of communal identity through the combination of compassion and powerful protection that shepherding requires.

Given all this, it makes sense that one of the most powerful, comforting psalms envisions God as a shepherd. But how that shepherding is described sounds a bit different in Hebrew than it does in English, so I’d like to highlight some things in Psalm 23’s original language that I hope enrich our understanding.

Let’s start with the first line: “The Lord is my shepherd.” When Moses asked God at the burning bush what he should call God, God responded, “I am what I am,” but this is only one of the possible translations. It could also be understood as “I will be what I will be,” or even more broadly, “I am the beingness of being.” Those translations give a very different sense of God than Lord, don’t they?

Whereas in English, shepherd can be a job title, in Hebrew it is exclusively a verb: to pasture, graze, or feed. So, in the original language, the first five words of the psalm state that the one who feeds me is the being who joins me in my being.

This is followed by a calm, good things sandwich around the scary phrase, “Though I walk in the vale of death’s shadow.” While we’re basking in the lack of want, quiet waters, and presence of God, it’s easy to gloss over the fact that God is leading us through death’s shadow, through a place with the potential for enemies looking down on us from all sides.

But the mix of comfort and challenge continue. “You set a table before me” – sounds nice – “in the face of my foes” – less nice! In Hebrew, each noun begins with a verb, and the verb the word here translated ‘foe,’ often translated ‘enemy,’ begins with is to bind or narrow. That certainly can apply to one you would call an enemy, but it could also apply to a wider group, couldn’t it? Like, people who make life inconvenient by taking away options you’d really like to take? And these narrowers are set around a table with you – a noun that in Hebrew begins with the verb meaning to stretch out. So, yes, God shepherds us to spaces shared with our foes and narrowers, but in a safe way. Maybe even a way that offers an opportunity for reconciliation.

The translation tidbit that resonates most strongly with Eastertide is back in that beautiful sentence, “Though I walk in the vale of death’s shadow, I fear no harm, for You are with me.” That word fear: in Hebrew, it can also be translated as awe or reverence. It’s a word that the Hebrew Bible reserves for God. Its presence here reminds us of the bad habit we humans have of revering, fearing, being in awe of that which can harm us: the predator-filled, dark valleys.

Instead, the psalm envisions the shepherded only revering God, the one who shows the path to abundance and care.

I would argue that there is meaning for us to make out of even these small translation differences. God and shepherd as verbs, not nouns; enemies as narrowers, not confrontational adversaries; the table as a stretched-out place, not just a piece of furniture. It adds up to a picture not of passive direction to serenity, as a parent would guide a toddler by the hand around danger, but of co-created travel through life’s hard stuff. It’s even more comforting if we engage with it, because we recognize that among the ways that God’s living presence protects us is by bringing us to spaces where we can be in the presence of people who are difficult for us and we can still survive, still experience the abundance of God’s creation. That’s resurrection.

Now, psalm 23 is poetic and abstract. In this passage from John’s gospel, Jesus gets concrete with how he describes his shepherding. In the first century, oftentimes, sheep pens didn’t have wooden doors, so shepherds would literally sleep in the sheep pen’s opening. They were the gate, just as Jesus says he is, the literal barrier keeping the thieves from plundering the space where abundance is experienced. And shepherds truly did know each of their sheep, and their sheep knew their shepherd by voice.

In these passages, we are presented with two aspects of God’s shepherding: on the one hand, psalm 23’s poetic shepherding through danger, a living presence that maintains abundance even as it doesn’t avoid bringing us into spaces with those who narrow our path; on the other, the highly protective, highly personal shepherding that keeps the thieves out, whose voice we know, who put their body in the gap in the fence for our safety.

Part of the gift of Jesus’ story is how he models righteous action in both shepherding aspects. In his final week, he walked the difficult path, confirming to God the night before his arrest that he would walk it to the end. He did not fear violence. He did not revere power. He allowed God to shepherd him through darkness’s vale to green pastures. But he also shepherded others, risking personal danger for the sake of the sick and marginalized.

During Eastertide, we, the church, the body of Christ, contemplate how Jesus passed us the gift and responsibility of a way of life based in trust in God’s living presence that enables us to care for those who need it. In the coming week, I invite you to think about how the verb ‘to shepherd’ shows up in your life. How do you feel shepherded? How do you shepherd? And can you find inspiration and beauty in these ancient stories of our tradition’s master shepherds?

Thanks be to the living presence for bringing our life back, for leading us to green meadows and quiet waters, even when the path leads through all the danger that this life is capable of. May our faith in the destination and the one who shepherds bring us peace, and the courage to be God’s shepherds here and now. Amen.